Clockwork Moon

by Felidae0

Chapters

5-1-1

Clockwork Moon (1)

Chuff……………Chuff……………

“Valve one, thirty degrees clockwise.”

“Got it. Thirty clockwise.”

“Valve two, twelve degrees counter-clockwise.”

“Twelve counter.”

“Valve three at… never mind. Three is good. Four is blocked, however. Open it, watch for the steam.”

“Roger.” Below the dimly lit catwalk, a hatch clacked open, and a gout of superheated steam hissed out. It slowed, and the hatch was closed.

“Good. Nineteen degrees clockwise now. Let’s hope it works this time, I think we’ve got it.”

“Me too. Nineteen, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed.” A pause punctuated only by the clicking of a small calibration tool. “Good. Numbers are good. Water intake is clear, dials are… bugger. Piston eight is slowing…Releasing pressure, stand clear.” The brown Earth Pony pulled a lever on the control panel in front of him. All four valves clacked open in perfect synchronization, releasing yet more steam and bringing the temperature higher, climbing uncomfortably. The brown Pony reached over; pulling a rope attached to the top of the metal tube. The ceiling slid open, revealing its true form as that of shutters. Below, the valves returned to their previous state.

“It’s still stopped.”

“I can see that, Niles.” Retreating from his hiding place behind a sheet of Aluminum (A hasty, badly smelted addition after a particularly bad scalding) a yellow Earth Pony, ostensibly Niles, looked above at the irksome component. It was housed inside a glass tube, and the whole assembly was roughly a foot in diameter. The piston had dragged against the glass, displacing it so that the piston couldn’t continue to churn.

The brown Earth Pony above brushed a strand of orange hair out of the way of his goggles. He began to walk around the circular steam engine, his hooves clanking upon the metal mesh of the catwalk. His right hind leg, in comparison, clanged loudly and obnoxiously with every step he took, the gears and cogs whirring to move his leg in a facsimile of a normal canter. Broken bone and torn tendons had been replaced with shining clockwork, well-oiled and always making such alluring clicking sounds.

He moved to the catwalk above piston number eight, and crouched low to release the latch. Finding it, he pulled the metal grating up and out of the way on its hinges. The piston now revealed, he balanced on his metal leg and kicked it with the other. Now realigned, the piston began pumping back and forth inside the tube, generating power like the other seven.

He grinned. “Heh, if I couldn’t fix that, I don’t deserve the name of Tinkertoy.” He replaced the cover, and it clanged back into place. He quickly resumed his position at the main control panel.

Chuff…Chuff…Chuff…

“That did it. Dials are still in the green; numbers are good…Output is still dropping… Niles! Check the coal!”

Back below Tinkertoy’s catwalk, Niles grumbled and clopped downstairs, hooves meeting mesh. The bottom level of the three was placed against the ground, with not even a piece of carpet between them and the cobbles of the alley behind their workshop. The center of the level was a round tube, a meter thick and made of good-quality iron. Below the stairs sat a large pile of coal, and a shovel sticking out of that.

Still grumbling, Niles pulled the shovel out before slamming it back in to pick up some of the lumps. The action was mainly to relieve anger, as he replaced the shovel before turning to face the hopper. He grabbed a nearby winch, and began turning the handle evenly in a counter-clockwise direction. Before him, the four iron heat shields surrounding the coal hopper began retracting downwards. He ducked as a wave of intense heat rolled over him, followed by a cloud of smoke. He coughed lightly, glad for the ventilation. The passing cloud stained his green hair (A genetic throwback from his ancestors) slightly, giving it the appearance of a burned plant.

As soon as the shield was fully retracted, Niles went back to the pile, once again grabbing a shovelful of coarse black rocks. He dumped the load into the hopper; the coal briefly obscuring the fire before the fire curled and consumed it instead. Satisfied, he winched the shield back up and denied the inferno any escape. He quickly clambered back up the stairs to his control panel. Above, the pistons began working faster and faster to charge the large battery at the very top of the tower. Were someone to look at it from a distance, they would have mistaken it for an armored water tower, surrounded by strips of shoddy aluminum to protect it from the elements.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.

“Output is climbing! Stored power at five percent and climbing…Six … I think we’ve got it, by Jove, I think we’ve got it!” Below, the fine filters inside the valves were becoming clogged. They should have been opened periodically; not to mention cleaned between uses. But they hadn’t, and that would cost the two. Clogged with ash, and then soaked with steam, the result in nature would have been called “Basalt”. Here, however, it was called a “Mechanical failure.”

Chuff Chuff Chuff Chuff Chuff…

“What in Luna’s mane…?” Tinkertoy started, but was interrupted by Niles from below.

“Buck! Tinkertoy! The filters have clogged, and the valves are locked! We need plan B, now!”

“The valves were our Plan B, it wasn’t supposed to get this bad! They were our fallback!”

“…BUCK!”

Tinkertoy started pulling levers and pressing buttons, hoping to rediscover a fail-safe he’d forgotten. Hooves clacking against the control panel, hoping against hope that at least he’d had the foresight to install a main shutoff switch, or some other way to release pressure that had slipped his mind. But there was nothing. The dials were vibrating violently, bouncing inside their casing and spinning wildly, bouncing occasionally into the red, then more often, before it stopped leaving the little red area at all.

ChuffChuffChuffChuffChuffChuff…

“I’m going to shatter the pistons!” yelled Niles from below, wielding a sledgehammer they kept around for an emergency.

“No! You fool! When the steam releases, it’ll boil us alive!”

“Steam rises! It’ll buy us enough time to escape before it blows!” Hurriedly, he tried to open the door, only to find it jammed by the heat, expanding at a microscopic level to render the lock worthless. Around them, the thin aluminum groaned and whined as only metal could around them. It began to hum threateningly with the strain.

:”That’s it! Quickly toss me that sledgehammer!” Niles looked at him like he was mad, but within Tinkertoy’s eyes, there was a spark of inspiration… He slung the heavy tool up to him. Between them both, but under the catwalks, the pistons were moving at a rate unmatched by many Pegasi, whirring, and visible only as a blur to the naked eye. Tinkertoy caught the Sledge, and bent to unbuckle piston number three’s section of protective catwalk.

Piston #3 was pointed at the direct center of one of the sheets of Aluminum that made up the outside shell, and therefore a weak point. Tinkertoy took a deep breath, considering how much he really wanted to do this. Niles watched from below, wondering what Tinkertoy’s plan was. The piston inside the tube whirred, no longer a piston but a metallic-grey blur.

CHUFFCHUFFCHUFFCHUFFCHUFFCHUFFCHUFF-

The Sledgehammer slammed into the end of the glass tube, not rupturing the transparent material but merely knocking it askew. At lower speeds, the piston would simply stop. Now, however, it was long past that point, and the glass was merely an obstacle in the way of its repeated motion.

It launched the tube, smacking it into the wall at a velocity that caused it to shatter upon impact, denting the wall and bending it outwards. A nanosecond later, the piston detached from its moorings, loosened by the impact. It too, was launched like a missile, and the easily thirty pound weight not only collided with the wall, it crumpled it, and it sheared from the side like a piece of paper hit by a baseball. Sam followed it outwards, missing the superheated cloud of steam by mere inches as he landed on the cobblestone pavement.

Niles ran past him, vertical as Tinkertoy had managed to land on his metal leg, twisting in such a way that he ended up with his hooves sprawled and lying upon his back. Niles left his field of view as quickly as he entered, presumably running for cover from the explosion of glass and various metal odds and ends that had been damaged in the escape. Tinkertoy didn’t care. Some spun through the air, shining and whirling beautifully through the air. A few bounced off him, causing discomfort only vaguely noticeable, as though happening miles away.

When the pieces had ceased their glowing dance, he stared at the night sky beyond. It looked… fake, somehow. It was, in every way, a night sky. But it still seemed wrong, copied without any imagination. There was no creativity in it, like art done without inspiration or music done without soul, merely a rhythmic beat without anything beyond. He strained, and he could swear he could hear said beat, but echoing and uncertain.

It took him a second to realize he could, in fact, hear a steady thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, and he recognized it as his heartbeat. Listening even closer, he could hear the grand machine he and Niles had built running out of fuel and shutting down completely. The chuff of the remaining pistons dwindled and eventually ceased. Without it, he started losing track of time. He might have lain there for minutes, hours, or even millennia and he couldn’t tell. He stared at the Moon. Was it always that dim?

It, too, seemed like it had lost all of its will to shine, and had given up on the concept past a required presence. Around it, the stars seemed to have lost their luster, unable to twinkle any longer. They looked more like holes poked in a sheet of paper now. They were nothing like that beautiful night, that wonderful sky he had seen a year ago. He could remember that, ironically, as clear as day. He still swore to anyone who would listen that he saw Princess Luna and her Sister dancing and playing among the stars, hiding among the constellations and racing each other around the Milky Way…

His daydream (A misnomer was never more apparent) was rudely interrupted, however, when Niles reappeared at the top of his field of vision. “Tinkertoy, wake up. There’s a constable here who’d like to speak with us. And a medical wagon.”

“Why would a Constable want to speak with us?”

“I’d assume because of the explosion.”

“We prevented the explosion.”

“Semantics.”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but I’d also like to see what licenses you may have for this. Both a’ you.” A gruff voice interjected itself into the banter. Without getting up, but merely bending his neck backwards, Tinkertoy sized up the copper.

The… Officer, he respectfully corrected for himself, was much, much larger than he was. Were it not extremely unlikely, he would have doubted his dubious claim to be a pony. Maybe a malformed Diamond Dog or a particularly well disguised Griffin. He stared at the blue uniform, the gold shield that defined his job for the particularly hard-headed, and the ridiculous tiny blue hat attached by a piece of elastic. Yes, he mused to himself. This was somepony not to insult. He decided to be a little snide anyway.

“Licenses for what?”

“Dangerous handlin’ o’ materials. An’ litterin.”

Tinkertoy quoted Niles. “Semantics.” Raising his head slightly for a better look, he noticed a very nervous-looking white unicorn behind him. Underneath his well trimmed lime green hair, he looked somewhat nervous. Tinkertoy pondered why, and briefly wondered whether the… Officer had gotten him, the Medic had gotten the Officer, or they had both arrived at about the same time. Behind them both, a small wagon with a stack of stretchers sat, waiting to be used.

Tinkertoy chose his next words very carefully, and yet not carefully enough.

“This may seem a mite tangential, but does the sky seem a little… off tonight?”

5-1-2

Clockwork Moon (2)

Tinkertoy sat in the hospital. After last night, he needed it. His right hind leg had been removed, mangled mess that it was. He was already mentally drafting a replacement.

He didn’t have a whole lot to do while he waited to be declared “Not dying” and released, so he was interested when the door opened. Someone to talk to? Complain at? One of the doctors entered, and held the door open for… Oh no. Not her. He wasn’t sure he could handle this.

A tiny orange filly followed the doctor in, eyes red and puffy. She’d been crying. He couldn’t blame her.

She walked near to his bed, but remained a few feet away, and looked at all the bandages. Miraculously, his mouth had remained uninjured, needing no bandages and remaining unobstructed.

“I’m sorry.”

Her wings fluttered quickly, surprised. She might not have expected him to speak.

“I know, Unca Tinkahtoy. I heard you say it enuff alweady. You don’t need to say it mowe.”

Her tiny voice, not even old enough to have grown out of the lisp, hurt him like a knife to the underbelly.

“I don’t know if there’s anything else I can say. What else am I supposed to say? I don’t know. Nothing but how sorry I am for killing him. Killing your fath-“

His voice cracked, and tears began to wet the edges of his eyes. She walked closer, stopping at the bed, at his right. The knife twisted.

“That’s what you kept saying at the twial. That and how you shoulda been punished.”

“Do you think so?”

“…No. I know you didn’t mean to do it, and no matter how I wook at it, it wasn’t your fauwlt. It was an accident, nothing mowe.”

It was the fact that she wasn’t even angry. He could ignore somepony who was just ranting at him incoherently, that was just noise. But her slow speech, considering every word before it left her mouth, showing only the barest hints of emotion… It was the final straw, and the tears began to flow freely. He closed his eyes, holding them in as best he could.

“The mawe at the agency said you wewe a hewo. That you cawwied him out, even with your weg like it was. Is… Is that twue, Unca?”

“Don’t call me that. We both know I’m not really your uncle, and even if I were, I don’t deserve the title.” His lip trembled.

“I don’t cawe. You’ll always be Unca Tinkahtoy to me, no matteh what you do. Unca… Did you really cawwy him out?”

Tinkertoy closed his eyes. He couldn’t hold the tears back much longer. “Yes. I knew he was dead. I watched him die, held his hoof while he passed. I carried him out anyway, just before it collapsed. It seemed like something that I had to do. Otherwise they’d be digging him out of the rubble.”

A moment of silence passed. It felt like an eternity.

“Unca Tinkahtoy? How did you suwvive?”

“Luck, I think. He was up on the platform, trying to get a solid reading on the water level. I was below, trying to reset the counter. I… I think I did something. I pressed a button that looked like the reset button, but it wasn’t marked. Suddenly he was yelling about the readings going off the scale, and that’s when the wall collapsed.“

“Pipes burst and we both got drenched with ice water from the lake. We both held on to something. I held onto the metal door that covered the measuring systems, and he held onto the railing. He couldn’t fly, not with his wings that soaked. I heard him shout something about the supports weakening, and when I looked up, he was falling.”

“He landed on top of this concrete chunk that was too heavy for the water to move, right on top of this long bit of rebar. When I got there, he was just staring at it. I would too, just poking out of my chest like that. He was bleeding pretty bad, think it hit a lung or something. I sat with him. His spine broke below the forelegs when he hit the concrete, but he could still feel his front hooves.”

He paused to wipe an escaping tear from his face.

“Somewhere in the chaos of trying to reach him, a fragment of the wall fell, and crushed my leg. I didn’t care; I just had to reach Jeremy. I got there and he started to tell me in this whisper I could just barely hear above the water; “Boss,” he said. “Boss, don’t stay here, I’m not worth it. Save yourself, Boss.” He always called me Boss. It was his nickname for me. Didn’t matter that we had the same job, that we were equal, he just always called me Boss.”

“Anyway, I couldn’t leave him. Not like that. I comforted him, held his hoof, told him not to look at the rebar. The other wall, the one on the riverside of the dam had collapsed at some point. I told him to look out there, look at the sun. Look at the sunset. He stared at it, and he told me to look after you, find his sister and send you to her. He told me to remember him and his family, before the divorce. That was how he wanted his family remembered.”

More tears now, they were beginning to flow freely.

“He told me that he’d been planning to teach you to fly next week. He’d always put it off. How he’d never get that chance, not anymore. He wished he could’ve done it sooner, but he’d never had the time, not since your mother left. He regretted it all. He looked at me, than back at the sunset, staring into it like it was the only thing that mattered. His grip tightened, and he clenched his teeth, and then… Just slackened.”

“Last thing I remember was closing his eyes and pulling him off the rebar. Apparently I walked all the way up five flights of stairs carrying him on, even with my leg the way it was. The paramedics told the door opened and I limped out with him across my back, right before the dam collapsed behind me. I woke up here a few days later, and the trial was a couple days after that.”

During the story, he could tell she’d been fighting not to burst into tears herself, but when he finished she just couldn’t hold back. She began to cry, the tears splattering onto his bedsheets, soon followed by her head as she pressed it into his chest.

She kept it up for a long time, but it had probably only been a few minutes. Her head finally rose, and her eyes were red and bloodshot from crying throughout the week.

“We… We wewe going to open a bakewy. He was j’st doing the work ‘til he got enough to buy someplace. That was his tawent, baking. Did…Didn’t matter if he was a Pegasus, if we both were, he always woved baking. And he was going to hewp me find mine, no matter if he was outside in the pawk or inside the bakewy. I woved his pastwies. Woved the smell of Cinnamon Wolls the best.”

He raised his hoof and cradled her head. It looked odd on such a tiny body. “I know. He told me. But do you know what else he told me?”

“Wh…what?”

“He told me that he wanted to do it with you. Even if you hated baking, and he knew you didn’t, not with how passionate you were for it, he wanted to open it with you. I promised that when he did, not if, not even there in the dam, when he did, I would be your best customer. Because no one could make a good roll like Jeremy.”

And then he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and started to cry like she had just moments ago. She pressed herself into a hug, awkward as it was to do in their position, and they both sat there and hugged each other, crying for what felt like hours. It ended far too soon, roughly and interrupting.

“Sweetie? Oh! I’m not interrupting anything, am I? I just wanted to tell you that your Aunt is here. She’ll be up soon in a few minutes. Let’s leave Mr. Smith alone, shall we?”

She and Tinkertoy broke the hug, and she sighed.

“Aunt?”

“Aunt Cheerilee. From Ponyville.” She turned around and started to walk towards the door. Just before she reached it, Tinkertoy stopped her with a word.

“Scootaloo?”

“…Yes?”

“I’m so very sorry.” She paused in the doorway, half in and half out, as though making a difficult decision.

Then she spun around and ran back to the bed, wrapping Tinkertoy into a bone-crushing hug that worried the nurse. She spoke in a whisper next to his ear. “Thank you.” Still hugging, she continued. “You promise you’ll visit?”

Tinkertoy smiled for the first time in a week, and brushed a purple strand of hair out of her eyes.

“Promise.”

“TINKERTOY!” The sudden shout ended the memory. Niles glared at him from his hospital bed. They hadn’t really needed them, just somewhere for the doctors to sit them down so they could tape up their bandages. They hadn’t even actually laid down in them, just on top, holding out a hoof to be bandaged.

“Finally got your attention. Jeez, you really did get deafened. Anyway, the docs are finished patching us up. I’d like my paycheck.” Tinkertoy sighed, and opened a pouch on his toolbelt. Wrapped around his mechanical leg, the wrench in the same place as his cutie mark opposite, his toolbelt had served him well. Already constructed of fireproof materials and made even more so by an enchantment, he was more flammable than it was.

He pulled a small bag from the pouch, and counted out twelve bits. He passed them to Niles, who had crossed the room by now. He looked at the piles of coins indignantly.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Hazard pay. I almost died tonight. Again.” Tinkertoy counted out four more bits. Niles nodded, and left with a “Seeya Tomorrow.”

“I almost died too…” Tinkertoy said to the now-empty room. “Jackass…” he muttered as he, too, left. He walked down the hall, and entered the second elevator at the end.

Graffiti on the side of the elevator said in sharp, red letters, “slowest elevator ever”. As the bell dinged two minutes later and he left the cramped metal box, Tinkertoy was tempted to agree. Maybe that was why it hadn’t been removed.

Entering the lobby, he waved to the paramedic who had brought them in. He was chatting to a pastel-pink pony with a ponytail. He waved back cheerfully, but she just blew a bubble of gum at him. He walked towards the glass doors, and the detection enchantment noticed him. The doors slid open, and he stepped through into the chilly night air.

He clanked down the streets of Canterlot. Behind him, the top of the hospital was lit up with a magical glowing sign. Above its spacious three floors, the sign showed a glowing Red Cross, the universal sign of healing. Beside that read Canterlot General Hospital. Below that, it read the time.

8:17. He really should be getting back to the workshop. Nonetheless, he took the scenic route. He wandered through the Canterlot market. In fact, this whole area was somewhat upscale. The hospital had been built here for that exact reason. Paying patients. Rich patients. He wandered around open stalls, few and far between as they were. Around him, ponies missing eyes or teeth, occasionally both, tried to sell him week-old fruit and “Gypsy charms”.

He never put much stock in those. Even in a land as magical as Equestria, some ponies still managed to make jewelry that had absolutely no magical enhancements of any kind. It baffled him. Everything on the planet had some background magic. The very ground oozed magic, when too much of it was lying around.

He passed a stand selling cheap spyglasses, and the young Unicorn colt manning the stand gawked at his leg. He didn’t mind. It was like free advertisement.

“Oi! Toss me one of those looking-glasses!” The colt looked up, back at the leg, and then grabbed one at random with a weak green aura.

“H-here, sir. Er, half price if I can take a closer look at that…”

“What’s your talent?”

“Pardon?”

“Your talent. You got a ‘mark, aintcha?”

“N-no, sir. Blank flank, sir.”

“Well, then. Have at it. And don’t look so dejected about not having a ‘mark. I got friends older than I am that haven’t got marks, and they complain all day about it! Trust me kid, Keep your eyes out for something, anything you’re good at. Don’t grow up like them. They’re right awful at checkers, but that doesn’t stop ‘em.”

“Really, sir?”

“Not really.”

“…Oh.”

“They beat me every time.” At this, the colt chuckled, and hopped over the counter to look at his leg. Tinkertoy eagerly showed the spinning gears and clockwork, much to the delight of the colt. He looked at it himself, and felt a little of that young wonder flow through his veins. How could it not? He mentally told the leg to raise itself high as possible and it did so, a belt pulled by a pulley contracting it like a mechanical wing.

When the colt had finished, he eagerly looked at his flank as though expecting a gear to have appeared on it. It didn’t, and he could see his face fall in disappointment. An old woman with a cheek puffy on the left and sunken on the right sat inside the stall, but she seemed to have noticed the colt missing without opening her eyes. Actually, she was a Unicorn. She might have.

“Boy! Where ya gone? Yer sapposed ta be manning the damn stall! You better git your lousy blank flank back here or I’ll give ya a whuppin’!” The Colt jumped, and quickly re-entered the stall.

“Sorry, gramma. There was a Stallion with a mechanical leg, and he-“

“I don’t care if he had mechanical testicles, ye’re not supposed ta leave or we lose sales!” The colt gritted his teeth, and looked back at Tinkertoy. “Half a bit, sir.” The old nag almost jumped out of her chair at that. “Ha’ a bit! Are ye’ trying to put me inna poorhouse?” Her eyes had snapped open by this point; not that it made much difference. They were milky white, her pupils having faded. She was blind as a bat.

“Ya conka’! You’s bette’ pay a full bit, or I’ll- Well, I’ll be.” The small colt looked back at his Grandmother. “See, gramma? He’s got a metal leg!”

“…Ye don’t, by any ch’nce, got a pair of-“

“No!”

Walking back to his workshop, Tinkertoy took the darkest streets he could find. He wasn’t particularly worried. Muggers were unheard of in Canterlot, or Equestria in general. Save maybe some of the darker streets of Manehattan. He used the Telescope to look at the night sky in detail, and came to the conclusion that something was very definitely wrong. Had this been any other universe or even any other planet in this one, he would’ve been helpless.

Here, in this one, however? He could ask a living goddess.

That had to wait ‘til the morn, however. He had work to do, and he noticed a few chunks of glass stuck in his leg, gumming up some of the more delicate clockwork. He turned a corner, and there lay the workshop.

It was a large building, a warehouse that had been refurbished into a manageable living space. He didn’t actually need to live somewhere else, and his machines didn’t bother him like they did Niles. In fact, the clickclickclick of delicate clockwork and the occasional toot of steam were comforting. He belonged here.

He stopped at the door, looking up at the sign.

-TINKERTOYS MECHANIKALS AND INVENTIONS-

The K had originally been a typo, but he’d realized that it worked better, made him seem a little foreign, much more intelligent, and gave him what his appearance and that of his workshop didn’t. He stepped inside, and took quick inventory. All his inventions were in place, and none had been touched by the Constables’ search for evidence. Mostly because they likely had no idea what any of them did. Ironic, that, as some were really quite dangerous.

He passed a table with a radio upon its surface. He clicked it on, happy for the background noise.

“-back to the Vinyl Scrrratch. Before we can get to the music, I’ve been handed a note from Octy here about… Seriously? We’re interrupting the music for a weather report?” A murmur, not quite audible, came from the background of the station.

“Alright alright. Fine. Anyway, apparently Canterlot has been a tad dry lately, so there’s one heckuva storm heading that way! We’re talking some flooding, complete soaking of any laundry, all that great stuff! Can I get back to the music now?” An audible exasperated sigh came from the background.

“Great! Thanks for that little break, Octy. You’re listening to DJ Pon-3 on the Vinyl Scratch. Next up, we got Tarby with Saturday Morning (Friday Night), and after that…”

His focus diverted from the radio. The music was alright, but he just stopped hearing it after a certain point.

He stepped up to one of the beat-up old mannequins he’d used to test worn inventions. He slid the odd-looking saddle off its back, and attached it to his own. One of his first true inventions, this saddle was originally inspired when he’d heard of a pony that desired hands. He had built his. Had anypony been looking at the back of his head, they would’ve seen the back of his head glow blue, flaring before settling into it’s activated state. The rune tattooed there was to control his leg, but he’d found it could also control this device.

A pipe on the back of the saddle began pumping out small clouds of steam, and underneath the saddle sat a miniature steam engine, as well as a complicated assortment of clockwork. As soon as it caught with enough power, it began to tick with its rhythmic quality. From his back unfolded a pair of metal arms, which began to reach to his front hooves. He strapped them to his legs, and flexed his new mechanical appendages. So simple, yet so useful.

Leaning onto the workbench, Tinkertoy picked up his two latest commissions. Both from an anonymous commissioner who’d paid in full, in bits, and simply asked them to be mailed to his location. The first being a small canister of various powders and gases, that, when the pin was pulled, released explosively but without any shrapnel. It made a deafening bang, a blinding flash of light, and in case that couldn’t incapacitate something, a cloud of smoke. He called it a “Blinding/Deafening Device for use on Rioting Crowds”, or the B/DDfuoRC, for short.

After he had accidentally set it off in his own face, Niles had led him out of the workshop like an invalid and called it a “Flash-Bang”. The name was appropriate, and Tinkertoy was actually proud of his non-lethal weapon. Which made their other mysterious commission somewhat distressing to contemplate.

This device was a unique weapon, and incredibly dangerous to hold, let alone use. Bullets, of course, existed in Equestria. As did pistols and other firearms, to a point. The first recorded use of what was later called a cannon was when somepony clever had shoved a bunch of fireworks and some rocks into a tube, then pointed it at the invading griffin army. Luckily, they had been perfected since then and similar disasters had been mostly averted. (Said Cannon exploded, causing a rock slide and massive casualties on both sides.)

It was like a typical flintlock pistol, but instead of having a single firing chamber, it had eight. The two sets of bullets were built so that when one round was expended, another would rotate clockwise and take its place. From the outside, viewed from the left, the arrangement of chambers was like a gear, and acted as such. Complicated clockwork fired the round, and rotated the chambers. When all the rounds were expended, (something not done often, due to the massive clouds of smoke it would cause if all were fired in quick succession.) The chambers could be ejected to the left, and a new series put in to replace them. The chambers were then typically spun from the front to the back, to clear potential jams.

It had also improved on typical accuracy, with even the most accurate rifle effective to a maximum of forty meters. This hoofheld device was accurate, and lethal, at two hundred. It simply launched the slugs of metal wherever you pointed it, and didn’t really stop. A set of iron sights had been mounted on the side, designed to be lined up with the eyes when held in the mouth. Alas, that was it’s only failing.

It had impressive recoil, and after his first attempt to fire it from the mouth he had to be treated and have his twelve broken teeth restored via medical magic, as well as his concussion. He’d later solved this by using the metal hand to fire it, but he could only hope that whoever wanted it was a Unicorn.

He set it back down on the table, then bent over to detach the mechanical leg. Inspecting it, he could see plenty of shards of glass blocking its beautiful movements. And yet it ran fine to the hospital and back. Amazing, despite the fact his hooves had made a clipclopksshclop rhythm all the way here, eliciting some odd stares.

He spun a small hidden crank, winding up the auto-clear mechanism. He released it, and the leg began convulsing on the table, grinding against the glass and grinding it to powder with exaggerated movements. He let it finish, and then leaned in with a magnifying glass to inspect it further.

He grinned, selecting tools built for cleaning clockwork. He was enjoying this. After all, that was his special talent, fixing things.

It had been so long since he had something complicated to fix…

5-1-3

Clockwork Moon (3)

Twang Twang Twang Twang…

It all went wrong in a matter of hours. Tinkertoy launched himself off the roof, his boots bouncing him off the street below and back up with a quick back flip to reduce speed.

Where had this day begun to to jump its rails, so to speak? When had his day gone from a normal day of taking commissions and innovating, to trying to reach her before whoever would commit their crime got their chance?

Twang Twang Twang Twang…

He had been dreaming…

“Boss, something’s been bugging me.”

“Something always is, Jeremy. What has irked you today?”

The two ponies were part of a mass, a crowd of ponies finally allowed access. They had all come in the same entrance, and were now splitting off to their own stations. Some moved in groups, speaking to their coworkers, but many simply wanted to do their jobs today. Nothing fancy. A blue mare at the back seemed to be somewhat lost.

Such was a normal day at the Las Pegasus Dam.

It was truly a marvel of engineering, a testament to the ponies who had dreamed it up and defied the odds, defied all those who had told them it was a crazy idea that would never work. That it would collapse in a matter of weeks.

It had defied everypony’s expectations, and stood even now, two hundred years later. Still producing electricity through a combination of well-built mechanics (Well, for two hundred years ago.) and magic. It even filtered the water.

“Boss, what’s our job?”

“Fixing the bits of the dam that break.”

“Right. We fix the complicated little bits and other ponies patch up the concrete when it cracks. But what about the pipes?”

“What about the pipes?”

“Who repairs them? Can we even access them? No. They’re sealed in the concrete for stability. So what happens when one of those, or, Celestia forbid, a whole bunch of those break? What happens to them, Boss? What happens to any poor sod caught nearby when those pipes finally bust?”

“I…don’t know. I never really thought about the pipes before. But it makes sense. Those rust, decay, degrade. They’ll break. You actually have a point, Jeremy.”

“Yeah! We should talk to someone about it. Maybe one of the overseers, you know? We can’t be the first ponies to realize this.”

“I’ll see if I can bring it up at some point with them. Maybe I’ll catch one on their break.”

“That’d be good, boss. We really need to consider this.”

Tinkertoy could remember this. He looked at Jeremy again, looking at how healthy he was. Surely this couldn’t be a dream. He tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. The conversation had ended here. It wouldn’t continue further.

This was the week before the accident. He’d had this conversation with Jeremy. Then… He’d forgotten about it. He’d never brought the subject up with anypony. He should have. The accident could have been avoided. This was, albeit indirectly, his fault.

The scene changed.

He was at his station. Above, on a catwalk that was both the main diagnostics panel and Jeremy’s station, sat the eponymous pony. Jeremy was looking at it. He turned, looking at Tinkertoy.

“These numbers are odd, Boss. Maybe some water got in the ‘lectrics. See if you can reset it.” Tinkertoy nodded involuntarily, turning back to his station under some control that wasn’t his. He stared at the control panel.

He’d never actually had to use it before. He’d gotten the training, but that was so long ago. He could remember a few buttons, but which one was the reset button escaped him. He reached his hoof out.

That one looked like a reset button. He brought his hoof up to it- NO! That was the one he had pressed before! He fought himself, trying to push his hand away from that button of doom. He pulled against it, trying his damndest to do something, anything, but press that damn button!

“Thy intentions are honourable. Alas, thus is not how thy event occurred. Thou cannot change the hand of fate.”

His hoof snapped out, depressing the button. He barely had time to turn as Jeremy shouted.

“What the buck? Boss, the readings just jumped! There’s something seriously wro-“ He was cut off as a loud groan shrieked through the room. Nearby ponies scattered, getting as far from the source as possible. The wall imploded, shearing through the catwalk and drenching Jeremy. Nopony else had been standing there. In fact, the closest anypony was to it besides Jeremy was that blue Mare from earlier. Her mane floated, billowing as she turned.

Tinkertoy could only watch as the catwalks moorings bent in upon themselves, dropping Jeremy onto the railing. He clutched on for his life, trying his best not to lose his tenuous grip. Hooves, however, were not ideal for gripping. Wet metal, along the same vein, had almost no grip. His fall was inevitable.

“Boss! Boss, I’m slipping! Tinker-“ He fell.

He fell, all grace lost, spinning slightly through the air. The water was hovering around him, splattering against his fur and wings. His hooves windmilled, looking for a hoofhold, anywhere he could get a solid grip.

Then he stopped falling. There was a strangled cry as blood spurted, and water splashed. Feathers floated across the water.

The scene changed.

Tinkertoy was sitting next to Jeremy, his own blood mixing with Jeremy’s to stain the water below. He didn’t care. Jeremy needed his help.

“It’s gonna be alright, man. We’re both gonna walk out of this place alive.”

“The hell –cough- the hell I am…” Jeremy was looking at the rebar again. It was barely recognizable as such, the bone fragments and blood disguising it as a broken rib. It stuck out of his chest at that perfectly horrifying angle, the one that was fatal no matter what was sticking out of it. It felt wrong just to look at it.

And then something was different. Tinkertoy looked up and realized that the blue mare was next to Jeremy as well, holding his other hoof. She was familiar. He started as he realized just who it was.

“Luna?” She looked at him. She appeared different. Shorter, unlike Celestia. Actually, she seemed to be just about normal size. Her wings were folded in, and her horn seemed just a tad larger than a normal Unicorn. Her armor, wet with the water spraying everywhere, seemed to be more for decoration than protection. He looked back down at Jeremy, who was looking at him confused.

“Jeremy… Do you see her? Don’t look at the rebar. Look at me. Look at her.” Jeremy turned, and saw Luna for what seemed to be the first time. “Yeah… I see her, Boss. Who is she?”

Tinkertoy could’ve told the truth, he could feel the dream had stopped being a memory a while back, but that wouldn’t have been comforting. “She’s… She’s here to help, Jeremy.” That was the truth. Of a sort.

“You… You from The Beyond, lady?” Luna looked at him, not sure how to respond. She looked at the rebar, and at the hoof she held. Looked at the blood. Jeremy was beginning to cough up quite a bit now. It leaked from the corner of his mouth, staining his brilliant orange fur.

“…Yes. We are from The Beyond. We are here to help thou. And thy friend.” She used the hoof that wasn’t holding his to move Jeremy’s head towards the hole in the Dam. The wall had cracked, and the last of the sunlight poured in through the massive hole.

“Look at thine Sister’s sun, and watch it set. Breathe. Feel the air flow through thy lungs. Breathe out. Feel they blood flow and thy heart beat. Thine life ebbs, like yonder light of thy setting sun. We cannot stop the sun from setting, and we cannot keep thy heart beating. But we three, together, can ease thy passage from this world. Do not fear the unknown. Do not leave this world with a heart full of longing and fear. Leave with peace. We are thy friends, and we are here.”

Tinkertoy realized he was crying. He looked up from Jeremy, and saw that Luna was crying as well. Jeremy spoke.

“What about –cough- my daughter?” Luna’s tears were like drops of the night sky, shining and twinkling and glowing.

“Thy friend. Dost thou trust him?”

“With my –cough- life…”

“Then trust him with that of thy daughter. Thou shalt not be there for her, however much we all wish thou were. But he shall be, and he shalt watch over her, as shalt I. What is her name?”

“Scoot…Scootaloo…”

“Then thine Scootaloo shalt never come to harm.”

He looked at her, deep into her eyes. Her tears splashed into the blood pooling in his chest, creating whorls and eddies of shining blue mixing with hard crimson. It twisted with beauty on a literally astronomical scale.

“Th…Thank –cough-…you…” He looked past them both, past his broken body, and into the sunset as it’s last rays shone into the slowly collapsing dam. Tinkertoy propped him up so he could see it. He and Luna looked out with him.

Jeremy gave his last breath, a sad wheeze that drowned out the water with sheer significance, He closed his eyes and slumped back into Tinkertoy’s hooves. Tinkertoy slowly set his head back down on the concrete, gringerly out of respect for the dead. Luna reached across and gave him a hug, trying to comfort somepony who had lost their friend for the second time. They sat there, looking at him for what felt like hours.

Tinkertoy finally looked back up at Luna, who nodded at him. She held her hoof up to her muzzle in the universal “quiet” gesture. He blinked, and she was gone.

Tinkertoy looked around the dam, trying to find the mysterious blue mare, but she was nowhere to be found. He heard a distinct groan from above, and looked up just in time to see another chunk of the dam fall from the ceiling…

…Tinkertoy slowly pushed his head off the workbench. His cheek stung. He brought his hoof up and brushed off the bolt that he had fallen asleep on. The radio was silent.

“Why, you are awake! I’m amazed you’re alive after being that dead to the world. Coffee? Or did you have enough last night?” The sudden sound stung, his sleep-deprived brain not quite being awake enough to handle audible noise yet. He turned his head around and found Niles, who was gingerly stepping through piles of various half-built ideas, stacks of parts, and some devices that actually looked completed.

“Wha… Coffee?”

“Oh yes. I’m more used to plain old hangovers, myself. I forgot that you much prefer alcohol after this.”

“That…sounds like it would taste marginally better at the moment…”

“Is it still in the emergency cupboard? Or did you ransack that for parts as well? In fact, how far did your particular brand of madness spread last night?”

Tinkertoy looked around the workshop. It was, to put it gently, like a hurricane made of magnets and pure spite for organization had blown through. He seemed to have made progress on his automotive prototype, but it was slightly outweighed by the disassembly of the lighting system for the shop. On the plus side, his Automobile now seemed to be built to work at night as well.

The Weaponry station had apparently been involved in the whole mess somehow, with peculiar scorch marks on the target dummies. His “Spinpistol” had been slightly streamlined and reloaded, and now was sitting nicely on a stand. The stand itself, however, appeared to be made of duct tape and various broken wrenches, some of which had not been broken the day before.

The accounting desk was missing it’s typewriter, which he found hooked up to a sewing machine or six above where they had been working on a mechanical adding machine. That would make one hell of a noise.

A gumball machine he didn’t recognize or own the day before sat next to a series of multicoloured spheres on a workbench. The round dome at it’s top had been removed and now contained an intricate system of clockwork. Several small metal poles stuck out from the sides, some with more poles sticking out of that.

Not even the personal lockers had been spared. They now boasted control panels and punch card slots on the front, and the plate for the locking mechanism had been replaced with a larger one.

“I… think I remember doing… well, not that one, but maybe… no, not that one either… I very definitely remember repairing my leg.” He glanced down, and was relieved to find that the leg in question had been reattached. Several plates had been attached over the more complicated parts for shielding, which he could remember thinking about yesterday. Not much, admittedly, past that.

He remembered the dream, though. He’d had a flashback and a nightmare about “The Incident” in the same day? It had never been that bad before. He must’ve had some bad carrots earlier.

“So you remember almost nothing past that? I’m guessing you also didn’t write any of it down. Honestly, would it be so hard to write “This machine blows stuff up” on a note sometimes?” Tinkertoy wasn’t really paying attention anymore. His back felt heavier than usual. He looked at his hoof, and the mechanical arm attached. It seemed that he had found some way to make it bulkier, but it also seemed that several wires now crept and twined their way around the device, plugged into the back of the “hand”. He traced them back to the saddle, and from there into a massive battery now mounted on it. So that was the weight, then. Mounted atop the battery itself was what he recognized, after some thought, as a Tesla coil. What was a transformer, and an unfocused one at that, doing connected to the receiving end of the battery?

“Oi! Tinkertoy!” He looked back at Niles. “Did ya even hear a word I said?” Tinkertoy shook his head from side to side. “I thought not. I said, if you’re listenin’ this time, that the Waffle iron I made on commission for the Royal kitchen’s been approved. I’m taking it there at four.”

“F-four? What time is it-“

“Three fourty-five. Did you get any sleep last night? I mean, I came in at noon and been cleanin’ since! I only made coffee cause I thought I might need it to stay awake after that meetin’ yesterday-“

“Yes yes yes, I’m sure it was important. Listen, if you’re going up to the palace anyway, can you see if you can make an appointment for me to see Luna?”

“Princess Luna?”

“Do you know any other Lunas?”

“Point taken. You didn’t use ‘er title, so I thought-“

“Anyway! Appointment, meeting, whatever. I want to speak with her. I had a dream.”

“…You had a dream about Luna.”

“No! Not about her. Well, a little about her. Mostly about the whole “Dam” incident, but she played a fairly large part in-“

“She wasn’t around to have known about that, you know.”

“She- what? No, no, she visited my dream. She physically played a significant role in my dream and I wanted to thank her, speak to her about her night sky, that sort of thing.”

Niles nodded to himself. “Got it. You want me to make an appointment for you with Princess Luna so you can tell her about a dream you had that had her in it. And there’s a Dam somewhere in there. You are aware you sound a little odd right now, correct?”

“Yes. Deliver the toaster-“

“Waffle iron.”

“-Waffle toaster, and see if you can get that appointment.”

“…Fine. I’m not picking any more of this up though. We’re partners, if I remember correctly? Then I can tell you what to do as well. Go through the paperwork. Along with all the mail we usually get, you seem to have repurposed the file cabinets into some form of speaker system. The files themselves appear to have been an afterthought.” With that, he picked up the suitcase that been sitting next to the door as though dropped in shock. He took one last look inside, shook his head, and left, closing the door behind him.

Tinkertoy cautiously walked around what looked like a tower made of jars. Sparky was nowhere to be found, which probably wasn’t good. He crawled over another workbench in the “Devices built to be worn” section of the shop (Ironically, the workbench itself was cleaner than the floor around it.) to find another invention he had worked on during the night. This one drew his attention.

It was like a pair of stilts, but it also appeared to be only worn on the hind legs. If whoever tried to wear it didn’t have a significant weight on their back, they would simply tip forward. It’s purpose baffled him. The hooves, or at least where the hooves would be if they were a normal pair of legs, seemed to be circular and metal. They would be springy when used, to the point of being useless to anypony who wasn’t a trained acrobat. Further up, a pair of straps went across a space obviously designed for a hoof. Springs and various clockwork surrounded it, and looking closely, he determined they were for reducing impacts. Despite their closeness to the leg in question, they seemed to be distanced far enough so that they would never be anywhere near the leg. And yet, it was all so simple that he could wear them and his clockwork leg simultaneously. Curious.

He left them on the dummy. He’d test them later. He moved onto the filing system, or what was left of it.

Their filing system was a mess normally. In truth, any filing system had some intrinsic flaw. Something that made it work in some glorious and genius new way. However, none could ever actually stand how much raw information everypony tried to put into it. They usually broke, only a few catastrophically. Most simply became far too precise and oversaturated, making it next to impossible to find whatever you were looking for but perfectly easy to find a “Subscription Cancelled” notice from a magazine that had ceased production four years ago. Theirs was no different.

Tinkertoy had designed a system that had required a mechanical adding machine and a clockwork-tipped arm to organize blueprints, files, and mail. They had none of these, and had only recently designed what would be the first steps toward this working goal. It was inspiration, of a sort. He picked up a random sheet of paper. Something about a noise complaint. He picked up another. A blueprint for an engine that ran on the sheer power of it not working. He’d been in a strange mood for that one.

A sheet of paper fluttered out of the pile. He picked it back and flipped it over. A note on the application of toilet plungers as weapons. He could already tell that this would be a long day.

It was about 5:30 that he found a more recent work order. The anonymous one for the pistol, multiple flash-bangs, and a mechanical saddle. He had been staring at paper for the past half hour, and was by this point used to all its natural creases and bends. This one looked different. Like letters, almost. The word “Assassination” was quite a long one, and had very quite plainly been written on top of the work order.

He flipped it upside down and pressed it onto the table, and grabbed a nearby pencil. He began brushing the tip across the paper, and lightly, slowly revealed what had been written on top of it. It was backwards, of course. Wrong side. But he was very good at details. The words twisted about in his head, realigning themselves properly. He read the revealed message.

Slackjaw, make sure the assassination occurs just after sunset. That’s when Celestia should be asleep. Unless she’s up late, which we can’t check. We’ll just have to wing it. I’m sure you can do that. I’m just finishing up with the orders. They should be sent out by the 19th of July, and we’ll get the equipment by the 12th of August. You’re to do it on that day. You’re a bit thick, it’s no secret. I’ll repeat this again so you don’t forget it. You’re to assassinate…

Tinkertoy jumped as he read the last two words of the letter. Someone was going to… HER?! He had to stop this! Time… What was the time of Sunset? Six, just about. They had sent out the equipment just the day before, like fools! Foalish fools! TODAY was the 12th of August! He could still stop…

His face fell. There was no way that he could get across most of Canterlot in twenty minutes. Not on hoof. But what options did he have? His eyes settled on the mechanical legs sitting on the dummy. If he could figure out how to run on the way there… He might just be able to get there in time. What else? They’d be armed. He’d need a way to defend himself and her. He ran over and pulled a bronze saber from the umbrella stand. This would do. He strapped on the legs quickly, and realized he wouldn’t fit through the front door anymore.

After some quick thinking and a few learning stumbles with the legs, he found the door they used to load larger components into the workshop. He grabbed his brown bowler hat from the hatrack and leapt out of the door, and gave the legs a few experimental bounces. Perhaps by design, the now-heavier saddle he wore counterbalanced him so that he could move almost like a bipedal creature. He bounced up, and felt himself launch into the air. He instantly felt sick. Earth ponies were not meant to fly.

Had he not seen the clock, he might’ve give up then and there. But he did, and adrenaline took over. He had ten minutes. He launched himself onto the roof of the the wareouse-turned-workshop, and began to run in earnest. The fact that it was raining did not deter him.

Twangtwangtwangtwangtwangtwang…

We rejoin him at this point. He had reached the upper-class, or more so, part of Canterlot. He ran from rooftop to rooftop, baffling everypony on the ground. His saber, in a sheathe made of sturdy, hardened cloth, bumped against the spring-leg.

Obstacles were quite simply not so.

He temporarily ran out of rooftop, and took to the street.

He sped past a fountain, taking a flying leap off of a stone goat to a smaller roof.

From there, he went to one even higher.

The Palace itself had been built both inside and off of a mountain that jutted even further than the rest of it did. A winding road that had been artificially created was one of the only ways to access the Palace itself, despite the constant complaints of traffic jams.

This did not deter Tinkertoy. Roads were for ponies who had plenty of time.

A distant clock tower told him he had three minutes.

Around him, raindrops splattered against every conceivable surface.

Thunder rumbled.

He bounced off the roof of a tea shop.

Construction site! Tilt tilt tilt… Grab the guide post, swing over, keep moving!

The rock wall of the lee side of the Palace confronted him.

A series of pipes that provided plumbing jutted from the otherwise seamless stone.

Some were sewage. Some were clean, drinking water.

He bounced and rebounded off this pipe, grabbed that one, swung himself up, too fast to think.

He was running, quite literally, on instinct now. And adrenaline.

He clambered up the wall like a spider that had taken up Parkour. He flipped himself over the final wall.

He landed in the central barracks for the palace.

Somepony shouted. Likely something along the lines of “Stop!” but he didn’t have time.

A nearby clock gave him a single minute.

He launched onto the mess hall’s roof, then to the main kitchens. On a nearby balcony, some kind of lanky- was that a Human in a suit, holding a briefcase? No time to go back and see.

He bounded across rooms that would likely have been significant on a map, but were nonexistent in his mind.

Throne room. Low to the ground. Integral to the design.

Wrong one.

The rain was getting very nasty.

The drops weren't quite a deluge, but they felt like they could smack a Parasprite out of the air.

He sped past a small garden. Guards stampeded after him, following him from the ground.

Another throne room. Smaller. Added on. Had a tall tower leading from the back.

He slid down a final rooftop that sloped towards the windows, his Spring-boots throwing masonry and sparks to the sky.

He gave one final bounce at the bottom, launching him into a large stained-glass window. An arrow sped past.

The window depicted a particular Pony. Nightmare Moon.

Of course, what else would someone put in Princess Luna’s respective throne room?

The window shattered into a billion sparkling shards of diamond...

5-1-4

Clockwork Moon (4)

Billions of shards of glass, dancing and spinning and reflecting rainbows of light across his face, whirled around him. He’d hit the glass with the back of his leg, what would in another dimension be called the elbow. When it hadn’t shattered spontaneously, the momentum had slammed him against the glass, flattening as it refused to yield until the last second.

Yet now he flew, still falling as the glass fell around him.

His head was more or less protected by the bowler hat, his chin the only part not covered. A miniscule shard of glass tangled in the scraggly beard he seemed to have acquired as of late. Others flew, bouncing and slicing across his belly, no deeper than papercuts but stinging all the same.

A single shard whirled by; a splatter of his blood orbiting it as centrifugal force caused it to be whisked off.

Past the storm of glass came a scene he’d been hoping to prevent. The throne room was maybe twenty metres long, if that. Much smaller than her sisters’. By the door were two guards. Under any other circumstances, they’d be standing at attention in case somepony tried to fight their way in. The possibility that that same somepony would win never entered the equation, and they now lay dead on the floor, crimson blood staining their coats and the carpet as it left their bleeding bodies.

Another pair had responded to the shots, and they lay just as dead on the floor, about halfway through the room. A pool of blood oozed inwards from the door, a sure sign that the guards there had been gunned down as well. Their killer seemed to be a Pegasus; a black coat stained a deeper shade of coal by the blood splattered upon it. Very definitely not his.

He turned now, his eyes staring in shock at Tinkertoy, who had managed to pick a window that let him launch himself almost directly at him. Behind Tinkertoy, the rain had followed him into the building and whirled around him like the glass, if slightly less reflective.

His hoof (Using his other Celestia-damned saddle to boot) held the Spinpistol, and he aimed it agonizingly slowly at Tinkertoy. Of course, without the benefit of adrenaline and whatever else was slowing his perception of time, this would all be happening within the span of a few scant seconds. But time moved like a snail across a desert, and he easily came to realization that he would not be able to aim at him quickly enough.

His eyes, seemingly the only thing that could move even close to fast enough to register anything happening, turned to Luna. By this time, she would have risen the moon, starting it on its regular journey across the sky. She would have retired to her night court, to hold control so that any problems could quickly be brought to her and solved with a benevolent hoof.

She was terrified, and blinking, but she could see his grand entrance with ease. Next to her were her personal Lunar guards, two of the few Batponies residing in Equestria. They were clutching their eyes, rolling on the floor in obvious pain. So the Pegasus had used one of the flash-bangs, as Batponies were purely nocturnal. Such a light, like that of the flash-bang, would be easily crippling. They were blind, deaf, and useless, at least for now.

His gaze turned back to the Pegasus. The pistol was still not quite pointed at him, aimed instead at the window adjacent to the one he had entered through.

Then time resumed its normal speed, and a few things now happened almost too fast for Tinkertoy’s brain to register.

He landed upon the carpet, next to the Pegasus.

The pistol fired.

A small buzzing pellet whirred past his ear, thudding into the masonry behind him.

Luna screamed.

He brought his hoof up in a punch.

He was off balance, so not as powerful.

The Assassin staggered backwards.

And then nopony moved, all of them giving each other time to think.

Tinkertoy was back at a disadvantage, his Sabre still sheathed by his side, which would take at least a second or two to pull out. Another second would be necessary to cover the distance he had put between him and the Assassin.

Luna was still shocked by the Assassin in general, and by this clockwork stallion’s entrance. She did not move from her seat, and the thought of doing so never crossed her mind.

The Assassin had a choice. He couldn’t remember how many bullets this pistol had, nor how many he had fired. Five? Six? Seven? He could have two shots left, one shot, or none at all. This stallion was blocking a clear shot and would likely stop him. He could shoot him. Easily. But that might be his last bullet. So, he opted for the target behind him, hoping at least to complete his assignment.

The pistol twitched left, and fire flew from the barrel, directly at Luna.

The shot went wild, but followed its deadly trajectory nonetheless. It curved through the smoke of his earlier shots, the latest sending a curl of it’s own. It spun lazily past Tinkertoy, missing his metal clad hoof by centimeters. It slammed with a sickening wet thud directly into Luna’s left flank, burrowing through flesh, muscle, and stopping just before it hit bone. He had hit her, and that was all he needed.

Than Tinkertoy slammed into him, knocking him backwards and horizontal. This would’ve been enough, but he spread his wings and aerodynamically flipped back onto his hooves.

Tinkertoy hadn’t realized the shot had impacted. Had hit Luna. All he knew was that this Pegasus was still standing. Still breathing.

He drew his Sabre, the reddish-orange blade glinting in a flash of lightning outside. The Pegasus wheeled, and pulled a Rapier from one of his earlier victims. He spun back around, and their blades clacked against each other, already parrying a blow.

“En garde.” Tinkertoy felt his memories of ancient Prance returning, and a bit of the language as well. On guard.

“Au revoir.” Goodbye. And the duel began, with the Assassin pushing against Tinkertoy’s blade, his hilt swinging around to use it as a lever with which he could simply club him. Not a gentecolt’s duel, then. The hilt of the rapier swung past his head, Tinkertoy just managing to duck under it.

He brought the curve of the leg holding the blade up, slamming it into the Assassin’s chin. He lurched backwards, moving his stomach out of the way of a slice intended to gut him. He balanced on his instep, turning as he spun the hilt of the Sabre in his hand so that the blade now followed the length of his leg. A blocking blow.

The Assassin was unprepared for this, and had to use his leg for support against the back of the blade, his head leaning over it from the sheer force of the blow. They struggled against each other, the impact having knocked chips out of the seamless blades and locking them in place against each other. It was now a battle to see who could push harder, to break their opponents grip on their blade.

Tinkertoy, the Earth Pony, had natural strength on his side, but it was slightly weighed out by his natural thinness. He was, statistically, below average as far as Earth Pony strength went.

The Assassin, a Pegasus, was agile and thuggish, having spent most of his life training for this exact purpose. All in all, they were evenly matched. Strength would not win this match.

Thinking quickly, Tinkertoy swung his other hoof forward in a left hook over their blades, clubbing the Pegasus and knocking him away from where their blades had met. He scattered onto the floor, the Rapier clattering away from him. Before Tinkertoy could strike again, however, he pulled a canister from his belt.

A sound not unlike a cannon full of baking powder hit Tinkertoy like a sledgehammer to the forehead, coupled with near-instant blindness. Presumably the Assassin had been protected by his mask and goggles, but Tinkertoy was left with the glowing afterimage of his mask contorting in what was unmistakably a smile, even under that.

As his senses slowly returned, he was knocked to the floor, with the Assassin landing on top of him. He made a movement to knock him off, but the barrel of a pistol was forced under his chin.

“Ah ah ah… No sudden moves. You can hear me, I assume?” Tinkertoy nodded. “Good. Any last words, Mister Smith? Something pithy?” He shook his head. In Tinkertoy's ears, the ringing ceased. “Than allow me to interject one of mine. I have, after all, wanted to say this, but the perfect situation has only just dropped into my hooves.”

He chuckled, and cocked the pistol. “Mr. Smith? Dodge this.”

CLICK.

He looked down at the pistol, the now obviously empty cartridge mocking him. Tinkertoy smiled. “Done.” It was about that moment that the Assassin realized what he had landed on.

Tinkertoy extended his hoof, the spring-boots and the clockwork adding much more power than conventionally possible, which managed to launch the Assassin across the room. He didn’t even try to use his wings. He arched a good four meters through the air, his journey stopping with a splintering of wood as he slammed into a desk.

The Assassin was dazed, as would anypony who had slammed into a desk at that velocity. Luckily, Pegasi were durable, so he wasn’t dead. He tried to clamber out of the wreckage, to roll out of the pile of splintered wood, but he was stopped by Tinkertoy slamming onto his chest.

Tinkertoy kept most of his weight off him, for leverage.

“Stop struggling. With all this metal, I easily weigh…ohhh… four hundred pounds? Something like that. More than enough to pulverize your spine, crush your ribcage. Easily, like a twig.”

He kept squirming, and Tinkertoy planted his metal-clad clockwork leg on his underbelly for emphasis. Behind him, Luna was trying to climb off her throne, likely to try and help him. Tinkertoy heard a clink, and looked down with just enough time left over to close his eyes.

He was spared the worst of the bright flash, but the concussion still made his ears ring. His eyes snapped open, and he found himself on the floor, the sudden light stinging his eyes and the veins in his eyes burned into his vision as afterimages. The Assassin had gotten out from under him, and he whirled around to find he hadn’t gotten far. A new squad of guards had arrived, and one held his sabre to the masked Assassin’s throat. It was over.

Luna hadn’t understood the significance of the flashbang, and had looked directly at it. Two in quick succession, no wonder a thin stream of red was trickling from her ears. She could likely still hear, but it would be very badly muffled. Her legs gave out, and Tinkertoy caught her, holding her in his hooves.

“Luna…Luna…! Can you hear me? Princess?” His own voice was distorted, unprotected and ringing. Still, her ears twitched. She had heard him. She tried to respond, but her voice cracked. She tried again, her voice wavering but understandable.

“…Who…What…What hap…happened?”

“An Assassin, madam. He’s been captured, but you’ve been shot. By a device of my own creation, sadly. We have both had our hearing impaired, and your vision. I’m here to help.”

“He…Help? Thine voice…It rings…But thou have a familiar tone…We know thou.” Tinkertoy was astonished. She remembered him. So she had actually been there, in his dream.

“Indeed, Luna. You visited my dream last night. You helped me when I relived the accident. You helped put Jeremy to rest. You helped… put me to rest.” The realization washed over him, the guilt from the accident gone. Mostly, as it was still there, but it no longer impeded his decisions, no longer controlled his every movement.

The ringing had begun to decrease for Tinkertoy, and his hearing was slowly becoming unimpaired. Luna was still shaking, her blinded eyes darting about for a look at him. She seemed to be significantly worse off, unused to lots of lights flooding the retinas. It had damaged her eyes, and they had “shut down for repairs” as it were. A thin corona of magic surrounded her horn, and Luna turned to look almost directly at him.

“We…are pleased that we could help…at least one pony with thy…inner demons before we met thine end…” The ringing stopped fully, just as Tinkertoy realized the meaning behind the words. He looked down, and realized that his hooves were now coated in her bright, sparkling red blood. It stained her beautiful blue fur with horrid streaks of crimson, and soaked into his brown fur and the carpet below.

“NO! Luna, stay with me, Luna! I just saved your life, I won’t have you die on me now!”

“Thy name, Stallion. What is thy name, and the name of our savior? We wish –cough- to know who wouldst risk thy life and limb for ours.”

“T…Tinkertoy, madam. Tinkertoy Smith. I fix things.” His eyes moved to the wound, narrowing at the vibrant red. “And I’m going to fix you, Princess Luna.”

He set her down on the steps of her throne, and rolled her over as gently as possible. Luna looked up at him, tears smearing her makeup. “Dost thou truly believe thou can heal our wounds?”

“My good Luna, I can fix any machine, no matter how complicated, and no matter how alien. Surely a ponies’ internals can’t be much different?” He had no tools, no scalpel, no bandages, not even any medicinal magic. He spied one of the Assassin’s fallen knives, and picked it off the floor. He had his scalpel. He hoped it was clean, and that the Assassin had not poisoned them.

He grabbed his saber from his toolbelt, and used it to cut down a nearby hanging tapestry, then slice and tear it into bandages with strength he didn’t know he’d possessed before.

Nearby, one of the Batponies had recovered slightly from the first flashbang. Ironically, it was the one wearing the eyepatch. His eye hadn’t actually been damaged, merely covered by the patch. He had switched the patch to his other eye, revealing the other one. He used it to stumble about more effectively. Tinkertoy could use the help. “Well, don’t just stand there, you fool! Hold this bandage in place, and keep bloody pressure on it!”

Below him, Luna had begun to shake violently, her hind hooves becoming slowly obscured by an advancing wave of grey. Her silver leggings weren’t a part of her, and therefore were the only things to hold their hue as her fur seemed to change colour around them. It spread slowly, advancing from her hooves upward. The bullet wound seemed to have a small ring of grey dyed by the blood around it, seeming to be the source. A grainy liquid wove a thin trail through the blood pooled around it.

Luna pulled her hind leg up to her eyes, “seeing” it with her magic. She grimaced, obviously not satisfied with the results. She looked at Tinkertoy, and he suddenly felt a presence in his mind. Not wholly there, but merely an extension of a much larger mind. He started as he realized it was Luna, and that she seemed… hesitant.

He nodded, as if to say “Go ahead,” and the presence migrated behind his eyes. As he looked at Luna, she moved her hooves to see them twitch, and how they’d been changed. As she saw the state she was in, she began to make a sort of muted scream, like somepony trying to do so around a mouthful of their own hoof. She regained her composure slightly to ask a question. “What…What sorcery was contained within that bullet?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to have to get it out.” She nodded, and Tinkertoy was suddenly taken by surprise as a Zebra leaned over his shoulder. Literally, as he his face was suddenly right next to Tinkertoy’s’. The large equine began to mutter to himself.

“A spreading grey; a shortness of breath. The culprit seems to be monochromatic death!” He began to dig through his saddlebags, pulling out herbs and fruit.

Tinkertoy looked behind him.

Then he looked up.

Right into the face of a very angry Princess Celestia.

“Prin-Princess?”

“You’d damn well better know what you’re doing, Colt. I was just interrupted from a very important dinner with the Zebrica ambassador to be told that my little sister had been shot. I AM NOT IN THE MOOD. If she dies, you will be next, clockwork colt.”

Stunned, Tinkertoy could only stutter. He was interrupted and brought back to his senses by Luna. The wave of grey had passed her flank, overtaking her crescent moon cutie mark and changing it into a uniform grey. It now obscured a quarter of her body. “It tingles, Tinkertoy. Like we had sat on it and stood too quickly.”

He held her front hoof, the contact comforting her. “Luna, don’t worry. Just keep fighting it, if you can. You will live to see your sister’s sun rise and set tomorrow, and many more past then.” Her eyes implored him, staring deep into his soul. For a second, this wasn’t Princess Luna, mistress of the night, speaking to him. It was just a terrified little filly. “Thou…Thou Promise?”

Visions of a certain orange Pegasus flashed in his mind, visions of a very similar conversation.

“I promise.”

He turned to the Zebra, who had fished out a jar that seemed to be filled with liquid rainbows dancing and swirling, but never mixing. “Can you give her something for the pain? This is going to hurt, no matter how I do it.” He nodded, pulling a large leaf from another pocket.

“This herb shall ease her pain, and give me time to explain. The antidote is ready, but you must remove the source and hold her steady.” He placed it inside her mouth, but stopped her before she could close her teeth on it. “Bite down hard, but do not swallow. ‘Else it shall make your stomach hollow.” Luna crunched down on the green leaf, holding it in her teeth as it drained down her throat. She spat it out when the leaf had relinquished the fluid, while Tinkertoy leaned closer to the wound.

It was a small hole, barely large enough for the bullet. A testament to the slug’s velocity. A centimeter wide, and leaking blood, as well as whatever poison the bullet had been coated in. He watched as a small tendril of grey curled across the pool of blood on the floor, tainting it with a deadly monochrome, uniform grey. Similarly, the grey had spread, almost covering half her body.

He gritted his teeth, and held the knife to the wound. He mentally asked himself how badly he wanted to do this, whether it would help or merely damn them both further. He made his decision, and pushed the knife into the wound, cutting a thin line nine centimeters long. Luna gasped. Either the herb had not had enough time to take full effect, or it just wasn’t enough to dull pain that bad.

Blood oozed out of the new cut, and Tinkertoy used his makeshift bandages to soak it up. He pushed the cut open further, strings of blood and various fluids stretching across the small expanse. He cut again, this time through muscle. He made a clean cut following a seam, minimizing damage. He pushed it aside, and somepony handed him clamps to hold it in place. He pushed deeper, and found the slug nestled inside a mass of tissue.

This far in, it had slowed, and flattened against the solid flesh. He wedged the knife under it, eliciting another gasp from Luna. He wormed it out as carefully as possible, and gently pulled it clear from her flank. He removed the clamps, flattening the flesh as close as he could to its natural state so it would heal more efficiently. He pulled the wound shut, and took an offered suture and thread.

Gently threading it through the skin and pulling the wound firmly shut, he stitched Luna’s internals back into place. A gentle shimmer of magic surrounded it, healing the cells on a microscopic level and cleaning the wound as well as possible. Tinkertoy turned around to find a familiar white Unicorn concentrating on the wound.

“Oh…Hey. Small world, huh?” Tinkertoy only nodded, and turned to the Zebra. He held the bullet in a makeshift glove torn from the tapestry. Behind him, the Unicorn finished cleaning the wound, and began to surround her belly with gauze to protect it. The Zebra shook the jar of liquid rainbows one last time.

“Liquid Rainbows are not to be drunk. This cure will involve some luck.” He opened it, and tipped the contents into Luna’s mouth. She coughed, gagging slightly on the spicy chemical, and swallowed it. The Zebra was right. Liquid rainbows could be downright toxic to anypony untrained or weak. He hoped an Alicorn could handle it.

As the grey reached Luna’s’ eyes, she hiccuped, and it slowed before stopping completely. The tips of her ears glowed in a multicoloured spreading array that began to wash across her body, the rainbows spreading almost exactly like the grey had, but quicker. It met the grey; almost painting over it as it slowed a small bit, then began to move even faster.

A layer of rainbows soon covered all of Luna’s body, morphing and swirling in a way that made the eyes hurt. Slowly, they settled down, mixing back into her natural night blue-coloured coat. It would have been perfect, were it not for the drying spots of crimson still coating her fur. The Zebra spoke first.

“The worst is gone but the grey remains. Finish the leaf, and remove what you retain.” Luna weakly took the leaf, and swallowed it whole.

“Give her some room, the Alicorn needs it. No nice way to put it, she’s going to vomit.” They all took a step back as Luna made a sort of “Hurk” sound and emptied her stomach onto the steps. She was spent, and laid her head down on a pillow Tinkertoy had placed. The disgusting liquid, expelled from her stomach, was mostly grey with bits of leaf and the occasional swirl of a leftover bit of rainbow.

Tinkertoy stepped back towards her, and wiped her mouth with a spare rag he had in his toolbelt. She coughed weakly, and looked at him. She spoke softly, completely exhausted.

“Thank you… Knight Tinkertoy…”

“Knight?” He was slightly taken aback by this. He sat down on the steps next to her. His boots wouldn’t allow him to sit normally, so he sat on the back of his haunches.

“In shining –cough- Clockwork…” Luna slumped downward onto his lap, gently rolling onto her side and looking up at Tinkertoy with her still nearly blind eyes. Celestia stepped closer. “How is she?” The medic answered.

“Well, she looks stable. Might get a secondary infection, as…” He trailed off, realizing that she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Tinkertoy, with anger in her eyes. He sighed.

“She’ll live. Eyes should be better soon, as long as she doesn’t get exposed to another flash. Bullet wound isn’t as sterile as I’d like, but she’ll live with bed rest and magic in a couple days.”

“Yes. About those, care to explain?”

“…You already know, don’t you?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t. She needs to hear this.”

“Fine. They’re my inventions. I didn’t mean for them to be used on her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy making them. They were an anonymous commission, I only discovered their purpose shortly before arriving here to stop it.” Luna looked up at him, forgiveness almost oozing from her eyes.

“Thy ends justify the –cough- means…” Tinkertoy looked down at her, and Celestia leaned in close. He caught the slightest flash of a Celestia that wasn’t the tyrannical ruler of the most peaceful country on the planet, wasn’t a princess, wasn’t an Alicorn. Just a big sister caring for her sibling. “Glad you could see it like that too, Lulu.” She uttered in a whisper.

A shout sounded from the other end of the throne room. The unicorn who had been keeping the blade at the Assassin’s throat gave a strangled cry, then slumped to the floor with a knife sticking from his back. The Assassin ducked past a crossbow bolt loosed at him, and spread his wings. He was out the broken window in seconds. Tinkertoy’s eyes darted down to Luna, who was staring at the window in sheer shock again.

Gently, he set her down as she slipped into full unconsciousness, and then with a few bounces followed him out the shattered window. Celestia nodded, and a small army of medics, nurses, doctors, surgeons and other assorted medical personnel descended on Luna, quickly bundling her up and onto a gurney.

If the rain had been pouring before, it was still somehow worse now. Meteorologically, this shouldn’t have been possible. Canterlot was at a high altitude, and there were no pollutants to worsen the rain’s effects. And yet Tinkertoy doubted, as he scanned the rooftops nearby for the Assassin, that it was in fact rain at all. It felt more like a million dragons had all decided to vomit on Canterlot at the same time. It smelled remarkably better than that, however.

The Pegasus had not expected the rain either, and Tinkertoy spotted him back on the rooftop behind him. He had managed to turn and land on the roof of the same building he had left just before his wings became soaked beyond any hope of aviation, and now stood on the front, seemingly waiting for something.

With another quick spring, he landed a scant five metres behind him. The Assassin turned, and shouted in a voice barely audible over the rain, “You just don’t know when to QUIT, do you? I’ve lost and Luna lives! Leave m…” The wind picked up for a short second, “…ucking alone!” He finished. Beyond the wind, the unmistakable thrum of Airship propellers picked up in volume. The clouds stubbornly blocked their source, adamant in that it would be a bloody good storm.

Tinkertoy opened his mouth, but the wind snatched the words out of his mouth the first time. He shielded his muzzle with a metal-clad hoof, and shouted again. “You killed too many for that! And even if you hadn’t, you still tried your damndest to kill Luna! I would chase you to the ends of the planet for that alone!” His mane began to prickle just the slightest bit…

“You’re bucking obsessed! You…” The Pegasus trailed off, his eyes unfocusing for just a second. He looked back to Tinkertoy, pure fear in his eyes now. “You bloody madpony! You’ll kill us both, coming up here now, covered in metal!”

Oh, right. This was a thunderstorm.

The prickling upgraded to full-on tingling, the unmistakable feeling of static electricity crawling up his spine. The smell of ozone invaded his nostrils, and his gaze drifted to the hoof that held his sword. Was bronze conductive? Had to be. Copper and tin were both conductive; no reason bronze wouldn’t be…

The thrum of the propellers became all the more obvious, and the source finally revealed itself. It pushed through the clouds, the heat radiating off it creating a buffer of sorts around its massive length. The faintest hint of sunlight from a gap far above shimmered across it, the green and yellow colouration brightening in direct light.

The Pegasus looked towards it, and grinned triumphantly. On the side of the gondola, a hatch flipped open, and a rope ladder unfurled. It fell about ten metres short, and faint cursing could be heard from above as the engines kicked up an octave. The airship was moving, constantly moving above them to catch him with a lucky pass.

Tinkertoy stared, but a beep from his mechanical saddle brought his attention to it. He looked over his shoulder in time, just to catch the Tesla coil at the top glowing with blue electricity, before a flash blinded him. The sheer force of the impact slammed him into the wet rooftop. A dislodged chunk of ceramic slid off to its doom, to the castle grounds far below.

Sparks and pain shot across his field of view. Had he… had he actually just been hit by… lightning? And survived? He stood back up, his leg muscles screaming at him for their torture. His right hoof stung in particular. He held it up. He was right-hoofed, but it didn’t come up often, except in cases like now when he was holding a sword. It seemed to have been hit by a stray bolt, and the blade had blackened and charred. Further down, his metal hand had slagged around it, the thin layer of insulation somehow having spared him from the electricity and the flash-scorched metal.

That hoof was useless until he could remove the hand then. His other had been left unmolested, and he watched a blue light on the palm arc occasionally to the fingers of the hand, spare electricity from the bolt leaping across the space between his fingers. A spare spark triggered a connection, and the hand twitched. All the fingers stuck out wildly, before coming back in and forming a claw.

He looked back up. The lightning had obviously startled whoever was flying the Airship, and it had missed its first pass. It was now coming around for another, trying to recover the failed Assassin. He looked back at the hand.

That little blue light was conductive, and it looked like it sunk inward. A button. A flash of memory from the night before reformed itself, and he remembered why he had modified the saddle.

The Pegasus turned; making sure Tinkertoy didn’t do anything stupid like fight back.

Tinkertoy held his hoof up and directly at the Pegasus, a deranged grin creeping across his face. “Smile.”

And then he pressed the button.

Instantly, his vision blurred, and the kickback forced his hoof upwards and back. He was blinded for the umpteenth time today, and the last thing he saw before he felt the roof collapse under him was that damn green Airship…

The roof gave, the timbers burned and the tiling vaporized.

Tinkertoy fell, and the feeling was unsettling.

Around him, sparks and ashes and chunks of ceramic whirled.

A piece of wood that had been holding up the roof curled past.

There was a final blur of colour, red blood and dark blue carpeting and white tile before-

Then his vision went black.

5-1-5

Clockwork Moon (5)

Bedsheets.

Stiff. Sterile. Probably white or awful lime-green. Rubber?

So, he was in a hospital then. He was alive, was Luna? He had to find out. He cracked his eyes open and lifted his head off the pillow, taking in the hospital room.

It looked… standard. A few chairs. A couple cabinets, for spare medical supplies and medication. A vase with a couple of sorry looking flowers, on a table that seemed to be made of bright, multicoloured plastic. Next to the vase was a pile of charred, twisted metal, which he realized with a start was his saddle.

Essentially, like every hospital room that had ever existed, save his broken equipment. He’d been spending a lot of time in hospitals as of late.

He leaned over the bed to find the runes on the side. They were standard for hospital beds, and he could probably learn whether he was in trouble, and if so, how much.

Pain killer rune, which was normal. Hydration rune, which explained why his mouth didn’t feel like it was made of paper. Nutrition rune, so that he wouldn’t die of malnutrition. And an alarm rune. Buck.

He slid out of the bed, his legs feeling like jelly, and staggered across the room. He had been awake for what? A minute or two? He should still have time. He elected to leave his saddle. It would only weigh him down and single him out a crowd. He just grabbed the charred bowler hat from next to it, and dropped that on his head.

He made for the door, and grabbed the handle with his teeth, quickly pulling it open. He turned back to the doorway, and felt himself stop. The blade against his throat was the main cause of this. It was a double-edged blade, a broadsword. Normal size. Iron. He followed it back to the hilt, which was marked with the unmistakable symbol of the Solar guard. And the marking of the guard captain.

The sword was being held with a pink corona of magic, which similarly surrounded the horn of a heavily built stallion. His coat was pure white, and his blue eyes were focused on him. He was wary. His armor was polished to a high shine, the kind that could only be attained by polishing it every second he was not actively guarding something. His cutie mark was a shield surrounded by stars, leaving no doubt: He was on the verge of being stabbed by Captain Shining Armor himself. Again.

“Captain! Stand down.”

“No.”

“Have it your way.” A grey-furred unicorn pushed himself against the Captain, shoving himself around him. His horn lit up with magic as well, and Tinkertoy could feel tendrils of magic scanning him. He remained silent, in case the slightest noise could anger the Captain and cause him to stab him. He didn’t particularly like being stabbed. Or the thought of being stabbed. It seemed like the kind of thing to avoid right now.

“Hmm. Good. Broken bones healed, but that fracture in the front didn’t. Miscellaneous scratches might as well have never been there, and the teeth have healed or been repaired. No lasting damage from the concussion… Mister Smith, welcome to Canterlot Central Hospital. Sorry about the receptionist, he’s a bit annoyed at you.” With that, the Doctor walked back into the hallway and out of sight.

Tinkertoy decided to chance a sentence, directly to the Captain. “Why, precisely, are you annoyed at me? I mean, it's ...good to see you again, but...”

“I believe that he is angry because you single-handedly managed to destroy several parts of the palace, do a better job than his highly-trained troops, and save Lulu’s life. Which would, traditionally, be his job.” The voice came from the hallway, and it was unmistakable. It was a motherly voice, comforting yet young enough to be somewhat attractive as well.

It was, of course, Princess Celestia.

She stepped into sight behind the Captain. “Captain Shining Armor. Stand down.” He grunted, and hesitated before pulling the blade away from Tinkertoy’s throat. Tinkertoy felt himself carefully settle back down onto the floor, having arched his back to avoid the blade. The Captain stepped back and around Celestia, resuming his post in the hallway.

“I apologize, Smith. He is somewhat on edge. There has been a discussion about what to do with you, and his opinion was to have you in court for various assorted misdemeanors. It went primarily unheard, and he has been annoyed about it since.”

He was speaking to Celestia. Well. This week was full of surprises. “What… What were the other opinions?”

She looked directly at him. The feeling was not unlike standing in an arid desert, all the moisture completely gone from the air. “Well, the prevalent one was to send you off with a medal and forcibly relocate you somewhere else. However, somepony did not get a say. Two in fact, but I digress. I assume you wish to see Luna?”

“Luna! Er… Yes, please. It’d be comforting to know she’s fine.” His lack of concern about his fate did not go unnoticed by the Princess.

“Hmm. Very well. Come.”

Luna was doing well, considering the circumstances. In the span of two days, the bullet wound and accompanying surgery cuts had sealed entirely. She was only still there due to a secondary infection, which she was already fighting off. Alicorns tended to do that. Her retinas had been severely damaged by the multiple flash-bangs, and were healing as well. She still had to wear bandages to prevent permanent damage from a visual overload, which were placed in a sort of X across her eyes and around her head.

This was explained to Tinkertoy by Celestia as they trotted to her room in the royal wing, as well as what had happened since he had been knocked unconscious. In a stroke of luck, nopony had been caught underneath when the roof collapsed, with Luna already having been moved to an ambulance.

They entered Luna’s room, Tinkertoy entering first, eager to see her. Celestia, then the Doctor from before, followed him in. The Captain followed behind, watching everypony that passed them in the hallway.

Inside, the Batponies had apparently been assigned (Or perhaps had assigned themselves) to guard Luna. One sat next to the door, and had blocked it when Tinkertoy opened it. It was the one with the eye patch again, but he recognized Tinkertoy. He moved aside and nodded to the other, who had been quietly humming to Luna. He looked up, surprised, and the humming stopped.

“Meadowlark? Why hast thou ceased?” Luna spoke, her voice calming Tinkertoy. Celestia entered, and moved next to her bed. Tinkertoy sat beside her. Celestia sighed, and then spoke. “It is I, Lulu. Tinkertoy has woken, and wished greatly to see you.” She spoke the last sentence with an emotion that Tinkertoy couldn’t quite identify. Disdain? Trepidation? Perhaps just curiosity.

Luna smiled, and spoke. “Thank you, Tia. Do not let us keep thou, as much as we wish that you could stay. Thou do hath a country to run, after all.” Celestia nodded, obvious relief crossing her face. “You are correct, Lulu. I almost always have time for you. Almost. But I fear that if I stay here any longer, one of those fools back at the Palace will try to claim control.” She turned to the Batponies. “I leave her in your very capable hooves.” As she walked out, Tinkertoy could just barely hear her whisper “Watch him.”

Luna reached out with a hoof, reaching to try and find Tinkertoy. He gently touched hers, and guided hers towards him. She turned to him, and spoke a with audible excitement. “Tinkertoy! Our savior! We are deeply sorry that we cannot lay our eyes upon thee, but apparently that would blind us permanently now. We must wait, and wait impatiently we shall.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Luna. It’s good seeing you again.”

“Indeed. But we art curious; thou doth not use the honourific?”

“Would you like me to?”

“No. ‘Tis refreshing, and we like thou all the more. Names art important things, things that tell stories. But still, there is only so much they can do. Please, Tinkertoy. Tell me yours.”

“Of course. Where to start…Well, I was born and lived in Las Pegasus…”

“But thou doth not live there now?”

“No. Too many bad memories, and my family is… Well, they don’t particularly want to see me at the moment. I’d…rather not explain it, it’s a bit troubling.”

“Of course. Please, continue, unless it doth cause distress.”

“It’s alright. Anyway, the thing about Las Pegasus… It’s a very bright city. Some call it the city that does not know darkness. Apparently, you can see the lights for thirty miles before ever arriving there. And they never go out.

“So, for the first twenty-one years of my life, I had never seen the night sky, save aside glances. I’d seen the moon, of course, as it’s glow overpowers the lights…but just barely. Then came the night the power went out.

“They were repaired quickly, as something like that couldn’t go without repair for too long before problems arose. But for an hour, I was in the dark, and the natural light was our only illumination. For that hour, on that night, for the first time in my life, I saw the night sky and how truly beautiful it was. It was amazing. It gave me purpose, though I didn’t know what it was yet.

“I’d heard of your return, and all that, but it hadn’t registered until I saw your sky. I knew you must be beautiful as well, to know beauty of that magnitude. So, with no other direction in my life, I moved to Canterlot, in hopes of seeing or even meeting you.

“I was already trained in fixing machinery by the owner of a thrift shop, who was of the opinion that stuff that worked was more valuable then broken clockwork. So, I opened a Workshop, and found an assistant of my own.” He blinked. “Heavens. Niles must be worried. Although probably more for his salary than anything else.”

“We canst have thine doctors send a message, if thou wish.”

“Thank you. In the meantime, I’ll continue my story, if it’s not too dry?”

“Not at all. The dream, if thou please? I wish to know the full story behind that.”

“Ah yes. I had a childhood friend, Jeremy. Now, Las Pegasus is a mechanical town, with lots of machinery and engines everywhere. Pegasi could run the machines and work transport just fine, and Unicorns kept the machines running and invented new ones, but I was an Earth Pony, and had nothing to grow. I had no clue what I could do, and I met him. He helped me find a job with the afore-mentioned thrift store owner. He was my best friend.

“When old Mr. Price (Half Price) had his heart attack, we were out of a job. Insurance company got everything he’d owned but the land, which the Real Estate Company got. So, together, we bounced from job to job, trying to find something we could do. He managed to nab a job at a bakery, where he got his cutie mark in baking confectionary. I wasn’t so lucky, and frankly, couldn’t cook for crap.

I was working then at a smithy. That didn’t last long either, but learned a fair bit about alloys and metals. Around then, he’d managed to snag a girlfriend, which became a wife. Their daughter had just been born when there was that big food poisoning scare, and the bakery shut down. His wife left him then, and disavowed the child, wanting nothing to do with her. I helped him; got him back on his feet, found him a job when he started hurting for money, which was pretty soon.

“I actually quit my job then, ‘cause he sure as hell needed my support. His world fell down around him, he was feeding his daughter at the expense of his own food, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have lasted long without me. I managed to snag us both a job at the Hoofer dam, which was good pay, and keep us working together. I fell into the position of ‘Uncle’ ass-first when Scoot had just learned the word. Fit me to a tee.

“Then…well…you saw what happened. He was gone, and I had to take care of her. Her Aunt showed up, a teacher. Good job, that. She had to move to Ponyville, though. So after she had to go, I had a bit of an…argument…with my family, and then the blackout happened. Must’ve been when they switched from reserve power to the new dam. Got that working far better than before, named it after him, and I got one hell of a settlement, but I wasn’t going back. I couldn’t just go back to working that job with a new partner.

“With the blackout, I moved here, and the workshop…Well… It hasn’t been going much better to be honest. I only take commissions I like, because otherwise I wouldn’t be arsed anyway. Pardon my language. Mostly, its lots of pocket watch repairs, maybe a couple interesting ones per month. I admit, I was excited when the commission for the Spinpistol and flash-bangs came in, ‘cause it paid a whole lot.

“Had I known what it was going to be used for, I would never have taken the commission, and likely done my best to track the messages. But I didn’t, not until it was too late. Had I just-“

“Hush. Thou could not have known, and we shalt be doing our best to track them down. And we do mean WE. You shall come along, for they have grievously insulted thou and I both.”

“Really? You don’t mind me sticking around? I mean, I’m hardly an angel, and admittedly a tad obsessed…”

“It doth not matter. Thou art a good pony, we can see that. ‘Twould be unfair to deny you, after all that thou hast done.”

“Thank you, Luna. Thank you!” With this, he gave her a tight hug, which she had not been expecting, but returned in kind. He felt her waving her hoof, and turned just in time to catch one of the Batponies closing a wing, which had what appeared to be a blade affixed from base to tip. It disappeared with a fwip.

“Perhaps some warning had best be in order, before our bodyguards nerves fray fully?” Tinkertoy nodded.

“Good. Now, from what I hear, they have our would-be assassin in another wing, under heavy guard. Perhaps thou had best question him, should he be awake?” Behind them, the door opened.

“Now seems like a prudent time to enter. Come, Twilight.” In stepped Celestia again, trailed by a purple Unicorn that Tinkertoy recognized from the papers. On her back rode a baby Dragon, which looked at the two. “Uh…are we interrupting something?”

“A bit. What dost thou wish, Sister?” Luna said, first to the Dragon, then to Celestia.

“Your suggestion to interview the assassin seems prudent, but we have just come from there. I shall let my Student explain.”

Tinkertoy spoke up. “And the Dragon? Is this unusual?”

“Not at all. Spike is my Student’s, and by extension, my assistant. He too, shall assist you. He can get messages to me instantly, and I encourage you to use him to send reports. But ask first. Anything else, before Twilight begins?”

Tinkertoy looked back at Luna. “Yes.” He leaned back in, and spoke clearly and lovingly to her.

“Luna. Your night sky that night, a year ago, the first I ever saw… It was beautiful, a true masterpiece. You’ve not been doing that anymore, I can tell. They don’t have the same magic, they’re just… There.

“Please… For me. Do those again.”

Silence reigned. Twilight coughed.

“Tinkertoy… Of course. We loved doing those. We were worried that they were not being appreciated, yet again. To know that even one Pony still loves our nights… It warms our heart. At our first opportunity, we shall bring the night, and do it properly.”

“Thank you, Luna.” Another hug, during which everypony else looked away.

“Alright, alright. Enough of the sappy crap.” Twilight began. “You,” She said, pointing at Tinkertoy, “Are a real terror. You should see the poor Pegasus. I didn’t let Spike see, and for good reason. Burns over ninety-three percent of his body. Hind legs badly burned, but recoverable. His left hoof was not, however, and was a charred mess they had to amputate. His right hoof was just… gone, when they got there. Not to mention his torso, or Light forbid, his face. What happened up there?”

Luna gasped, and looked back at Tinkertoy, who was equally shocked. “I…I think I hit him with lightning…He’s lost both front legs?”

“He’s crippled for life. Were he not going to prison anyway.”

Tinkertoy reeled. He’d… crippled somepony… He felt… Miserable wouldn’t convey it properly. He just stood there, looking down at the floor. “Tell… Tell him I’m sorry…” A hoof touched his shoulder, and he heard Luna’s voice once more.

“Tinkertoy. Please, don’t beat yourself up on his behalf. He tried to kill us both, and did kill several guards. Was there anything else?”

“I… I think… Yes! There was an Airship. Green envelope. Aluminum Gondola,” Celestia stepped in. “Madness. Nopony would be mad enough to fly an Airship in a thunderstorm. You must have hit your head harder than we thought, when you fell.”

“There was something else. It seemed to be covered in a metal framework, like a faraday cage, albeit a massive one.” The Baby Dragon (Spike?) spoke to the Mage. “Twilight? Would that work?”

“I… Don’t know. Maybe if it was well insulated… If there really was an Airship, we can check the Canterlot Aerial logs, which would record any Airship even passing near. They’d have the name, colour, cargo, and crew manifest, even whether or not they responded to their radio. We’d have everything.”

Celestia sighed. “My faithful student… Please. Do not get involved with this colts’ mad ravings. He seems unhinged, unpredictable. As it is, I would not be surprised if he imagined this Faraday Airship or even his whole rooftop battle. ‘Tis certainly easier to swallow than his having the ability to shoot lightning from his hooves.”

Tinkertoy stared at her. “…What? I saved Luna. At least three times within the space of five minutes. Were it not for me-“

“That is what she had guards for.”

“Yours were dead, and hers were blind and deaf.” At this, the Batponies looked at their hooves, embarrassed.

“Thanks to your machines. Your damnable devices. This is your fault.” Luna had been silent up ‘til now, but this last sentence was too much for her to ignore. A rage had been building up ‘til now, and it released explosively. “How… How dare thee, Sister! Tinkertoy risked his life for ours, and those of our guards! Even if he could not save everypony, had he not arrived thou wouldst not be standing in a hospital, but a graveyard!”

“Because of his devices! Had he not built them to begin with, the Assassin would never have gotten so far! You have applied unrealistic expectations to a mortal pony, made him out to be a hero that he is not! You look at him with lust in your eyes!”

“Tinkertoy has been naught but a perfect gentlecolt! Any feelings toward him are well-deserved, and thou art attempting to control thine life again!”

“That is hardly the subject of discussion. We were conversing about-“

“No, that is now the subject! For just as our mother thought she would rule Equestria forever and should set our lives with appropriate suitors, thou art now running my life as well! Dost thou remember that horrible King Blueblood that she arranged thy marriage to fifteen hundred years ago?”

Celestia responded as though clubbed in the underbelly, and whispered, hurt by the comment, “You promised that nopony would ever know about that. That it would never be mentioned again in our lives. That we would forget it ever happened.”

“It happened, Tia! Even today, one can find his detestable descendants wandering the halls, being horrible to perfectly fine ponies, such as our maids, who he has disrespected more times than any should be allowed! Was that tiny country worth it? Or did Mother’s scheme fall apart like all her others?”

Tinkertoy saw something that few ponies saw in their life spans. Celestia was crying. She stared at the floor, as Luna continued to shout.

“Wilt thou lord over our life like she did to thou? I say nay! WE SHALL HAVE OUR FREEDOM, AND THOU SHALT NOT INTERFERE-“ A hoof on her shoulder cut her off, brought her back to the room. Celestia had collapsed to the floor, Twilight beside her, Spike lying in shock from the royal Canterlot voice. She had reduced her big sister to a sobbing mess upon the floor.

She looked back at the hoof, followed it back to the pony at the other end. Tinkertoy was giving her a sad look, disappointment and fear and surprise all in one expression. “Luna? Don’t. Don’t speak. Just… You shouldn’t have done that.”

Around her, even the Batponies seemed shaken.

Slowly, Celestia’s head rose. “We…appear to have gotten off topic…”

“Indeed, Sister. We…I…apologize. ‘Twas uncalled for.”

“But necessary. You…Are right. I have extended a tad too much control. I… Must learn to trust you once more. Twilight?”

“Er… Yes?”

“You have my permission to investigate this mysterious Airship to the fullest of your abilities, with my authority. Assist Princess Luna and Mister… Smith, was it? With their inquiries.” She turned to Tinkertoy. “I apologize to you as well. Trust… is something that too many ponies take advantage of these days.”

Twilight nodded, and turned to Spike, before beginning to list off items they’d need and places they’d likely go. Tinkertoy turned to Luna as Celestia turned and left. The bandages covering her eyes were starting to become wet with tears, and a strange shadow seemed to recede back underneath them. “Luna? Are you okay?”

She slowly shook her head, and Tinkertoy hugged her lightly. “Luna… Please. It’s alright now. What was that?”

“’Tis not okay. We… I… Slipped. We made Tia cry, and… I almost lost control. I almost let the Nightmare slip, let her loose. She almost took control once more. I cannot let that happen.”

“Did she?”

“No… But just barely. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t worry. If it tries again… I’ll be here to pull you back.”

* * *

The last rays of the sun arched over the West Mountains. The tomato-red sky, shimmering against the last of the rain clouds, shrunk and disappeared like a curtain being drawn.

“Ready, Luna?”

“Indeed. A moment, if thou do not mind. ‘Tis been awhile since we have last done this properly.”

The moon, already visible, shimmered and began to glow like polished ivory. Around it, the stars began to blink into visibility, slowly, one by one at first, but picking up speed. They shined like they were meant to, gloriously and without shame or reservation. No, before they had simply been there, but now, they glowed and twinkled like candles in the sky.

Around them, the blue night sky receded, dimmed, and disappeared, no longer restricting Tinkertoys’ sight, as now he could see the sheer expanse, the sheer simplicity and beauty of the universe in its entirety. Every star was unique in its own special way, and Tinkertoy could see that now. He could’ve studied a single one for a hundred years, and even then he would not be ready to move onto the next. And there were millions.

And that was just the stars. The rest of the galaxy, all those galactic objects, they all whirled and spun around each other like a astrophysical symphony, in a dance that could not be replicated by anything but Equestria’s night sky, and only under Luna’s direction.

Supernovas glowed, expanding outwards.

Planets whirled about stars, and two stars whirled around each other like a pair of dancers.

Pulsars seemed to shiver with excitement.

Far away, a black hole only visible thanks to the asteroids and planets and stars whirling about a hole in which nothing existed.

A gas giant, not content by motion, simply hovered, the solar winds causing it to twist like dye in water, were the water the size of the universe and the dye the size of hundreds of solar systems.

Meteors blew past, almost too fast for the eye to track.

Even further out, Tinkertoy could see other galaxies, each whirling about their own centers with all their own unique features.

It was breathtaking.

And so was Luna.

The Princess of the Night, The Mare of the Moon, and the Mistress of Dreams stood before him, concentrating only on her beautiful night sky, the effort making her shake with the pure magic flowing through her. It shimmered around her, and Tinkertoy could not tell what was the magic’s’ power and what was hers.

The speckling around her cutie mark had expanded, crawling across her skin and coating it in a darker blue than he had ever seen before, and the crescent moon stood out with a white glow.

Her hair was like the gas giant, and it billowed out from the same unseen solar winds, and it curled without a care in the world. And yet, the night sky that she carried within glowed brighter than the sky above and was a million times more beautiful. The stars in her hair formed into recognizable constellations and then dissolved, forming more and dissolving again into constellations never seen before and never again.

Her armor, decorative in nature, changed as well, revealing it’s true nature and changing from its painted disguise into a tall pair of obsidian leggings, the gaps showing her skin underneath while covering enough so that she would be protected from any attack. Her necklace too, became obsidian, with the moon upon it gleaming like the polished silver it was, the two materials forged together in ways that were thought to be impossible. Finally, her small tiara became a dark crown that seemed to absorb light itself as it wrapped around her horn, the black metal decorating it with a thin wire covering. Underneath, the sheer amount of magic was making the horns’ central crystal glow from effort, making it visible through the bone spire. Her nerves and veins stood out against it, strict control of her power keeping them unharmed.

Her eyes had been closed until now, and as she opened them, they filled with blue light that pierced the darkness around her, a thaumic circle spinning into existence at her feet. Unfamiliar shapes seemed to be in place of lettering, and the circle whirled, glowing and spitting with pure power as she gritted her teeth.

A minute or an hour or a millennia later, she exhaled, and the circle dissipated, the magic fading harmlessly. Her armor returned to normal, and the darkness of her cutie mark receded until it was just that. Her hair didn’t billow quite as much, and her eyes simmered down into a reasonable shimmer. She collapsed to her belly, lying upon the ground with an exhausted air.

Tinkertoy was instantly at her side, making sure she was okay, and holding her close in case she wasn’t. She rested against him, and looked upwards at her sky.

“We picked one of our favorite memories, from before we learned our craft. We learned another that we need to relearn, and enjoyed it as well.” Tinkertoy followed her eyes back to the stars. Now, several stars had begun to glow just a bit brighter than before, and Tinkertoy searched them all out, found them, and looked at as a many as he could. The pattern was purposely unusual, and something clicked inside Tinkertoy’s mind.

It twisted his mind, and his eyes were no longer his own.

He was now in a garden, a garden in the courtyard of a castle that was very distinctly not anywhere near Canterlot. A small hedge maze, complicated but easy to learn, took up most of the garden. It was octagonal, and perhaps thirty metres across.

A pair of fillies, one pure white with pink hair who was larger than the other, who was blue with dark blue hair, chased each other around and through the hedge maze. He started as he realized he was looking at a young Luna and Celestia, before either were the living goddesses he knew now. No, now they were just tiny Alicorns.

An adult, female Alicorn sat off to the side on a bench, an ambivalent expression on her face as she watched the fillies. Her fur seemed to glow with pure light, and her hair was a natural white that only a god could acquire without dye or overbearing age. Was that the Princesses’… Mother?

A door across the courtyard opened, and a black Alicorn walked out, a knowing smile across his face as a dark purple Unicorn wearing a star-studded robe and a typical wizard’s hat followed him. He managed to catch a bit of the conversation:

“And then Luna doth told me that thy homework wast a waste of time! ‘Twas incredibly insolent, and without even an inkling of practical Magick, how canst I hope to teach her the truly powerful Magicks required of an Alicorn?”

“I think, and soon shalt thou, that thine younger daughter ‘tis more capable than she wouldst have thou believe. Daughters Luna, Celestia! To me!” With this, the two fillies ceased running, and trudged solemnly over to their father. Well, Celestia trudged solemnly. Luna seemed to trudge as though she had done something wrong, and was trying to take more time so that she wouldn’t have to face it.

“Luna, have thou been putting off homework?” She nodded. “For what, forsooth?” “Playing with the servant’s children.”

“I see. Luna, dost not look so solemn. ‘Tis doth not suit thou. I’m going to teach you some more Magick, some that only I know and that only thou canst learn. I shalt teach thou how to remove thineself from other’s vision.” At this, Luna perked up, her ears twitching from excitement. Doubtless, new ways to use a power like this for pranking arose in her mind. Celestia looked up, but for a different reason.

“Father! How canst thou reward her for such insolent behaviour and leave me behind, despite all that I have done?”

“Who said that I wouldst not teach thou something as well?” He smiled at her, while the teacher similarly started to sputter.

“That Magick is far beyond her abilities! She might be able to do such a task, had she been studying, but without, she shalt simply hurt herself!”

“Don’t be daft, Clover. Your name seems to suggest otherwise. Besides, how couldst she hurt herself via invisibility? No, the only one that couldst possibly hurt herself is Celestia, for I will be teaching her teleportation.”

“Thou art the daft one, for that is too dangerous for a filly her age!”

“But she ‘tis prepared, is she not?”

“Possibly…”

“Good.” With that, he leaned down to whisper into Luna’s ear, saying something that Tinkertoy couldn’t hear. She appeared to listen intently, and nodded. She stepped back, and then concentrated, her horn glowing. She seemed to ripple, like the air around her was water disturbed by a stone, before fizzling out of existence.

Her father looked confident, smirking at the Mage, who looked surprised, and not happily. Her mother looked annoyed, and was giving the father a look that said, “Really? Thou decide to teach her that? Dost thou know how much trouble she shalt cause now?” While Celestia, annoyed as she was, was now looking about the courtyard in wonder.

Then she jumped as though something or somepony had touched her flank, as a voice came in on the breeze, masked by magic with an echo. “Tag.”

“By the Light, Luna! Thou doth not fight fair!” She shouted, the chiding somewhat reduced by the fact that she was now giggling like a madpony, happy with her new challenge.

“Satisfied, Clover?” The father spoke once more to the Mage. “She hast been learning, even if thou doth not see it. She will surprise thou, given the chance. Perhaps for the sake of surprising thou. She hast mentioned many a time that you wear a hilarious expression whilst confused.” He looked at the Mage carefully.

“Yes, truly that is an interesting expression. What say thou?”

“…Very well. I shall let her dereliction of duty pass. For the moment. Thou still insist on teaching Celestia to Blink?”

“But of course, Clover. What thou canst teach thine apprentices, thou canst teach thine daughter.“

“Daughter? Singular?” The father leaned in and muttered loud enough to Clover just loud enough for Tinkertoy to hear.

“I shalt not teach Luna that trick. It requires a dab hand at subdimensional travel, and were Luna to acquire access to another dimension, who knows what mayhem she couldst cause. No, only Celestia shalt be taught that, but Celestia shall not be taught to render herself invisible, to balance out the power.”

“Wise. And I used to wonder why thou wert so loved among the population.”

Tinkertoy began to notice the edges of the memory fraying, and the sound distorting. Without a sound, it receded, and he was next to Luna once more, staring at the sky. She was looking at it, with an expression of…Sadness? Reflection? Tinkertoy couldn’t place the expression, but it wasn’t outright unhappiness.

A pity, because he might’ve been able to do something about it. She shook herself out of it, and looked back to Tinkertoy.

“Tinkertoy… ‘Twas not as educational as we had hoped. Instead, ‘tis raised more memories, some not as pleasant.”

“It was too faint?”

“Indeed. We could only catch a small portion of what was said, and ‘twas maddeningly vague.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help, Luna.”

“Doth not apologize, Tinkertoy. ‘Twas naught thou couldst do, and I shalt puzzle it out eventually.”

“Hey! Space Princess! Mechani-colt! Get your plots down here; we need to plan out our investigation! And get the buck off the roof, you’re going to fall!” The sound of Twilight Sparkle’s voice rang out through the air, and they both stood to walk to the edge of Luna’s roof.

It sloped slightly, but a flat platform had been mounted up top so that she would have somewhere to raise the Moon. They stepped onto the slope and looked over it.

“Yes, you! Get down here!” Tinkertoy shrugged, and slid over the lip onto the balcony. Luna took to the sky, and circled slowly around to the balcony. At the last moment, she clutched the bandages across her barrel with a gasp, and landed rather badly onto the railing before falling firmly onto the balcony.

Tinkertoy was by her side in an instant, making sure she was okay and helping her up. Concern even shot across Twilight’s face for a moment, but as she realized that Luna was alright again, it was replaced with annoyance. “Are you going to injure yourself again?”

Tinkertoy sighed, but didn’t comment. “Luna, are you alright?”

She nodded, and allowed Tinkertoy to pull her back into a standing position. “Good. Careful, now. You wouldn’t want to open up your stitches again. Can you walk?”

“Y…Yes. Thank thou, Tinkertoy.”

“You two lovebirds done? Good. Let’s go.” With that, the purple Mage led the Goddess and the Mechanical Colt down the stairs.

5-2-1

Eye of the Storm (1)

There were some faint hoofsteps, but they stopped almost as soon as they became audible.

“Ah, here we are. My workshop.”

“…You do know the sign’s misspelled, right?”

“That’s on purpose!” The doorknob rattled, before the key clicked in the lock.

“Riiight. Whatever you say.” The door opened.

“No, really! It’s meant to look foreign and interesting! Intelligent! Catch the eye, you know?”

“It’s interesting, all right.” An Earth Pony Stallion stepped inside, his frame silhouetted in the doorway. “Oi! There’s no call for that! Wait… I didn’t turn the lights off…” He reached to the left of the door, into the shadows that permeated the inside of the building. His hoof glinted, a metal rod reflecting in the early morning sun. It was strapped to, and led down, his forehoof, leading down to a mechanical hand and back up to a metal box on his back. There was a click, and the inside of the warehouse was filled with light.

In the new light, his brown-coloured fur was revealed, as was a crop of messy orange hair. He entered, looking around with an air of confusion as the voice that he had been arguing with entered behind him. It belonged to a magenta Unicorn mare, whose hair was a similar shade with a pinkish stripe slicing through the center and down to the end. A small male baby Dragon rode on her back, excitedly looking around the warehouse. Finally, a deep-blue Alicorn mare followed them in, shutting the door behind them with a cerulean wave of magic.

“Nor did I close the door when I left. Maybe Niles did it…?”

“Is it always such a mess in here?”

“What… Are you always so critical? I’m busy, I don’t always have time to…to…” He trailed off, looking around the massive room once more, only now taking in the state of disarray it was in. It looked rather like a certain god of Chaos had been let loose.

“Huh… I mean, it’s a bit of a mess, but never… This bad!” To describe it as a shambles really wouldn’t do the mess justice. Just from a cursory glance, he could see that everything not nailed down had been stolen, and some things that had been nailed down were as well. Despite those having been most of the clutter originally, it was still a mess, as presumably that the same somepony who had taken it had scattered the contents of the file cabinets in the corner across the warehouse, creating a carpet of paper between the tables and workbenches. The papers themselves, he realized with a start, were his mail, his various documents, and what seemed to be any pieces of paper one could find in and around the warehouse. Thankfully, he didn’t see any of his blueprints in the piles.

The afore-mentioned file cabinets themselves had been overturned, seemingly just for the hay of it, as had several long workbenches. At the back, the firing range had been knocked over, the sheet-metal walls now resting on the floor as well as the bulls-eye. The blue Alicorn stood next to the Earth Pony, concern in her eyes as his glazed over. “Tinkertoy? Art thou well?”

“I… My work… My life… I lived here, who would just…? Luna, all of my…my…Stuff, it’s just… Gone!” The Unicorn turned to the Dragon on her back. “Spike, dig through this, see if you can find anything important.” He had been sniffing the air, and only realized a second later she’d been talking to him. “Huh? Oh! Gotcha, Twilight.” He leapt off and began shuffling the piles about.

Tinkertoy seemed to snap out of his distraught trance, and leapt onto one of the tables, taking a much more thorough inventory. “Seriously? They took the RADIO? Who does that?!” Luna flapped her wings and landed next to him. “Thy culprits seem to have absconded with thy tools as well. Who hast done such a thing?”

“You… Really designed an electric pen?” They quickly descended into an argument, triggered by Twilight’s condescension, Tinkertoy’s defense of his life, and Luna trying to find some middle ground.

“Guys?”

Twilight pulled a book from the floor, a scrapbook of various inventions. Most of the latter half of the book seemed to be a picture taken every day of some form of Automobile. “Look at this! Who would want to ride in something this dangerous, or something that stupid-looking, for that matter?”

“How dare you! I’ll have you know that the Gasoline Automobile is perfectly safe, and the only reason it looks like that, for function, mind you, not for beauty, is because I haven’t built the outer skin for it!”

“I’m sure.”

“Guys? Hello?”

Luna began digging through a scattered pile of jars, which all seemed to have escaped unbroken. She pushed an empty one labeled “Clockwork Virus” out of the way, pulling out another that seemed to hold an organ of some sort, suspended in a clear liquid. Suddenly, a slit opened against the jar, facing her, revealing an orange, cat-like eye. Luna yelped before dropping the jar, only barely being able to catch it with her magic before it hit the floor.

“Luna! Is something wrong?” Instantly, Tinkertoy was by her, taking the jar with his metal hands. “Wait, is this… Ha! The fools left Sparky!”

“Sparky? Thou named this abomination Sparky?” Tinkertoy brought the jar to his snout, and began nuzzling it lovingly. “Yep. He was part of this idea I had this one time. It boiled down to organic engines, and Sparky was my first attempt.”

“Ah…”

“Backfired miserably. On the plus side, I got a pet-slash-friend that I only had to feed a minute amount of electricity. He’s incredibly adaptable, and he even shaped himself so that he could feed off-“

“GUYS!”

The shout instantly drew all attention to Spike. “Does anypony else smell Kerosene?” Twilight sniffed the air. “Now that you mention it… Yes, yes I do. How did you smell that?”

Spike looked flattered for a moment, before he began. “Well, you kinda get trained to notice flammable stuff when you can breathe fire…” He trailed off. “Why IS there Kerosene in here?”

“It’s not supposed to be. I don’t use Kerosene in my workshop, not even for lanterns. Too flammable.” Tinkertoy gently set the jar back down, and sniffed the floor. Behind him, Luna bent down for a closer look at the jar. A tentacle waved at her from inside the jar, seemingly happy.

Tinkertoy bent down, and pulled the paper below his hooves wide, exposing the bare floor. It was absolutely soaked in Kerosene, the stench of the flammable liquid wrinkling their noses in disgust.

“What…?” He was interrupted by the balcony door on the second floor opening wide. The sound of arguing entered first.

“See! Diamond dog tell you not on fire! Ignatious never lie, just forget!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

“It not Ignatious’s fault if partner is birdbrain! Literally! Damned Gryphon chase pigeon!”

“Hey.”

There was a long pause.

“…I caught that pigeon.” The Gryphon in question stepped through the door, his grimy grey feathers rustling in surprise. “Uh…”

“What, stupid bird?” A blue Diamond Dog entered after him, looking about in surprise as he remembered he’d shut the lights off. They both looked down, and saw four pairs of eyes (And one spare) were looking at them in surprise. Consisting of the owner of the warehouse, a famous Unicorn, her baby Dragon, and the Princess of the night herself. Tinkertoy reflected that he may have suddenly started meeting much more powerful ponies thus far, seemingly without reason and without much warning.

Behind the pair above, metaphorical bricks dropped. The Diamond Dog leaned over and hissed out of the corner of his mouth, “Does Jeff have plan?” The Gryphon leaned over as well. “That depends. Do you still have that Molotov?”

“Ignatious drink.”

“Then no.” His eyes darted downward, just as Luna shook off the initial surprise. “What right hast thou to cause such disarray!? I demand thou surrender thineselves-“ She was interrupted by the Gryphon reaching behind him and drawing a long, mechanical compound bow, which he speedily notched with an arrow.

Tinkertoy was between them and Luna before anypony could even blink, but the Gryphon had a different target. He pulled the string back, and loosed the arrow into the warehouse’s fusebox, which exploded in a brilliant shower of sparks, killing the lights as it did so. The shower of flash-melted metal reached the Kerosene below, and it snapped into flame in an instant, the sudden blaze spreading quickly across the Kerosene-soaked carpet of paper.

“OUTOUTOUT!” Yelled Twilight, yanking Spike back onto her back and disappearing in a bright snap of magical energy. The teleportation tore a sizable hole in the roof, presumably as Twilight moved faster than physically possible via magic. Bright sunlight from the hole quickly replaced the darkness of the workshop, which had only been illuminated by the flames. Tinkertoy pulled Luna away from the balcony, and out of the sunlight, as flames began to lick up the walls, and they both began running towards the door. They slammed it open, the bright sunlight replacing the fire-lit interior before they collapsed onto the sidewalk. Tinkertoy looked up just fast enough to catch Twilight snapping back into existence before she careened into a nearby wall, catapulting Spike off said wall, and back towards them. Twilight slowly took a few steps backward, eyes rolling in her head as she began trying to speak.

“Got out… Tried to teleport to police station… Forgot where police station was… Couldn’t teleport to the palace, too far… End up as a purple smear… Teleported back…” Her eyes righted themselves, and her horn glowed. “Can probably put it out myself… Maybe Clover the Clever’s Spring Shower? Or Stonehoof’s inland wave? Maybe- shut up, voices! That’s not helping right now! No, maybe an instant condensation spell?”

“But… my work… My life…” She turned, her eyes glowing with power. “You too! SHUT UP! I can hardly hear myself think!” Tinkertoy was instantly silenced. She wasn’t listening. Ah well. Really, it’s not like he had anything important. It’d all been taken already. What was left was hardly worth saving. Certainly nothing living-

“SPARKY!” He shouted, leaping back at the door. It had closed shut after them, and smoke was curling out from underneath it. He grabbed the handle, but was yanked away by a blue glow of magic. He instantly felt nauseous. He pulled the handle out with him, and the door opened into a gout of flame, which burst outward. Had Luna not grabbed him, he would have been roasted. She dropped him back on the ground, where Luna stood next to him, making sure he was okay. He was, but from his perspective, everything was sideways.

“Seriously? That abomination in the jar? You want to go back into that,” Twilight said, motioning her hoof at the steadily burning building. “To get a squid?”

“’Tis a living creature, Twilight Sparkle. Doth Sparky not have a right to live?” Luna pulled Tinkertoy back to his feet, but his knees buckled again. She caught him with her wing, and held him close with it to keep him standing.

“And… And he’s not an abomination… He’s a sentient being, just like you or I… Well, semi-sentient… Sort of… It’s complicated…”

Spike hopped off Twilight’s back, and walked up to Tinkertoy, whose head was still visibly sagging towards the ground. His eyes moved up to look at Spike at more-or-less the same height. “The thing in the jar, right? With the eye? I’ll get it.” He began to move towards the door, but Twilight stepped in front of him. “Spike, what in Tartarus do you think you’re doing? You’ll get burned!”

Spike just pushed past her hoof. “Relax, Twilight. Fireproof, remember? I’ll be right back.” He paused one last time at the door, after pushing it open. “It’s in the pile of jars next to that giant typewriter, isn’t it?” Tinkertoy nodded, and Spike turned before walking into the burning building with his distinct waddle. Twilight turned to Tinkertoy. “If he gets a single scorch…”

She was interrupted by the sound of rapid hoofsteps down the street, towards them. Above, a squadron of Pegasi blew overhead, circling back with a leftover raincloud. Two stayed to buck the cloud into releasing the water inside, while the rest scattered to get more. Back down on the street, a beet red Unicorn wearing a fireproof coat and a firepony’s hat came around the corner of a nearby warehouse, leading a small group of similarly-dressed Unicorns and Earth Ponies to the burning building. “Hey! What happened?”

The fact that he was asking Princess Luna never really registered. He had a job to do, and he listened intently. “’Twas started by saboteurs, arsonists, in order to cover the tracks of a royal assassination attempt. A Diamond Dog and a Gryphon. Thy names wert Ignatious and Jeff. Tell thy Pegasi to ‘Keep their eyes peeled’, as it were.” The Unicorn nodded, and an orange glow surrounded a communication crystal attached to the lapel of his coat.

“Waterhorn one to all Waterwings, be advised. Witnesses say Arson. Culprits are a Squawker and a Rockdog. They may be armed, so watch your plots.” Behind him, a cyan Earth Pony yelled “Bow-chicka-bow-wow!” “Can it, Hot!” The Firepony spat. He glanced back at the crystal. “Somepony else get a line out to the guard, tell them we have Luna and Arson out here.” He clicked it back off, and faint radio chatter along the lines of “Did he say Princess Luna?” could just barely be heard.

He turned back to the three, giving Tinkertoy an odd look. It was probably justified, as he was still being held up by Luna’s wing. “Now, I’m gonna need statements from all of-“

“OHCELESTIAGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFSWEETMERCIFUL-“ Spike burst out of the warehouse, his screams slightly muffled by a mass of tentacles wrapped around his head, tipped with small claws. The main part of it, or at least the center of mass, appeared to be attached to his left temple. A single, orange, catlike eye looked around wildly and settled on Tinkertoy. It pulled on the Dragon’s shoulder and started tugging him in their general direction.

“Spike?! Are you alright?! Is it hurting you?! Did you get burned?!” At Twilight’s last question, the eye moved up and down repeatedly. “Sparky!” Tinkertoy managed to find the strength to stand, and moved towards the two. “I’m so sorry, Sparky, I didn’t know they’d start the fire and-“

“GETITOFFYOUCRAZYBUCKER!!!” Spike was, of course, still underneath Sparky. “C’mere, Sparky! Come to Tinkertoy!” It chittered and began unwinding itself from Spike, before leaping off his head at Tinkertoy. As soon as it was clear, Twilight wrapped Spike in a hug, almost crushing him against the sidewalk. From underneath her, Spike’s eyes darted around until they locked back onto Sparky, who was now suckering itself onto Tinkertoy.

“That…Thing…Jumped out of nowhere at me! It clamped on and rode me back out of the warehouse!” He looked at his arm, which one of the tentacles had wrapped around for support. “I want to take a bath. For, like, a week. That just felt wrong…”

They all looked back at Tinkertoy, who had stopped listening and had begun nuzzling Sparky affectionately. It seemed the squid had settled, and Tinkertoy was now wearing him like a scarf made of tentacles, the suckers essentially gluing him into place for the moment. Most of the creature’s mass had settled in the crook between Tinkertoy’s neck and back, and the various tentacles had wrapped around his barrel and extremities to get a grip.

Tinkertoy was completely unaffected by this.

“Awww, who’s a good Sparky? You are! Because you’re the only Sparky! You’re irreplaceable, don’t you worry! Yes you are! Now, did somepony disconnect you while I was gone? Poor little squiddy, you must’ve been starved and I bet you couldn’t get past Spike’s scales! Go ahead, little guy, take all you need!” He nuzzled it again, and it chittered, extending two more tentacles. These were smaller and sharp at the ends, and the creature quickly and carefully poked them into Tinkertoy’s back, connecting into his spine. Tinkertoy jumped a little at the prick, but it only lasted a moment. The smaller tentacles glowed slightly as it began feeding, a barely-visible orange glow spreading across them.

“What,” Asked Twilight, coldly and carefully. “Is it doing?” Tinkertoy turned to her. Behind him, Luna leaned in closer to look at Sparky, a small smile betraying her interest. “HE is feeding off my body’s excess electricity. That’s how he gets nutrition, by drinking tap water, and then electrolyzing it into oxygen, hydrogen, and whatever else was in the tap water. Which, incidentally, is how he breathes. The hydrogen is released, and I was planning on jury-rigging my internal combustion engine to use it as a fuel. Hence why the fire freaked him out, and in his panic, attempted to… ‘couple’ with Spike there. He was beginning to run out of both.”

Spike blinked, before he shrank back towards Twilight. “C… Couple? …Ew…”

“Not like that! He’s a symbiotic creature! I feed him, and he helps me with my experiments. He has proven himself an able assistant, and I count him among my friends, if not one of my best.”

“Sounds more like a parasite. Any side effects? Should I be even more concerned for Spike?”

“Of course not. Had he succeeded, the only noticeable effects would be that both be quite a bit calmer. It seems, however, that Dragon scales are solid enough to resist Sparky’s plugs.” Luna gently poked one of Sparky’s loose tentacles with her hoof. It lifted, curled, and slowly extended towards her hoof. When she didn’t recoil instantly at the contact, it reached out again. Luna allowed it to probe along her forehoof, and she leaned in close. It followed her leg up to the shoulder, and continued to her muzzle. She let it feel along, memorizing her face, and exploring through the medium of touch.

She looked back at where it had injected Tinkertoy. “Doth… Doth that hurt?”

“Only at first, when he starts. He’d be a terrible symbiote if he caused constant pain. Instead, he creates and releases a chemical that dulls said pain, and coagulates the blood.”

“Curious…” The tentacles finished their investigation, and gently patted Luna’s head. “Good, Sparky. Nice and calm. Everything is fine. This is Luna. Luna, you’re in luck. He likes you!” Luna smiled, and reached her hoof back out, pausing just before she touched him. “Go ahead. He likes being petted.” Now with permission, Luna began petting Sparky, eliciting a gentle purr from whatever auditory organs the Squid possessed.

At some point, the Firepony had left, likely to direct the Pegasi. He returned now, with several guards, the Firepony chief, Captain Shining Armor, and Princess Celestia herself. The Chief spoke first.

“Chief Firebreak. What’s this about arson?” Celestia simply stepped over him, looking directly at Luna as the Chief scooted out from beneath her. “Luna. You have not been outside the palace for an hour, and yet I am receiving reports of arson, attempted murder, and potential biohazards. Explain yourself, Sister.” Her gaze shifted to Tinkertoy, and the Squid hooked into his spine. “Ah. That would be the biohazard, then. Hold still, Smith. I would not want to blast you as well.”

Instantly, Tinkertoy turned to protect Sparky, yelling “Don’t!: in the process. At the same time, Luna leapt in front of them both, blocking Celestia’s spell. “Tia! Hold thine fire!” A shimmer that had building at the tip of Celestia’s horn dissipated. “Luna. You are making this far more complicated than it needs to be. ‘Twas a mistake to let this pony drag you out on this fool’s errand.” She looked past all three of them, to Twilight. “Perhaps you can shed some light on current events, my student. Please, tell me what has happened here, and why they are protecting that Parasite.”

Twilight levitated Spike onto her back, and confidently strode alongside Celestia. She cleared her throat. “Ahem. We stopped by Mr. Smith’s workshop to search for clues, lock up properly, and locate ‘useful’ devices.” She wiggled her hooves as she said “Useful”.

“We found that it had been broken into, and we arrived just prior to them actually lighting the fire. An unlucky coincidence, nothing more. The Squid seems to be an artificially created pet.”

“And he doth be harmless!” Luna added to the end. Celestia gave her with a glare that could slag glass. It softened quickly, but not much. “Lulu. Please don’t interrupt. Twilight was speaking.”

“Actually, I was more-or-less-“

“But she was-“

“Luna. Like that.” She glared at her once more. Twilight’s eyes darted from one to another, before she started again. “Er…anyway… The Gryphon started the fire. The Diamond Dog called him Jeff, and himself Ignatious. That’s about it.”

In the background, the combined efforts of the Pegasi in the air and the Unicorns on the ground had finally put out the fire, only smoke guttering out of less-soaked piles of rubble. The largest remaining column of smoke curled into the sky, a black streak on a perfect blue painting. Captain Armor stepped into the ruin of the building, pushing the more obstructive piles of debris aside. The charred remains stained his fetlocks, turning his white legs grey. He walked through the skeleton of the building, dodging a support beam as it snapped off what was left of the rooftop. Finally he reached the back, and found the melted fusebox.

“You said it was here?” The shout came from the back of the warehouse. Tinkertoy turned. Shining Armor was inspecting the source of the fire, and the arrow sticking out of it. “Yeah, that’s it. Power shut off when it got hit, so you should be alright.” The white stallion nodded, and wrapped a levitation field around the arrow. It came loose with just a couple of yanks and a squeak of metal, and he inspected it as he walked towards them.

The fletching had burned, but the smell of scorched Gryphon had easily replaced it. Hoof… Claw-made, so no manufacturer. He flipped it ninety degrees. The tip had blunted from the impact, but appeared to have been a solid-body metal arrow with no arrowhead. About half-way down the shaft, he spied several multi-coloured bands encircling the arrow. H idly pondered their purpose as he stepped out of the burnt-out building.

“Here’s the arrow. Typical Gryphon design. He made it himself, using his own feathers. Means he’s a competent flier, and confidant enough to use his own feathers to guide his shots. Doesn’t really narrow it down, though. Every Gryphon is proud of their work.”

“Now, the bands here are interesting. I’ve seen them before in the armory, but I never got to learn what they meant. They’re used for tracking their kills among Gryphon mercenaries. Every one is different. Somepony pulls one of these out of an enemy, the Gryphon who uses these colours gets paid a bonus.” He held it out, so anypony could take it to explain. A cerulean glow shimmered around it as Luna took it and held it to her eyes.

“’Tis been not long enough since I have seen such weapons. I still recall their meaning, however, and-“ She was interrupted as the arrow was yanked out of her ethereal grasp, now surrounded by a magenta glow. “I was reading a book about the Gryphon military last week. I got this.”

Luna gaped at her. “But… But I was going to…” Twilight shot a glare at her. “Luna. It had diagrams. I got this.” She took a deep breath as Luna looked around, sputtering, for support. All eyes were on Twilight, save Tinkertoy’s.

“Let’s see. Four rings. In order of back to front, species, family, personal colours, and who he works for. Species is white with brown spots, or Gryphon. We knew that, and I’m getting sick of saying it. Family, purple and yellow, don’t know, don’t care. Personal colours are brown, red, and purple. Company colours are green and yellow, so we should be on the lookout for companies with those colours. Obviously.”

Celestia nodded. “Impressive, Twilight. I shall assist. I do not know the Gryphon families, but I do know what the personal colours mean. Brown means ‘Expert in ground combat’, and it’s a light brown, so at range. Red means warrior. Light red, so maybe ten kills at most. Finally, purple means he’s a scholar, specifically a history major. Which is a bit odd. However, I don’t recall the company colours either. We can narrow those down, however.”

Twilight nodded, and the arrow floated back to the captain, changing to his dark pink as it did so. “We’ll keep checking out our ‘Airship’ lead. See you at six, Shiny?”

“You bet. Mom and Dad are looking forward to seeing you again, Sis!”

“Me too! I’ve got so much to tell them!” Gently, the conversation faded into background noise. Both Luna and Tinkertoy had tuned them out. Luna was still standing there, her mouth agape.

Twilight’s opinion was more important than hers.

Her mind darted back to the last year and a half.

When she had learned her Lunar guards had all but disbanded.

When nopony would speak to her. They were afraid.

A stark inability to do anything about it, because she no longer held any authority.

She was denied her spot on the council.

Learning that over the millennia she had been gone, she had been replaced by a procession of students, which were nothing but glorified goldfish.

Learning that everypony she had ever known before her banishment, save her sister, was now dead.

Learning that the latest goldfish had replaced her in her sister’s mind.

Tinkertoy saw her eyes glaze over, and he stood next to her for support. “Luna? Are you okay?”

Her night court was a sham. Only a distraction so Celestia could say she had a duty.

That holiday, and it’s cannibalistic folklore. Not that she minded the actual holiday itself, but the intent behind it. She didn’t like scaring ponies, even if they wanted to be scared.

And the goldfish had tried to change her, to bend her to her will, just because… Because she no longer fit here. Tried to make her more likable… Because she no longer was.

In fact, only the reduction of the royal Canterlot voice had been useful, or had, in fact, stuck. That and the abolishment of the royal “We”. Not that the goldfish hadn’t reminded her every chance they met.

The only job that she was allowed to do, one of the few duties she enjoyed… Ponies seemed more scared when she showed up than before, no matter how awful the nightmare.

That duty was the small mercy that Celestia had given her. And nopony wanted it.

She… was useless.

No.

Worse than useless.

Extraneous.

Equestria already had one Princess. The shift to a diarchy was too much. Too sudden. They didn’t need another Princess.

She would always be overshadowed, compared to her sister, and she would always come in second. Dead last.

And she would always be a villain in their eyes.

Tinkertoy went from standing next to Luna to comfort her and keep her company, to holding her up as she slumped, sobbing. All eyes were instantly on them as she fell to the sidewalk. “Luna?! Are you alright?”

“T…T…Tinkertoy… We are useless! We hath been replaced!”

“Lulu? Stop this tomfoolery. Our subjects are watching.”

“Thine subjects are watching! Mine is holding me now! Nothing I do m….m…matters!” Twilight rolled her eyes. ”Jeez. She could give Rarity a run for her bits right about now.”

Captain Armor helped pull Luna up, settling her against Tinkertoy. He stared at Twilight while Luna clutched Tinkertoy like a drowning mare. “Twily? Are you feeling alright?”

“Perfectly fine. I’ve seen Rarity do this plenty of times. She starts feeling ignored, and gets all dramatic so everypony’ll pay attention to her again.”

Spike shifted on her back, and Twilight looked back at him. “But she’s crying…”

“So does Rarity. She’ll get over it.” Celestia tilted her head at all of them. “Lulu-“

“Doth not call us by that name! Not after the past 1015 years!” Celestia sighed, and her head sunk. “Luna. Nopony wants to see history repeat itself. Please, you need a rest. Smith, you seem to be helping, if only a miniscule amount. Can you watch over her?”

Tinkertoy nodded, and Celestia looked closely at Luna. “Please, Luna. Get your thoughts together. Go back to the palace. I shall meet you there later, and we shall have a good, long, talk. I foresee it being beneficial to us both.”

Luna stared back at her with hatred in her eyes. “The palace you built, adding our quarters as an afterthought? FINE! Goodbye Celestia! GOOD DAY!” She began moving on her own without warning, and Tinkertoy stumbled for a moment before catching up to her.

They disappeared around a corner, and Twilight looked back at Celestia. “I’ll keep searching. Can you send a royal guard down to meet me at Air Traffic control? I need to look at the manifest, and I doubt they’ll just let anypony look at it.”

“Indeed. In fact, Captain Armor?”

“Yes?”

“Are you busy?”

“Not at all.” He got her hint. “Come on, Twily. I’ll come with. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been studying lately?” They trotted off, leaving Celestia behind. She gazed at the palace as she murmured to herself. “Lulu, what odd mood has taken you as of late? You have been acting so strange…” Her eyes drifted upwards as she looked over her sky, finally settling as she gazed straight into the sun. “But thank you for the compliment. ‘Tis a good day, indeed.”

5-2-2

Eye of the Storm (2)

“Useless… We are useless once again, even today… How couldst we be so blind as not to see that we hath been replaced…”

“Luna? Please, don’t…” The sentence hung in the air, incomplete, as Tinkertoy tried to find a satisfactory way to end the sentence. Please don’t cry? Please don’t feel miserable about something that was utterly world-shaking and truly deserving of such misery? He let his voice drop, ending the sentence there. He didn’t know what to do, how to comfort Luna. He was lost, the only course of action left being simply to be there and act as a shoulder to cry upon, occasionally hugging her closer when the sobs got particularly loud.

They had returned to the Palace.

For the first time, Tinkertoy noticed the recent brickwork and patches of more recent paint indicative of this wing being a hasty addition. They had passed back through the throne room, a sheet and plywood supports keeping the room relatively sealed. It covered the window, at least. The massive blast hole in the roof would need a little more work just to patch together. The Batponies were keeping watch in the rafters.

The floor was still stained blood red in spots, where the guards had fallen in Luna’s defense. The bodies themselves had been removed and given proper funerals, their families reimbursed. But the blood remained, left there as a show of respect for the deads’ efforts. Nopony would clean it up, and nopony had asked. By the throne itself were several powder burns, scorches of the flash-bangs. Luna’s blood and unsavory liquids had been eagerly cleaned, however, a slight discolouration the only reminder of their presence.

They walked past it all.

Luna’s tower was built into the wing, a door behind her throne leading to a spiral staircase that emerged, after a twisting climb, through a door and onto an outer balcony. The top of Luna’s tower was comprised of this balcony, and her quarters. A circular metal door made of some sort of purple metal with a moon carved into it (Or perhaps it had been made like that?) was the only other feature of the tower. Luna had pointed her horn at it, and it had unlocked, the gentle curves and waves of the metal glowing and separating. It had opened like a metal flower, and disappeared into the sides of the doorframe. On the other side of her tower was a balcony, with a silver and glass framework door preventing casual entry.

Tinkertoy realized, with a start, that if Luna had her food brought to her, she had almost no reason to leave this little section of the palace. The room was fully furnished, split between bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen, and study, all built within the confines of fifteen metres. He rescinded his thought of having her food brought to her. The fully-stocked kitchen proved that she was expected to cook for herself. Only social events would be able to extricate her from this tower, and he’d heard that she never went.

They sat then in the bedroom, on the bed. Luna had torn all of her bits armor and her crown off, and wrapped herself in her blankets with only her muzzle poking out. They now lay across the floor. Tinkertoy sat, cradling her head in his forehooves as she wrapped herself around him. He was glad he hadn’t been born a Pegasus. He was tempted, of course, but he wouldn’t act on those impulses. He was a gentlecolt, if nothing else. At some point, the cold had crept in, and he had wrapped a few folds of the sky-blue (At least on one side. The other was more of a navy blue) blanket around himself as well.

And that was where they sat. Sat for at least half-an-hour, with time seemingly dragging by. He didn’t mind spending it with Luna, but he sorely wished he were with her under happier circumstances. Still, no matter how slowly a nearby clock ticked, he stayed still, and comforting Luna as best he could. He looked down at her once more. She was still sobbing quietly. She didn’t wear much makeup, in fact almost none at all, but what she did have was beginning to run. Her beautiful mane had been pulled into the blanket, but he could still see the twinkle of stars within the dark folds. Her eyes were just the slightest bit puffy from the crying. He pulled out his handkerchief to dab her eyes, but decided against it. After all it had been through, it was covered in ash, scorch marks, blood, and sweat. Adding tears to it seemed like a step too far.

His eyes searched the room. It was a dark purple, with the ceiling sporting an odd glow. Some sort of magic, he gathered. He idly wondered what spell it was, before returning his attention to the nightstands and dressers. There was even an ironwood wardrobe against a wall, in place of a proper closet. In fact, most of the furniture seemed to be made of the material; it wasn’t hard to imagine why. He found what he was searching for. A box of nose-wipes sat on the nightstand next to him, and he plucked one out of the box before wiping Luna’s eyes.

As he did so, she blinked, as though unaware of her surroundings. The tears had stopped, but Tinkertoy didn’t know if this was because she had calmed, or if she had simply run out. “Luna? Are you feeling better?” She blinked slowly, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes once more. Well, that answered that question, at least. She shook her head, paused, and then nodded just the slightest bit. He pulled her head until he was looking straight into her eyes. “Luna. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. Sadness, loneliness, I dunno. Just remember, I’m here.”

She spoke, tentatively, her voice was as fragile as a Chineigh plate. “But… Thou shalt not always be…” Tinkertoy pulled her closer, cradling her once again. “I’m here now, Luna. That’s what matters.”

From the front of the tower came a knock, the kind of knock that wasn’t quite impatient, not yet, but said simply, “Get out here, because I don’t want to have to open this door.” Luna’s horn glowed, and Tinkertoy felt his ears pop without warning. Then yelled, in the royal Canterlot voice (Though he heard it as being just louder than her normal speaking voice) “PISS OFF!”

Her horn glowed once more, and Tinkertoy’s ears unpopped. She had deafened him, so she wouldn’t… Well, deafen him? A few moments of shocked silence passed, before Celestia’s voice came through the door. “Well. That is hardly how I expected to be greeted.”

Both sets of eyes widened, and they both made a quick scramble to get off the bed as they door began to click open. However, they both moved too quickly in different directions, and the blankets became tangled, wrapping around them like an oppressive snake. They realized where they went wrong, and both moved again, once more at cross-purposes. The door had been opened now, and regal hoofsteps came down the hall. There was an unsettling split second of freefall, and they both hit the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Celestia opened the bedroom door, and stepped in. “Luna, what in Equestria could have you using such lan-“ She stopped dead as she entered the room. Luna had hit the floor first, cushioned from the fall by the carpet and the blanket, and Tinkertoy had fallen atop her. Celestia, goddess of the sun and (Co-)ruler of Equestria, looked at their incredibly compromising position.

Silence.

Shocked silence.

Quickly becoming awkward silence.

And then Celestia grinned.

“Heavens, Luna. Is that it? You could have said. Or… What is the etiquette these days… Put a tie upon the door?”

There was more shocked silence.

And then a quick scramble as they both tried to explain and disentangle themselves from the blankets, both voices fighting for dominance.

“This isn’t what it looks like, I swear, we just fell off the-“

“Sister, we wert not… No! Free thy mind from the gutter!”

“Ow! I mean, this is a side of you that I’ve not seen before-“

“Sorry, I think ‘tis knotted like this…”

“-And to be honest, it’s a little creepy, and- Agh! Other way!”

“And what doth thou mean ‘Is that it?”

“And we didn’t have a tie or anything anyway…”

There was a twang of fabric, and Tinkertoy found himself free of the blankets once more, landing at the pure white hooves of Celestia. He could see his reflection in her golden shoes. Something clicked.

“Wait… You’re not angry?”

Celestia looked down and gave him a quizzical look. “Of course not, my little pony. Why would I be?”

“…Because the first time we met, you threatened to have me executed? And you were kinda cold the second and third time we met?”

“Tinkertoy!” Luna tried to leap at him to shut him up before he insulted Celestia, but she was still tangled in the blanket, and merely flopped forward.

“’Tis quite alright, Lulu. I understand my demeanor was less than admirable. Lulu’s life was on the line, however, and time was of the essence. But if you two have truly romantic intentions…?”

“What?! I…uh…”

“You do not?” Her gaze hardened, just slightly. Tinkertoy looked past her, back at Luna. She was sitting back on her haunches, still wrapped in the blanket, like a particularly messy dress. Even when he was being stared at by Celestia, he couldn’t deny how cute she looked like that, caught off guard. She was over a millennia old, at least, but that never crossed his mind. He really, truly did love her.

He made his decision.

“You’re right.” He said, with a smile. “I do love her.”

Instantly, Celestia’s gaze softened, and she beamed at him and Luna. She looked down, and picked Luna’s crown off the floor. She polished it on her foreleg, and placed it back on Luna’s head. Luna looked surprised, but she still smiled, a happy, almost dopey grin spreading across her muzzle. “Excellent.” She placed a hoof on Tinkertoy’s shoulder. “Luna, do you mind if I borrow him for just a moment? I feel we should have a conversation about respective futures and such.”

Luna’s smile dropped, and she frowned at Celestia. “If you even think of bedding him after that-“

Celestia laughed, and wrapped a long forehoof around Tinkertoy, who recoiled just slightly. “Ha! A funny thought, Lulu, but fear not. I wouldn’t dare! I simply wish to show him something in the south tower. A cautionary tale, if you will. Just thought I’d show him the Chalice of Princess Christina, let you both know I still want both of you doing your jobs despite what you two are doing together!”

Luna still looked unsure, but she nodded. Tinkertoy gently moved out of Celestia’s grasp, and back to her, cautiously nuzzling her. She quickly returned the favor, however, and he nuzzled her without worry before pulling back. “Don’t worry, Luna. Apparently I’ll be right back.” Celestia placed a hoof on his shoulder and gave him a nudge towards the door. Luna gave a wave before the door shut.

“Follow me.” Celestia said, all cheer drained from her voice.

“You are an inventor.”

“Er…Yes…”

“That is both good and bad.”

“How so?”

“Luna needs somepony to properly introduce her to modern technology. She is reading and catching up, and I have been doing what I can. Nonetheless, she still a fair bit behind, and I wish you to instruct her.”

“I…assume that’s the good?”

“Correct.”

“And the bad?”

“Several reasons. I’ve met many inventors over the years. Some were geniuses, some were thieves, and some meddled in things they should not. Some wished simply to have their inventions get used, and the recognition with it. Others would give ponykind the world. For a price.”

“Ah. Any other reasons?”

“You shall see. We are here.” They had arrived, after a fair bit of trotting. Before them was a massive metal door, made, seemingly, of some sort of mix between Titanium, Thaumium, Silver, and Marble. Each of the components had it’s own use. It was famous for it’s construction, as it was one of the most massively magical devices in the world. The Titanium, for strength. The Thaumium, so it could store the massive amounts of magic necessary to allow it to work. Silver, for supernatural protection. Marble, just because. And yet, nopony knew what was behind it.

Theories ranged. A portal to other dimensions. The meaning of life. A device that could teleport the royal sisters to a secret torture dungeon, or another planet. Free energy. The answer to life, the universe, and everything. A prison filled with the most horrible monsters to have seen sunlight. Pinkie Pie’s horn, wings, and sanity.

Well, okay. That last one was Tinkertoy’s theory.

It was built straight into the wall, and stood out no more than a foot. There had to be some sort of spatial manipulation behind it, as otherwise, it wouldn’t hold much. The door itself was split into six sections, one for each of the elements of harmony. That, too, was common knowledge. The center was a transparent disk that seemed to glow slightly.

Celestia’s horn glowed with golden light, and she loosed a surge of magic into the disk, which accepted it eagerly. It hummed, and energy bent into arcane shapes as it span quicker and quicker, before stopping suddenly with a final thump. The disk shimmered and disappeared, leaving the door to split into six equal parts as it slid apart. She turned to him, and gently tapped his head with her horn. A shiver, like electricity but not quite, hummed through him before that too, dissipated

“Wha… What was that?”

“Temporary access. Welcome, Tinkertoy Smith, to Vault Six.” The door slid open fully, and white light shining from inside blinded him. Celestia didn’t seem to be similarly affected. She stepped into the light without hesitation, and motioned for him to follow.

He stepped in, and the door shut behind him. As his eye adjusted to the bright light, he found himself standing in a white metal tube, albeit one with overly-bright lights.

“It’s not that impressive…”

“Just wait. This is identification.” As she said that, a red wave of light shot across the top of the tube. It began moving downward, and as it passed across Tinkertoy, it tingled and began moving back upwards, coming to a rest and disappearing once it reached the ceiling.

“Confirmed. Princess Celestia and… Guest?” The voice came from the door at the far end, or rather a speaker above it.

“That is correct, Hidden Treasure. Tinkertoy Smith. He is an inventor, so play nice.”

“Long as he keeps his hooves- Uh… metal claws? To himself, I don’t mind.”

“What was that? Who’s she brining in?”

“Greetings to you too, Sunset Shimmer. Once again, Tinkertoy Smith. Spread the word, or I shall soon grow sick of hearing it.”

“You got it. Ma’am.” Tinkertoy’s eyebrow raised. “Ma’am?”

“A story for another time. Not even Luna knows this one. All I can tell you now, and I stress that you shall tell nopony, is that this is a pocket dimension, with a staff of it’s own. We store dangerous things here, things that should never see the light of my day, and things that are too wonderful to reach Equestria. Yet.” Before them, the door opened, and they strode in, Tinkertoy suddenly much less confident than before. “Follow closely, Smith. This dimension shifts, but a few things remain consistent.” Behind them, the door slid shut.

The walls and floor seemed to vary in material and construction, between tile, concrete, rubber, wood, and some unidentified plastic. He made a point to walk around the sections made of clouds. Light came, seemingly, from everywhere at once, without any actual source. They walked past racks of assorted items, shelves of seemingly random odds and ends, and barrels filled with unidentified liquids.

The passed four books, all underneath a solid-looking glass shield built into a wooden lectern. The first was a beat-up brown book, labeled AITRAN. Next to it lay a blue book, a red book, and a green book respectively, all unlabeled.

They pushed onward.

They passed a large metal cube, with a door set into the side. A window was set into the door, and Tinkertoy looked inside. The room inside was absolutely empty, save a floor coated in Light-knows-what, and a concrete statue facing away from him. It was bipedal, cartoonishly rounded, with a pair of arms facing the wall. He blinked, and it was facing him, with a face made of spray paint and pure hatred. He jumped away from the door in surprise, and the window made a loud ping sound. He looked back in to find it pressed against the glass, a miniscule scratch where it touched it.

“Smith, stop playing with 173. This way.”

He shivered, and followed her.

It seemed the place went on forever. He had just passed a massive yellow bipedal robot (Labeled Elemental Gimmick Gear) when Celestia stopped. After all the things he’d seen, they had stopped at a simple safe, with an alphabetic lock. A glow of magic clicked several buttons in order. Tinkertoy caught the order by pure chance. D…U…S…T…Y.

The safe clicked open, and the golden glow swung the door wide. Inside, on a velvet pad shaped specifically for it, sat an ivory-handled Spinspistol. But this one looked different.

He looked closer, and found that the chambers didn’t spin along the axis of the barrel, but was turned ninety degrees, so it would spin horizontally to it. A golden corona surrounded it, and it levitated out of the safe. Gently, Celestia slid it into his mechanical hand,.

Now holding it, he inspected it in detail. The handle was painstakingly etched with images of the sun, whorls of light, and pure, intricate beauty given form. Turning it towards the floor, he found an inscription on the butt of the handle. An etching, of two cutie marks spliced together. One was unmistakably Celestia’s, but he didn’t recognize the other. Until he did, at least somewhat.

It was a bullet, turned sideways on the flat end, facing upward.

“A gift,” Interrupted Celestia, derailing his thoughts. “From a …very close friend.” Tinkertoy nodded. He kept his finger pointedly off the trigger, and pointed it at the wall. He brought the sights up to his eye, and found that it had been perfectly aligned. He moved it away, and noticed a button to the side of the hammer. Carefully, he thumbed it. He heard a small click, and felt the revolving chamber loosen. He wrapped his left hand underneath the gun, and pushed the revolving chamber out completely.

It popped free on well-oiled hinges, revealing six bullets placed in a roughly hexagonal position. He tilted it backwards, and a single brass casing fell out before he could catch it. Celestia caught it with her magic, and passed it back to him. It was the only spent round. He clicked the revolving chamber back into the gun, lining the empty chamber up with the hammer so that it would reach the empty one first.

He lined his arm up with the wall, and pulled the hammer back. He pulled the trigger, and the clockwork inside struck the hypothetical bullet with a loud click. “The design is ingenious. Who made it? Why have I never heard of them?”

Celestia was still staring at the shell. “His… Name was Dusty. Dusty Hooves. He asked for an audience with me, nearly two hundred years ago. Before Luna rejoined me on the throne. He brought me many clever inventions, and showed them all to me and my court. He finished his presentation by giving me this as a gift, and… Declaring that he loved me. Truly loved me, with all his heart. But… All of his inventions were weapons. Tools of war, made to kill and maim and murder in order to defend Equestria. His intentions were good, but all he chose to build were weapons. He explained how he received his cutie mark after he had perfected the first one of these. His talent was making weapons, and all the death and despair that came with them.

“So… I went to his workshop. I visited him personally, out in the desert, near where Appleloosa stands now. I explained it all to him, why he could not continue his work, why he had to disappear.”

A tear slid down her cheek, and splashed onto the floor. Her impenetrable mask cracked.

‘Why he had to die.”

The pistol was gingerly taken from Tinkertoy’s hand, and the shell reinserted into the chamber. She placed it back into the safe, and turned back to Tinkertoy, and the mask was back, like it had never left. But there was still a bit of moisture on her cheek.

“What kind of Pony are you, Tinkertoy Smith? You have so much potential. You have made weapons, and I have no doubt you will make more. But how will history remember you?

“As the Pony who built the gun that ended the world? That brought a bloody glory to Equestria, and money to himself, to fritter away during his short existence? Infamous?

“As the Pony who found a better way? Who fought not only with his knowledge, but with common sense? Who won without firing a shot, or, if he did, made the world a better place anyway?

“The madpony who got Lulu killed?

“Will history remember you at all?” The safe clicked shut.

“Think about your answer. Keep Luna in your mind, and close to your heart, with everypony else you know. And think about who will be the one to remember you, and record you for everypony who did not..

“You will not live forever, Tinkertoy Smith. Nopony does. Even I shall fade, given time. But she will live much longer than you, and she will have to live with what you have done regardless.

“Think about your answer.”

Her eyes were wet again, and Tinkertoy still had a nose-wipe in his toolbelt from earlier. He pulled it out and offered it to her. She took it graciously, and wiped her eyes. He took a deep breath.

“I know what kind of Pony I am.”

“Do you? Well, if you are sure. But! Do not tell me.”

She pointed back at the door from whence they came.

“Go out there and tell them.”

5-2-3

Eye of the Storm (3)

The Royal Canterlot Archives did not get many visitors. Only the occasional hard-working student, the perpetually-overworked professors, and the odd tourist who’d taken a wrong turn looking for somewhere else. A constant guard presence ensured several things, including that nopony tried to do anything to the massive library or its contents, nopony went near the level five archives save the princesses, and making everypony who tried to actually read anything very uncomfortable.

Apparently Celestia had done her damndest to create a personal library, and the Royal Canterlot Archives were as close as she could come.

This, of course, made it the perfect place to hold their meeting. All of the afore-mentioned reasons, and the final, most important one: It had a nice, round table. That was important.

“Captain Shining Armor, at ease. Deliver your report when ready.” The Stallion in question exhaled, and shuffled a few papers he had with him.

“Right. Well, we got there about ten minutes after leaving the warehouse, and I had to go find the, uh…little colt’s room… By the time I caught up with Twily proper, she’d gotten the manifest after having done… something to the poor mare in charge of the paperwork. We’re going to have words about that later, Twi. Ones explaining the meaning of ‘A colour that doesn’t exis-“

“Anyway! Yes! Got the manifest!” Twilight interrupted him, suddenly changing the subject away from whatever the Captain had been about to say. A purple glow opened her saddlebags, and the manifest, a little black book, flipped out and onto the table with a flourish. Her horn lit again, and the book’s pages flipped like a gust of wind had blown them open. She suddenly slapped her hoof down onto the book, stopping it on the correct page.

“You can see here that there were two airships with that combination of colours on that day. One was just a transport vessel carrying a load of corn, but the other…” Another spark of magic slapped the book closed as she leaned close to the table, as though she had been telling a story and had just gotten to the really good part. “…was a reported pirating vessel.”

There was shocked silence for a moment.

Captain Armor broke it. “Pirates? Seriously?” He looked around the table for support. Celestia was lost in thought, her expression unreadable. Luna had cocked her head, as though she wasn’t quite sure she had heard her right. She glanced to Tinkertoy, and raised an eyebrow. Tinkertoy just shrugged in reply, adding “Well, as little sense as that actually makes, it’s a lead…”

Celestia spoke, her voice unwavering, yet unbelieving. “Indeed. ‘Tis a lead, albeit not a particularly good one. Forgive me, my faithful student, but it seems a tad… far-fetched… Why would pirates wish the death of Luna?” Captain armor coughed.

“For that matter, how were they identified as Pirates? That’s a heck of a conclusion to leap to, after all…” Twilight shot him a glare, and flipped the book open once more. No fancy magic this time, she simply flipped it open with her hoof. “The description is identical to a ship that raided a small transport vessel roughly six months ago, as well as buzzing several ships of the Equestrian Aerial Navy. It’s the same ship, no doubt about it.”

“After we retrieved the manifest, I had to check a claim from the EBC about an unusual transmission they had recorded, so we split up again. Found that this message,” Shining Armor placed a small recording device onto the table in front of him. “Had overtaken their own for a short period. We got lucky, and somepony recorded it.” As he finished, he clicked the button. A pleasant female voice with a Trottingham accent began speaking.

‘-And that was sports. You’re listening to the EBC news hour, and the time is-“ Static cut through it the recording , as another voice began speaking with a cockney accent. “This is Timberwolf to The Barrel. We have arrived at the sunburst, and are ready for pickup. We need the location of- What was that, Echo? What do you mean we’re broadcasting over- Oh buck me. Switching to frequency Marmoset, over!” The static came again, returning them to the news broadcast. “-And in international news, a major archeological team in South Amareica has supposedly found modern building techniques and technology inside a 3000-year-old temple-“ Shining Armor clicked the button again, and the device silenced.

“That signal was meant to bounce off their tower to Cloudsdale, and presumably on from there. If we’re really chasing Pirates, then that’s where we go.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, they were using codes, so we can’t identify anything in the message for sure. I think the ‘Sunburst’ is either meant to be the palace, or maybe just Canterlot in general, but that’s as far as we got.”

Celestia nodded. “That would make sense. I believe…” She paused, lost in thought. “…Yes, there is an airship leaving to-day, at roughly six o’clock. I doubt the Captain will mind if we try and add a couple of passengers to his manifest, especially if one of them is you, Luna.” Luna nodded, excited. “Ooh… ‘Tis been far too long since We hath seen an airship, and never hast We been aboard one. Tinkertoy, art thou not… Tinkertoy?”

The Stallion in question had blanched at the mention of an Airship, and had, for that matter, been paling slightly since the mention of Cloudsdale. “Tinkertoy? Hast thou taken ill?”

“I, uh… No… Just don’t like heights much. Well,” he paused, gulping a bit of air. “It’s not that I don’t like heights, it’s just that… It’s an Earth Pony thing. We get a bit nervous if we aren’t supported by solid ground, even if that solid ground is the side of a mountain. There’s a reason you don’t see many Earth Pony pilots, if any, and why Pegasi cities only contain themselves and Unicorns.”

Twilight made a sound, not unlike a spit of disgust, and turned to Tinkertoy proper. "I can place a cloudwalking charm on you, but if you’re going to be too terrified to move anyway there won’t be much point.”

“Okay. Uh…What if I just stay here?”

“Really, Tinkertoy? You that wussy about heights?”

“Twily! Be nice!”

“’Twould defeat the purpose fully, Love. Please, see it as a way to try and overcome this phobia.” Tinkertoy gazed back at Luna. “I… I just…No. I can’t. At least, not without being immensely uncomfortable.” Luna sighed, and placed her hoof upon his, resting both upon the table. “We understand. Doth not worry, we’ll find another way to pursue them. If it wouldst affect thou such, then thou shalt not have to do this.”

Tinkertoy looked back into Luna’s eyes, seeing a little bit of sadness there. She had really wanted to ride on an Airship. He couldn’t blame her, not really. And, if she loved the idea so, he would have to enjoy the activity eventually…

“You know what? Screw it. Luna, we’ll go on that Airship, and damn my nervousness. I’ll live. I’m not going to take this from you.” At this, she brightened, and launched from her chair to wrap Tinkertoy in a hug that knocked him off his.

“Whoa-umph! Ow… I hope this was a good idea.”

“This was a terrible idea…”

“Doth not say such things. Hast thou ever ridden an Airship before?”

“No, I arrived in Canterlot by train.” As he said this, his nose itched. He brought a hoof up it, and it came back with a drop of blood. Odd. Maybe he needed to drink more water?

“Well, I have heard many wonderful things about doing so. I have heard that even some Pegasi prefer an Airship ride when they are unable to fly under their own power. ‘Tis supposedly one of the smoothest journeys one could imagine, such that some cannot even tell when the ship is truly in flight!”

“It’s a very romantic idea of yours, isn’t it?”

“Indeed! I look forward to this!”

Tinkertoy looked once more at the massive Airship. It was a large transport vessel, the kind that brought foodstuffs to major cities in fleets, but seemingly older and retired. It spoke of speed, with its smooth lines and tight ropes, despite being a behemoth among vehicles. The envelope itself was over fifty metres in diameter, possibly more. The faded brown fabric of it had been woven from Cloudwood wool, with several weight-negating and sealing runes painted across it.

At the fore, which is to say, the front of the ship, was mounted a metal cone that tapered down to a point as to make it more aerodynamic. The envelope itself wasn’t quite oblong, but rather more cylindrical before tapering down similarly to a round end. At several points across the visible side were crow’s nests, three in number, spaced evenly from the center to front and back. Presumably, the design was mirrored on the opposite side, the top, and underneath the gondola so as to make use of the inner support beams.

Towards the aft (Back) of the ship were eight engines, evenly spaced away from each other in order to get the best mix between thrust and wind resistance. They all seemed to be connected by stairs or catwalks to the interior of the envelope, which presumably consisted of the engine room in that section. Each powered their own massive propeller, all at least five metres across.

The gondola below was like a Remora fish suckered onto a shark, anchored on like an afterthought made of reinforced aluminum. It cowered below the envelope, with only indirect sunlight reaching the interior. The rest must have been lit with electric lights. The gondola itself extended a mere ten metres below the envelope, and two levels were visible. The upper deck seemed to be the command deck, with the bridge visible through windows at the fore. Several of said windows, as well as others along the gondola, had been opened so that Pegasi could enter and exit freely whilst preparing to depart.

The lower level had to be the crew quarters and storage then, with a gangplank extending from the side, towards the back. This was what currently connected the airship to the dock, with a red Unicorn standing at the bottom of the ramp to make the picture complete.

He held a clipboard and an almost comically over-sized quill in a field of magic, watching various Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns dragging, floating, or pulling cargo aboard. As an orange Earth Pony dragged a particularly heavy-looking crate up the ramp, he blocked him with the quill. Not that it would actually stop him should he decide to press the matter, but merely to signify “stop”. Something not on the manifest, apparently.

Tinkertoy’s gaze drifted from the ship. As interesting as it was, it still made him queasy to think that he would soon be on board, and he would abandon his perfectly fine, solid, not-at-all-turbulent ground. Instead his gaze focused on Luna, who was smiling at him. It was a wonderful smile, the kind that kings would fight wars over until the pony who wore it asked them to stop.

They stood on the boardwalk, near the dock, having paused simply to stare at the massive airship before them, and all the Pegasi buzzing around it, bringing information and redistributing weight to balance it properly. The dock itself, of course, didn’t have waves lapping at its timbers. In fact only a thick rope prevented non-Pegasi from falling off the dock and, therefore, off the side of Canterlot mountain. A gust of wind whistled through the air around them, as if trying to do just that.

Tinkertoy peered, as best he could without actually moving from underneath Luna’s wing, around the envelope to look at the sky. Most of the rainclouds had by now dispersed, leaving only wisps of cloud about to remind him of his daring run. He’d need a name for that, beyond “his run” in the future. He’d need to call it something interesting, so his grandkids could ask, in the far future, “Tell us the story! Tell us about the… the…”

His imagination trailed off. What should he call it? It was a heck of a storm, with lots of heavy rain and thunder… The Thunderrun? He kind of liked the ring of that. Rolled off the tongue, and all that.

A nudge from Luna brought him back to the present, and she motioned back towards the gangplank. The Earth Pony and the Unicorn had finished their argument (with the Earth Pony dragging the crate away), and the Unicorn had waved them over. They began trotting to the gangplank, only to jump back as a purple flash temporarily blinded them.

They opened their eyes to find Twilight now arguing with the other Unicorn, something about the crate. On her back sat a very confused Spike. From behind them came the sound of clopping hooves. They turned to find Captain Armour had followed his sister, and had stopped next to them.

“Mr. Smith? Princess? A word?” Luna shot a final look at Twilight, before shrugging at Tinkertoy, who nodded to Captain Armour. “I suppose we have a moment now…”

“Yes, I’m well aware. Listen, I have to stay in Canterlot, and as much as I’d like to keep an eye on Twily, I can’t.” He paused, and hung his head. “I’m not going to lie, Mr. Smith. I can’t say I like you much. You’ve shown the guard up, you came out of nowhere, and suddenly you’re in a relationship with one of the local Alicorns-“

“Pot calling the kettle black!” Pinkie ran across the dock, past them, and shouted the statement as she did so. She was followed by a brown Stallion with an hourglass cutie mark and a grey Pegasus with some very odd eyes, with the stallion looking startled when he saw Tinkertoy.

“Bloody hell! I’m not supposed to have met you yet!”

“What?” But all three were gone as soon as they’d appeared, disappearing into an alley. “Well.” Luna started. “‘Twas surreal. I cannot help but feel I hath seen him before…”

Captain Armour turned back to Tinkertoy, still looking confused. “Anyway… As I was saying, I can’t keep an eye on my sis, and she’s been acting funny lately. Just… Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, okay? I wouldn’t normally trust somepony with something like this out of the blue, but there’s no other way to do it…”

“Got it. Keep Ms. Sparkle from causing too much trouble.”

“Precisely. I don’t expect you to try anything funny, but if you do…”

“Uh…Understood.” Captain Armour gave him a curt nod, before glancing back in Twilight’s direction. The argument had gotten louder. He shook his head, and gave her a wave she either didn’t see, or chose to ignore, before trotting away.

“-Celestia’s personal student, and I need my books!” Luna and Tinkertoy reached the gangplank as the other Unicorn replied.

“I don’t care if you’re Faust herself, you’re not taking all those on board. That’s at least ten kilos of weight we’d have to just chuck, and if we have to make an emergency ascension, we’d have to chuck those too. Maybe three, max, if you absolutely need them. Normal-sized, none of these bloody encyclopedias.”

Twilight turned back to the crate with a pout, and waved her horn. The top of the crate instantly splintered into a cloud of wood dust, and several books floated through, pausing before her as she flitted through the titles. She picked three, and bundled them with a piece of twine before the cloud of wood chips meshed back together, reforming as though the crate had never been opened. Finally she turned to the Earth Pony who had been standing beside the crate the whole time, who seemed a little shaken by her method of opening the crate.

“Back to the palace. I’ll have them delivered to Ponyville later.” The Earth Pony nodded, and looked back up at the palace at the other end of the city before sighing. With a huff, Twilight trotted up the gangplank, her books following her like a trained pigeon, and Spike looking slightly less nauseous.

The Unicorn with the clipboard watched her go, and turned back to Tinkertoy. “Sorry about that. Sometimes Ponies forget how delicate an issue weight is aboard an Airship. Heh, I once had somepony try to smuggle gold on this thing. Found him out pretty quickly, let me tell you!” He placed his clipboard and quill inside a saddlebag at his side, and turned back to shake Tinkertoy’s hand.

“Pleased to meetcha both. I’m Careful Count, cargo manager. Princess Luna, Mr. Smith, welcome to the Aeroflux. She ain’t pretty, she’s a little outdated, but she’ll get ya where ya need to go. It’s wonderful to have you both aboard! Especially you, Princess!”

“…’Tis?”

“Oh yes. Many a night we fly above the cloud layer, making navigation via landmarks next to impossible. So we use your stars to keep our course instead! It’s even saved lives, when we’re transporting medicine and such.”

Luna’s face visibly brightened, and she suddenly had a grin spreading across it that would put Pinkie Pie to shame. “Well! I am glad my work could be so appreciated, doubly so if ‘tis of use to somepony!”

“Oh, very much so! Speaking for everypony on board, we’re honoured!” He looked back at the dock, checking for any late cargo. Finding none, he turned back to the two. “We’re all loaded up and ready to shove off. I don’t really need to be anywhere for a little while anyway, so I’ll show you two to your cabin.”

:”Er… Cabin, singular?”

“Yes, specially requested by Princess Celestia. Is… Is that a problem? She told us you two were a couple, but if you aren’t…” He turned to Tinkertoy, and gave him a sultry look.

“No, no! A single cabin wouldst be perfectly fine!”

“I’m… charmed, but yeah, we’re a couple. And I’m straight.”

“Aww, killjoy. This way, then.” He led them inside the cargo bay, but stopped by the door, and the control panel that controlled it. He pressed one button with his hoof, which caused the gangplank to retract and fold up simultaneously, essentially becoming a wall, before he flipped up the cover for a speaking-tube. “Gangplank’s up. We’re all shiny here, Cap’n.”

Another voice filtered through the brass pipe, presumably that of the Captain. It was a gruff voice, the kind you’d expect from the Captain of a ship. It was the kind of voice that demanded a beard and the ever-present smell of salt. Or whatever the aerial equivalent was. “VIPs on board, Count?”

“Aye, Cap’n. All four accounted for. Ms. Sparkle and her pet lizard buggered off somewhere else, though. I’ll go find them after I get the Princess and Mr. Smith situated.”

“Good. Tell ‘em ta find a good window, we’re lifting off in sixty ticks.”

“Aye aye.” He clicked the tube shut, and turned back to Luna and Tinkertoy. “Well, like he said, let’s find a good window. You won’t wanna miss this.” He led them through a maze of crates, and up a staircase on the other side of the room. Around them, a few Pegasi were rearranging the crates and strapping them down so they wouldn’t shift about. They exited the room through a short metal door, and through a corridor that was just as cramped, before exiting through another door and into a much more spacious hallway.

A long window followed the right wall, allowing a view outside the ship. This was split into three smaller windows by two aluminum struts, and all three stopped to watch out these windows. Outside was simply the pier, but the way the windows were positioned, one could see over all the cargo left on it, and therefore, across the entirety of the docks.

For the first time in a while, Tinkertoy could get a damned sense of scale for Canterlot. As large as the docks were, they were still in the shadow of the section of the city above, finally ending at the palace. The whole city had been built like that, spiraling around the mountain like a corkscrew. The docks were at the bottom end, near to the city gates themselves, while the warehouse district and the slums (such as they were) sprawled outwards from that. Beyond that was the commercial district, and the massive market square in the center. At the moment, this view still ended at the lee side of the mountain, where the slope obscured the residential section.

“Here we go…” warned Careful. Luna unfolded her wing back over Tinkertoy, protectively pulling him close. He was starting to feel a little queasy, and they were still technically docked. He tried not to let Luna see it. An intercom in the corner, another one of those brass tubes, spoke with the Captains voice once more.

“Dumping ballast in fifteen ticks. Everypony get clear.” Careful turned to Tinkertoy. “First flight?” Tinkertoy nodded. “Thought so. Never met an Earth Pony keen on flight before, and you’re certainly no exception.” He paused. “Listen, I’m sorry for making a pass at you earlier.” His gaze shifted to Luna. “Probably not my place to say, but he must love each you very much if he’s willing to do this for you.” He turned away from them, and back to the window, before he took a deep breath, fogging up the glass in front of his muzzle.

Beneath their hooves, the deck shifted, and Tinkertoy felt his stomach drop out from under him. The engines kicked in, and he almost fell on his side from the shift in gravity. Only Luna holding him up kept him from keeling over from airsickness. Not in front of her. He forced out a chuckle, and nervously murmured, “That wasn’t…too bad…”

Careful had his eyes closed, but his right eye peeked open at the two. “If I might recommend something? Take a deep, slow breath. We’re pressurizing, so your ears are going to pop soon. Keep breathing, in and out.” Tinkertoy inhaled, and felt Luna doing the same by his side. He exhaled, and didn’t feel quite as queasy.

“That… helped, a little. Thank you.”

“Heh, anytime. Your cabin’s right behind you. I’ve got to get up to the bridge and deliver this cargo manifest, but if you ever want the tour, just ask for Aircolt Count.” He turned to leave, but caught himself before he did so. “Oh! Almost forgot, your key…” Said key emerged from his saddlebags in a white field of magic, and Luna took it in her own cerulean one. “…And the Captain wanted to meet you for a dinner of sorts later, in the galley. Around eight-thirtyish, he told me. See you there?”

“Of course! We wouldst not think of refusing such hospitality!”

“Likewise, ‘Aircolt Count’.” Said colt let out a snicker at his own expense, before he left, the door shutting behind him. Tinkertoy and Luna turned back to the window, gazing back outward.

“Dost thou wish to hold this?” Luna passed him the key, and he held it in his hoof as she looked out the window once more. He looked at the key in detail as it rested in the frog of his hoof.

It was a tiny little iron thing, surprisingly ornate for simply being another cabin key. Then again, he reflected as he looked at the other doors, this was hardly the rest of the crews’ quarters. It made sense that the Captain would give him, or more likely Luna, one of the fancier cabins. He looked back at the key.

The end opposite the teeth, where it was meant to be held, had “Guest Quarters” inscribed into it in a small, plain font. He looked closer, past it’s shine and fanciness, and noticed it was covered in lots of pits and scratches . Some of the deeper ones held a minute amount of verdigris, suggesting that the iron was merely a cover for the copper it was actually made of.

In the harder-to-reach spots, little bits of engine oil and grease residue flattened it back out, belying its true nature. That being a reliability and strength hidden underneath a layer of cleanliness and gaudiness, which didn’t particularly suit it. It remained pleasant to look at, however, and the overall appearance kept it particularly interesting.

It made a rather good metaphor for the Aeroflux, in fact. He clicked open a pouch on his tool belt, and dropped the key in. “Tinkertoy, look! Tia is waving us goodbye!” She started waving back, and Tinkertoy followed her gaze to one of the Palace’s towers, where he could, indeed, see Celestia waving. Already they were a fair distance away, and all he could see was a white, pony-shaped blur, but he followed Luna’s example and started waving as well.

Next to her, he could also see a smaller, white-and-blue blur, which must’ve been Captain Armour. Huh. He’d made good time. He appeared to be sandwiched between Celestia and a larger, pink blur. That had to be… Princess Cadence? Odd that she’d see them off as well. Even odder was that she seemed to be much closer to Captain Armour than Celestia was, but that could’ve been a trick of the light.

Nonetheless, the fading light illuminated the city, colouring it a faded gold. Canterlot was beautiful during the sunset. Still, sunset meant Luna would bring her night sky soon, and he looked forward to it. He’d seen it twice now, and knew it wouldn’t be cheapened by seeing it for a third time.

They passed around another mountain, a thin spire, that obstructed their view of Canterlot, leaving them to look at the rock wall, the wide yellow sky, or the Equestrian plain below. He could even, if he squinted his eye, make out a few trailing curls of smoke rising from Ponyville. It was a beautiful moment, one that could’ve lasted forever.

“Ah, found you, Luna. Shouldn’t you be doing something right about now?”

Which meant of course, that it couldn’t. Some unknown law of the universe dictated that Twilight show up now (At twilight, haha) and ruin it. He hadn’t even heard the door open, nor the distinct snap sound of a blink. She’d managed to show up without either of them hearing it.

Luna’s ears drooped. “Very well, since thou insist…”

“Damn straight. Come on, there’s an observation deck at the top of the Airship.”

Calling it a “deck” was a bit of an exaggeration. In truth, it was little more than a glorified crow’s nest, and about as large. It was built so a single topspotter could keep a watchful eye, and hadn’t really needed to be very large for that.

The fact that he was still up there made it a little cramped, however. “You do know there’s only supposed to be, like, two ponies up here, max, right?”

“Sorry. Luna needed a clear view of the sky, and Ms. Sparkle didn’t want to waste time. As soon as she’s finished, we’ll be on our-“

“Are you apologizing, Smith? Don’t bother. Luna has a job to do, and this is the only place she can do it.”

Tinkertoy stared at Twilight. It wasn’t particularly hard to do, as he was somewhat flattened between her and Luna. His eyes narrowed.

“ I… That’s it. Change of plan. Ms. Sparkle, let’s make this room a little less cramped. I’d like to talk to you downstairs.” Twilight rose an eyebrow as Tinkertoy continued. “Luna, can you meet us there when you’re done?” She nodded, and Tinkertoy opened the hatch and proceeded down the spiral staircase that connected the observation deck to the array of catwalks below. Twilight followed behind, and they stopped as they reached the bottom of the spiral.

He looked around the interior of the envelope once again, hoping to calm down somewhat. Early Airships had the entire envelope filled with Hydrogen, but the Aeroflux was one of the later ones. The decks of the gondola extended for two more levels into the envelope, with the lifting-gas sealed into massive pouches on the side. Catwalks went from the fore to the aft of the ship, following the support skeleton, and allowing for access to the lookout post or to the engine room. Towards the front, the gondola went up another level, forming the galley.

He took a deep breath, and turned around.

“Pardon my language, but what in Tartarus, Ms. Sparkle!? You’ve been insufferable since the day I met you, and downright rude to Luna! In fact you’re being a nag to just about everypony we’ve met thus far, save Celestia herself! I’ve read the papers, heard the radio reports all about you and your friends, ‘The Elements of Harmony’, and I’m friends with another, Pinkie. I cannot imagine that she’d be friends with somepony this abrasive to absolutely everypony she meets! In fact, If you’re this bad all the time, I must wonder how you made friends in the first place! Your behavior is unbecoming of an Element of Harmony, a student of the Princess, and the mare everypony knows as Twilight Sparkle! What on Arcadia do you have to say for yourself?”

His rant seemed to have finally gotten her attention, as she was visibly shaken by the end of it. Tinkertoy momentarily wondered if he had been too hard. She frowned, and glared at him, before speaking again, her voice cold and concise.

“You want to know why I’m so abrasive? Because of you, that’s why. My family has lived and worked and died in Canterlot for generations, and we have some royal blood. It’s taken over a thousand years simply to get a Sparkle to become the Princess’s protégé! And then you come out of nowhere, from some town out in the middle of a desert, and suddenly you’re not only in a better position than anypony in family has ever been, but that position is as Princess Luna’s mate. After saving her from your own machines, after a sob story, after about two days, you’ve made everything my family has ever done meaningless!”

She had been building up her anger and her magic ever since she’d started, and the air now felt electrified. Her eyes had shifted from a deep purple to white hot with power, and her voice now felt strained.

“Meaningless! I swear, it makes me want… to… hnng…” She clamped her eyes closed, and Tinkertoy braced himself for whatever was about to happen. This was Twilight Sparkle, after all, and whatever she was preparing in that head of hers could wipe out the Airship if she chose.

Her eyes opened, and she grinned, and it was one of the most terrifying things he’d seen for quite a while. Then his ears popped, and he couldn’t tell which way was up anymore. He instantly collapsed to the deck, with his head pounding in time with his heart as he came to the sudden realization he was no longer on the ground. He felt like vomiting, but held it down. Wiping his fetlock against his muzzle, he groaned (He absentmindedly noted that sound didn’t seem to work quite like it had before) at Ms. Sparkle, “What…urgh…did you…do?”

Sound echoed, like he was underwater, and yet like they were in a huge room with awful acoustics. Her voice now sounded nasally, unpleasant, having hinted at it before. “Removed the fluid from inside your eardrums.” She grinned diabolically, and spat on him.

“Have fun. I’m going to do a little reading.” She trotted past him, each step ringing on the metal, her hooves beating a four-step rhythm that reverberated inside his skull. He tried to stand, but his hooves refused to cooperate as the world spun around him.

No, he’d be just fine on the floor for a little while, thank you very much. Maybe he’d take a nap.

“Tinkertoy? Art thou unwell?”

Luna’s voice, Luna’s beautiful, singsong voice. Nothing else would make him respond.

Well, maybe spiders. He hated spiders. If he opened his eyes, and there was a spider in front of them, he’d have a damn heart attack. He decided not to risk it.

His mouth eased open, his lips dry. There was an acrid taste in it, like he… Hmm. Probably a few dry heaves while he was out. He swallowed to try and get it off his tongue. “F…fine, Luna. Thanks.”

“Then… Why, forsooth, art thou lying upon the deck? Face down?”

“It’s less… spinny, down here. I’m a little bit… Okay, massively airsick. Twilight could tell you more, she did it.”

“The goldfish? She did this?”

Tinkertoy cracked his eyes open. No spiders, but a lot of stinging light. Maybe he should’ve stopped staring at one of the electric lamps. Luna was crouching next to him, and smiled a little as he saw her.

“Yeah… We should probably mention that to someone.” A sudden wetness on the side of his face finally made him aware of its existence. “And this puddle of… Stars above, I hope that’s drool.”

Luna took a careful sniff. “It bears the odor of earwax.”

“Ah. That would probably be where that got to, then.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. We should probably tell somepony about that before they slip.”

“Dost… Thou need assistance standing upright?”

“Probably? I don’t really trust my legs right now.”

“To do what?”

“Work.”

A gentle cerulean corona of magic surrounded his midsection, and with it came a wave of thaumic nausea. It also pulled him, more-or-less, to his feet. Said feet then collapsed underneath him. He would’ve had a very painful reunion with the deck had Luna not caught him, and snapped her wing back around his barrel to hold him up.

Another gentle flick of magic sent the waxy fluid from his face, and Luna began to slowly guide Tinkertoy back to the decks below. “So, how long was I unconscious? How’d it go up top?”

“It went fine, a matter of a few minutes, but what happened to thou?” They turned a corner. “I believe thy ship’s medical office is along the distance of this corridor.”

“That’s good… I don’t feel so good, though. Kinda… vomitey.” Concerned, Luna turned her head to him and held it a foot further away. Her horn lit with a spell, and his head tingled. Not completely unpleasant, but it made his brain feel… buzzy.

“She… removed the fluid from thy eardrums? Ew.”

“That’s what I said. She’s been acting weird.”

“I noticed. Our encounters with her have always been so, but during the duration of those events, at least her emotions seemed consistent.” She hugged him close again. “There doth not appear to be any permanent damage, nor any that wouldst not heal within a week. But I suspect you desire equilibrium before that?”

“Equilib…thingy, would be nice, yeah.” They turned a corner, and stood before a door. In truth, the only thing different about this one, as opposed to all the other doors on this ship, was a Red Cross on it. But, that was also the universal signal for “Medical Attention”, so not much about it really needed to be different. A small nameplate beside the door bore the simple name of “Rusty Scalpel, M.D,”

Tinkertoy no longer felt as optimistic about this idea.

Evidently, neither did Luna, as she stared at the name like it had just turned purple. “’Tis… an unusual name…”

“Doesn’t inspire confidence, does it?” Tinkertoy tried to imagine a pony with that name actually working on his ears, and cringed. Luna seemed to be trying to comfort herself against Tinkertoy now, but seized the door handle with her magic all the same.

She had begun to turn the handle, but was interrupted as the door slammed wide open all on it’s own, framing the… thing behind it. At first, Tinkertoy thought he was a Gryphon, or some form of quadruped bird.

“Ah! I thought I heard voices, come in, come in! What’s wrong with him? Or her? Which of you is dying?” Luna seemed just as taken aback, but recovered well enough to stammer out, “N-Neither of us is dying, but-“

“Wot? Than why do you need my help? Have you merely come to talk, and spread damned germs in my office!?”

“What madness- No! A unicorn removed the fluid from Tinkertoy’s eardrums!”

“Oh! Somepony removed his Endolymph fluid? Ooh, that’s clever. Who? I’d rather like to talk to them- ah, right, matter at hoof. Well, why didn’t you just say so? Come in, come in!”

Luna muttered under her breath, “The goldfish…”

“Pardon?”

“I said, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Ah, of course, our other VIP. Is she going to press charges? Are you going to press charges? Can I do it?”

“Nay. If favoritism is not likely to work in my favor, it is even less likely to do so in thine.”

“Aw. Well, bring him in anyway, even if you wanna skip most of the fun parts. At least we’re not skipping the surgery, that’s my favorite part!” He finally stepped away from the door, and Luna pulled a slightly reluctant Tinkertoy inside.

At first glance, it seemed like a perfectly normal Doctor’s office, but small details began to make themselves known. All of the file cabinets were upside down, and faced the wall, making them next to impossible to open in such a position. All of the typical surgeons’ tools, which were normally kept in a sterile toolkit, were missing. They had been replaced with a slab of plastic, a Buffalo tomahawk, and a comically oversized drill.

The location of the normal assortment of scalpels became apparent as Tinkertoy faced the wall opposite the examination table. A dartboard was hung on the wall, with all the scalpels buried in a picture of a fish. The fish was seemingly unaware of this. He shook his head to clear it. He’d been hanging around crazy ponies too much.

His gaze moved back to the examination table, which had, for some inexplicable reason, a bucket of fresh organs on it. Blood seemed to be dripping off the metal and onto the table, staining it a bright crimson. His gaze moved back to the other pony (He refused to call this obvious lunatic a doctor), as he swept into his field of view and picked up the bucket of organs with a rubber-sheathed wing.

“Aha, don’t mind this. I’ll be putting them in the refrigerator soon, and that’ll keep them sterile. Onto the table with you!” As he did so, Tinkertoy finally got a good look at Rusty Scalpel, M.D.

He was wearing a rubber poncho that appeared to cover most of his body, with special holes and coverings for his wings. His hooves emerged from the bottom of the poncho, covered with a pair of heavy rubber boots. The poncho also had a hood for his head, where he was wearing what seemed to be an ancient unicornian plague mask.

The mask itself was black, with a “beak” extending outwards about ten centimetres from where his muzzle presumably ended. Small filters on the side revealed that it also served as a gas mask, and likely protected him from his perceived germs. Above the beak were two, giant glass lenses, which Tinkertoy stared into. The eyes of the doctor stared right back at him. No, definitely Equine. But even by Tinkertoy’s standards, he was odd.

“Er… Doctor Scalpel…” He tried to catch his attention as the “Doctor” strode past, before stopping at his desk. He pulled open a drawer, and began rummaging through it. “Doctor?” He asked, a little louder.

“No, please,” said the Pony. “Call me Rusty!” He finished, pulling out what looked like a medical rib-spreading device. He balanced it on one hoof, while he reached out to shake Tinkertoy’s with the other. Seeing that he likely wouldn’t do so, he waved the rib spreader.

“This, incidentally, is in entirely the wrong place. But seriously, call me Rusty!” He dropped the rib spreader into another drawer, and pulled out a giant needle as long and wide as Tinkertoy’s foreleg. He paused, tapping the needle against the desk. “At least… All my… friends…used to…” He held the needle back up, with a deranged grin spreading across his face, which was all Tinkertoy needed to start scuttling along the table, away from the crazy pony.

“Nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopeno-“ He promptly ran out of table, and entered the air, his hooves getting in one good windmill before the back of his head smacked against the metal floor.

Tinkertoy blacked out again.

5-2-4

Eye of the Storm (4)

Tinkertoy Smith was having a very strange dream.

The fish outside the glass tunnel probably thought so too.

The glass tunnel, and indeed, the rest of the dream, required some explanation. At the moment, he stood inside a glass tunnel, roughly three metres wide and tall, with the top of the tunnel curved in a convex manner. The end result was more like a glass hallway, as opposed to a tunnel, with several metal supports every couple metres to hold up against the massive pressure of the ocean floor. Above, only the barest hint of light shone through the murky canopy of the ocean, isolating him completely, even from the surface.

And yet, against all odds, he breathed air.

The tunnel itself wasn’t very long, at most ten metres from end to end, without any bombastic curves. The tunnel ended on both sides at a metal wall, stylized with a metal inlay of a city on par with Manehattan, and a single word above; “Lux”. The penultimate end of all things, paradise, a mythical state of being. He’d never been big on the religion, but considering Celestia was one of the holy daughters, there hadn’t really ever been a reason to assume anything else. He just wasn’t as devoted as whoever built this place obviously was. Nor as full of himself.

He took another impossible breath.

He watched his chest expand, and compress. A harness, similar to his utility saddle but more combat-oriented, moved with it. A blood-stained crowbar hung by his side, as well as some kind of tribal machete. He stood on his hind legs once more, the spring-boots having been scaled down for easier use inside. He doubted he could bounce around as though on a pogo-stick anymore, but he likely wouldn’t need to. His mechanical hands were present as well, the left buzzing with electricity.

Wait. It shouldn’t… buzz?

He turned his hoof over for a better look, and was startled to find the buzzing was coming from his hoof, and the electricity arcing around the inside of the rim. He used a finger of the hand to touch his frog, and the electricity eagerly jumped with it. He jumped, expecting to fry, but merely felt an unpleasant tingling. In an instant, the electricity had followed the course of his veins and up his foreleg, colouring them blue, Likely reached his heart, and flowed back down to his frog in time with his heartbeat. Freaky.

Experimentally, he outstretched his foreleg at a metal support, and splayed his hand in the same way he had fired the device at the palace. The blue arc exploded outward, striking the support and visibly electrifying it, with the contact point growing white hot for a moment. The water on the other side bubbled for a moment, the steam rising to the surface.

“Hoof fulla loightnin’, boyo. We’ve been over this, so would ya kindly get movin’, and quit wastin’ COS?” He jumped at the sound of Niles’ voice. It had been a while since he’d spoken to him, but he was pretty sure Niles didn’t have a Skyrish accent. He looked around, confused, until he saw what looked like a scaled-down short-wave radio strapped to his left hind thigh. Bringing it to his muzzle, he clicked the ‘transmit’ button.

“Uh… Niles?”

“Wot? Do ya need directions? Forward. Medical’s dead ahead, and Scalpel is in there somewhere. Get the key, remember? Do oi need ta hold yer hand, too? Oi would, but it’s a radio, and-“ A series of thumps emanated from the line, like hoofsteps on metal. “Shit, the Splicers are in the vents! They’re in the light-damned vents!” More thumps, but these sounded more like gunshots. “Hah! Take that, ya buckin’ freaks! Ooh, that duct’s leaking blood now. Least I know I got ‘im. Just keep movin’, Lad. I gotta concentrate on runnin’ now, so I won’t be able to talk much, but- Oh cocks. Seeya in a bit, I just opened a door into Splicer central.”

A few insane war whoops and growls echoed through the speaker and around the hallway, as well as more gunshots. He really didn’t need to hear that, so off the radio went. Or at the least, he switched to another channel. This held another surprise, in the form of Luna’s voice now filtering through the speaker. With just a hint of a stalliongrad accent.

“Tinkeirtoy? Art thou alright? What is this strange dream that thou art having?”

“I’m not sure… It seems.. vaguely familiar, however… Probably nothing. What about you, are you okay?”

“Indeed! I appear to be in a room with several surveillance screens. They art low of quality, and show only differing levels of grey, but they suffice. ‘Tis water above thee, is it not? Oh! Thank you, Med Kit. ‘Tis a very nice… Bear, no? I shalt cherish thy gift, my little pony.”

“Luna?” It seemed she was now speaking to another pony. After he’d heard of the splicers from not-Niles, he was slightly jumpy about unknown ponies.

“’Tis also a small number of fillies with me. They seemed scared, and rightfully so, of the ponies outside, but I hath been protecting them for a few hours now.”

“Hours? Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure it’s only been a few minutes at the most for me.”

“Mm. Time is a nebulous creature within the confines of the mind. It bends, stretches to make fit that which cannot, obstructing memory and making sections run faster or slower. We can only observe this plainly within thine dreams. Thou canst learn much of a pony through thine dreams.”

“Wow… So, what’s this dream saying about me?”

“I cannot see all of it, but what I can see… ‘Tis curious. Inequine monsters running across an alien landscape, which is too detailed to be an absent-minded creation. Thou hath been here before.”

“I’ve never seen this place in my life! I’d damn well remember this hellhole!”

“I beg thy pardon? Oh! Apologies, one of the fillies wishes my attention.” The radio clicked off, and Tinkertoy was left alone once more. He spared another glance around the glass corridor.

“Right. Sod this, I’m gonna go poke about in my brain.” He stepped towards the end of the hallway, and the strange artwork on the wall there. Seconds before he reached it, however, it slid upwards, revealing a proper room this time.

This new room seemed to be a reception area, with three major entrances and exits. The first was the one he came through, while another was behind the desk. By the desk was a wooden cabinet, with one of the wooden doors being slightly broken, and slightly off it’s hinges. To his left was a giant steel door, like one would see on a bank vault of a particularly fancy bank, and more strange engravings on it.

This normality only made the wall to the right even more horrific. Piles of debris surrounded a green pegasus lying on the floor, splayed in front of a wall with HE SAID HED MAKE ME PRETTY painted on it in blood. The tail of the Y trailed down the wall, pooling around a recording device lying against it. He gingerly stepped around the mare, pausing next to the device. With his new vantage point, he could see her a little more clearly. She was lying facedown in another pool of blood, and had she been alive, this surely would’ve caused problems. She wore a red cocktail dress, a slinky number with glittery bits outlining a thin hourglass figure she came only a little short of, designed with holes through which her wings could stretch. They seemed slightly thin, fragile, and bent oddly, but the way the dress was designed implied that they were that way before she died. Said wings splayed like a blanket across her, and feathers had scattered like somepony had murdered a pillow instead of a mare. He gave her a gentle nudge with his hoof to roll her over.

He regretted his decision almost immediately, as her face… Well. It had been pretty, at some point. He could see that even now, mutilated as it was. She still had one purple eye, some pleasant laugh lines, but really, it all served to make it seem worse. Gryphons ate non-sentient meat, that was common knowledge, and he had worked in a restaurant back in Las Pegasus. He’d seen ground beef before, but that was a mare’s eye right in the middle of it!

Shivering, he rolled her back onto her stomach, trying his damndest to forget what his own subconscious had apparently thrown at him. Glancing around, he saw the tape recorder again, and picked it up in a slightly less blood-stained spot. With a press of the play button, it began to emit a familiar voice, however static-tinged.

“Log…uh…342. Date is August 12th, 1977. Just a quick bit of plastic surgery. Muzzle work. Patient has chosen to remain anonymous for this log. Surgeon is Dr. Scalpel, AKA myself.” The recorded voice cut out then, with a pop. It resumed almost immediately, but Tinkertoy could tell it had skipped ahead quite a lot in the interim. “-four-oh silk and… done.”

Another voice, a mare, spoke. “The muzzle looks terrific, Dr. Scalpel. …Doctor?”

“You know, looking at her now… I didn’t realize how much her face sags… Scalpel.”

“Excuse me?”

“Scalpel!”

“Uh, Doctor, she’s not booked for a face lift…”

“Let’s just come in here, and…” the sound of whistling, out of tune and weirdly flighty, began filtering through the speaker. It was not the whistle of a sane pony.

“Doctor… Stop cutting… Doctor, stop cutting… Get me the chief of surgery! Get me the chief of surgery now!” The recording died with a squeal, the tape inside the machine whirring of the wheel and becoming tangled, yanking more of itself into the gears until the whole thing died with a sound like a mouse being hit with a claw hammer. Tinkertoy stared at the device, and an outside observer would have just seen him staring into space. In truth, his mind was going a million miles an hour.

Something was off about this dream. Luna was right, when she said it was too vivid, as though he was remembering a place he had visited before. And yet… The answers wouldn’t come. He still didn’t know what was going on, or why he didn’t remember this place.

But he did know the answers were within that vault.

Leaving the tape recorder by the savaged mares’ body, he strode towards the massive vault door, inspecting it as well. It looked out of place, and for several reasons. First was the thick layer of dust lying on its surface. He wiped a hoof across the metal, and it came back with a coating of light brown dirt, like he had seen back in Las Pegasus, in the Moojave desert.

Second, it just didn’t seem to belong in the first place. Like the room had warped to fit it, the ceiling seemed to have stretched a few feet, the metal screws themselves being several feet wide. Had the door been designed to open outwards, it wouldn’t have been able, as the sudden drop in the ceiling would have made an effective doorstop.

He looked at the only recognizable markings, the numbers 101 stenciled military-style across a flat spot midway up, and had no idea what they meant. Only the vaguest inkling that they should’ve meant do much more. The whole vault was shaped like a giant gear, something else that should’ve meant something, but no secrets revealed themselves.

Luna’s voice came once more from the radio. “Tinkeirtoy! Something wicked thine way comes! To quote thy friend, Wouldst thou kindly hide somewhere?” In an instant, Tinkertoy was searching the room for anywhere large enough to hide him. His eyes settled on the cabinet he’d seen earlier, and he clambered into it, holding the door closed after himself. He watched the room from the safety of the broken door.

Thud. Drag. Thud. Griiiind. Thud. Drag. Thud.

Whatever was coming was approaching at its own pace, and it had one that was both slow and powerful. It certainly had the capacity to go faster, but then important details would be missed. And if that was done, then there was no point in moving forward at all.

Griiiind. Thud. Drag. Thud.

The sound came to a sudden stop, and Tinkertoy’s heart almost followed its lead. He quickly found that he had rather preferred the noise, because then he could at least tell what was going on.

Beyond his cupboard, the door behind the desk began to slide open excruciatingly slowly. It had only risen a metre before a tiny orange filly ducked underneath it and into the room. “Scootaloo?” Tinkertoy whispered from under his breath. She looked like Scootaloo, but she was different, somehow.

Her mane was even messier, as though forgotten completely. Her fur was discoloured, like she had never seen sunlight. And her eyes… She had no pupils, no iris, but merely an alien, magenta glow. Yet, she could obviously still see, as she darted haphazardly around the room. Her wings were changed too, as instead of being a normal Pegasus’ wings, they looked as though someone had built giant dragonfly wings and surgically implanted them into her back.

Finally, a wickedly sharp needle was strapped to her right hoof. The end opposite the point ended in a rubber tube, which led to a glass tank facing her muzzle. A fake teat was attached to that end, giving it the appearance of a psychopath’s baby bottle. Almost needless to say, it…she…Scootaloo was terrifying.

Behind her, the door sputtered, coming to a stop halfway up. A massive metal hand appeared below the door, and grabbed the bottom edge. A grunt, pained yet mechanical, echoed from the other side of the door as it began moving upward. It had only moved a single metre when it jammed again, the machinery inside the door shrieking as though stung.

Tinkertoy could see the owner of the metal hand now, and he instinctively tried to make himself smaller. It was a massive stallion, at least three metres tall, wearing what appeared to be an armor-plated scuba suit. His head was encased in a massive metal diving helmet, through which bright green lights shone outward, obscuring his face. His right hoof had either been replaced, or outfitted with a drill larger than the circumference of Tinkertoy’s barrel, and splattered with blood and… other liquids that should not have been outside of a pony. His other hoof had been equipped with a much larger version of the mechanical hand that Tinkertoy himself was using, large enough so that the stallion had to move on his knuckles like a gorilla.

He gave the metal door another push, but it was now solidly locked in place. He almost looked ready to find a way around, but he stopped when Scootaloo shouted, “C’mon, Mr. Bubbles! I can smell an angel!” When he heard her say that, he gripped the door once again, and made a noise not unlike a pained whale. Pained, yet defiant, unyielding.

He pushed, and yanked the whole damn thing out of the doorway, a giant steel door that weighed more than a desk made of metal. Tossing it aside with an ear-ringing clang, like the movement was nothing, he thudded his way into the room to follow Scootaloo. She darted to him, gave his knee a hug, and said, “Good work, Mr. Bubbles.!” She pulled away after a few seconds, and pointed at the mutilated corpse. “I found an angel Mr. Bubbles. Over here!”

Thud. Drag. Thud. Griiiind. Thud. Drag. Thud. Griiiind.

He followed her over to the corpse, where she was already gleefully stabbing her needle in and extracting quite a lot of blood. She continued this in multiple places, until the glass container was full, whereupon she put her mouth to the teat and began drinking it. She coughed as she finished, and the massive stallion gave her an impossibly gentle pat with his hand.

“Thanks, Mr. Bubbles.” She sniffed the air. “I smell another, Mr. Bubbles. They’re not an angel, but they will be soon!” And with that, she turned towards the cabinet Tinkertoy was hiding in. Her wings gave a buzz, and she darted up to the top of the cabinet. “Mr. Bubbles! They’re inside the safe!”

Tinkertoy jerked back from the gap in the door as Scootaloo swung onto the door from above, hanging on like a monkey. Seconds later, a giant, bloodstained needle jammed itself into the front of the cabinet, just underneath Tinkertoy’s genitals. He tried to stand up just a little bit higher. The needle moved up and down, wiggling inside the hole it had made in the door. It seemed to be stuck. Soon, the whole cabinet began rocking back and forth as Scootaloo began trying to pull the needle back out. It began creaking, and Tinkertoy braced himself as it tipped forward just a little too far.

With a slam like a piano being dropped, the whole cabinet fell on it’s front, almost directly on Scootaloo. The doors shattered, and Tinkertoy quickly grabbed the needle and forced it away from himself, while Scootaloo was shrieking something along the lines of, “I found him, Mr. Bubbles!”

Almost as quickly as it had fallen, the cabinet was lifted off of them, and the stallions lights had gone from a pleasant green to an angry red. “Get ‘em, Mr. Bubbles!” Shouted Scootaloo from beneath him. In the back of his mind, Tinkertoy realized that it probably looked like he’d attacked her, from where the eponymous Mr. Bubbles was standing.

He was so bucked.

In the space of a second, Tinkertoy found himself flying across the room, his chest hurting almost like he’d been kicked by something much larger than he was. Imagine that. Just as suddenly, his flight stopped, and he found himself practically plastered against the opposite wall. He opened his eyes, having shut during the flight, to find he’d landed against the massive vault, and its mysterious “101”.

He’d barely had enough time to register this before he was moving again. The air was squeezed out of his lungs by the Stallion (he was loath to call something that had so thoroughly kicked his ass Mr. Bubbles, at least to its face) as he held him up to his diving helmet. For just a moment, the lights inside dimmed, and Tinkertoy saw the face of the half-mechanical protector.

It was his face.

Older, more wounded, and with several parts warped or replaced, but his face all the same. It all clicked about then. Of course he was protecting Scootaloo. Of course he had a mechanical hand. Of course he was wearing the suit, if he’d gotten hurt that badly.

He would’ve thought about it more, but the lights brightened again, and he had to shut his eyes to keep from being blinded. However, even with his ears ringing, he could still hear another sound; the whirring of the drill spinning up. The Stallion slammed him into the front of the safe again, pinning him, and pulled the drill back as though winding up for a punch.

And then he slammed the drill forward, pulverizing his torso. Just for a moment, through all the blood and gore spraying from the drill, he saw a the brightest blue light he’d ever seen shine through from the vault, some part of the contents within freed by accident. Just enough to get a hint of what it contained, not nearly enough to even begin to understand what it was. Had he just another moment, he knew, he could’ve understood it all.

But unfortunately, the blood loss and massive organ damage caught up to him, and killed him. And because of the way he understood dreams, that meant one thing:

He woke up.

He woke up, and took a massive gasp of air. His hooves moved like a shot, checking that everything was still in the right places. Head, chest, forelegs, hind legs. One flesh, one metal. All the important bits were still there. The rest he could work out later.

A blue blur slammed against his barrel and clung there, knocking all of the air out of his lungs again, and causing a coughing fit. “Tinkertoy! Never do that again! I was so worried when I started being pulled from thy dream without warning, and looked to the monitors to observe thee being killed horrendously!”

“Can’t…breathe…”

“’Twas such a horrible place… Such slaughter and destruction, all so clear…”

“Luna… Love you…But can’t…Breathe…” This got Luna’s attention, and she loosened just enough for him to take a deep breath. She laid her head on his barrel as it inflated, and deflated, not unlike the dream.

The dream. Holy shit, what was that? Luna had said he’d have to have been there before, but none of it looked familiar. Even now, the finer details were slipping away. If that was what his subconscious looked like, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take any naps anytime soon.

Luna seemed to shiver, and that brought him back to the present. He was lying on a bed, with Luna lying almost on top of him.

Well, that was moving a bit quick. Not that he was complaining.

The bed seemed to take up most of the space in the small room, which was otherwise dominated by a writing desk with a window over it, a travel trunk, and a section of wall he guessed contained the bathroom. Past that was a door with another window in it, and a curtain that had been moved over it to obscure all sight inside.

Luna began to shift, moving away from him slightly, and facing away. “I… I apologize. I saw thee fall and lose consciousness within the doctors’ office, and worried. He had sedated thee immediately after I lifted thou back onto the table, and after he treated thy ears, sent us here. When you began shifting in thine sleep, I panicked, and entered thine dreams again. I… was not prepared for that.”

Tinkertoy shifted himself, sitting up on his haunches before hugging Luna with his forelegs. “Hey. It’s alright. We’re both alright now. Hell, I’m not even airsick any more!” This seemed to galvanize Luna, who turned around and looked in his eyes. “There is that word again. Thou used it before, in the dream, before I was interrupted by the filly. What is the meaning of that word? I have never encountered it in my life, neither before or after my banishment.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but the words didn’t come. Where had he learned that word? He’d never heard it in his life, not from any pony other than himself. “I… I don’t know.”

Luna frowned. “Indeed. ‘Twould seem there art many things within thine mind that do not fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle that has been mixed with several others.” She sighed and slumped onto his chest again. “I cannot imagine how confused thou must be. Even upon returning from- Tinkertoy?”

She had stopped mid-sentence, and was staring at his barrel. “What? Is there something wrong?”

“These scars. Thou didst not mention them.”

“Scars?” Tinkertoy looked down at his chest, where Luna’s hoof had shifted his fur, and noticed the pinker-than-usual skin beneath. It seemed to outline a massive spot on his stomach, almost like something had burst outward, and for the life of him, he could not recall where he had gotten such a horrific injury. “Scars. Huh. I didn’t think I had those before.”

“Is this not where, in thy dream, the Stallion-“ She was interrupted yet again, this time by a knock at their cabin door. Luna glared at it, but then it shifted to him. “We shalt discuss these later.” It softened, as she continued. “But if thou truly cannot recall such grievous injuries such as these… such a fact is extremely disconcerting.”

The knocking came again, followed by Careful Count’s voice. “Princess? Mr. Smith? Are you two alright in there?” Tinkertoy looked at Luna, who motioned towards the bulkhead, and scooted off of him. Now that he was (regrettably) no longer underneath her, he wen to the door, opening it.

“Hey. Whatcha need?”

“I was just gonna tell you two that the Captain had invited you two to dinner with the crew, but if you’re, uh, busy-“

“Wha-? No no, just… sleeping. Dinner?”

“Yeah, The Captain thought because- shit, were you really asleep? I didn’t even think-“

“Seriously. It’s alright. Where’s the galley? I didn’t get directions before.”

“Down the hall, all the way to the front of the gondola, up the stairs, and a U-turn into the bulkhead marked Galley. And, uh…” He fidgeted, giving him a hug. Which caught Tinkertoy off guard more than anything else. “Seriously, I’m sorry.”

Luna was giving him an amused look, and Tinkertoy just patted him on the back. “It’s alright, I… I don’t know, I’ll buy you a drink later or something?” After another moment, Careful pulled back, and fidgeted with his hoof.

“Right. Um. Well, I guess we’ll see you there in about half an hour?” He grinned awkwardly, before darting down the hall, not waiting for an answer. Tinkertoy shook his head, and turned back into the room.

“Wonder what’s up with him.” Luna had moved to the small window on the other side of the cabin, and was peering out as if looking for something. She turned back to face him, smiling as she shook her head.

“Perhaps he was afraid of offending us? I hath noticed my sister has hardly left an amiable impression upon most ponies in my absence. Most would assume I would be similar, and I may hath given that impression ‘pon my visit to Ponyville…”

“Heh, yeah. Pinkie told me all about that, actually. She said how you started off all scary and such, but right after your arrival she and Ms. Sparkle explained the holiday in detail to you.”

“Indeed. Laughter and Magic were most helpful, and I am glad I managed not to do anything too scary. Fun has become such an abstract concept in my absence. Still, at one point, I was actually considering turning all of their rubber spiders into real ones. Silly, no?” She smiled at him, but frowned as Tinkertoy visibly cringed. “I apologize, did I say something off-putting?”

Tinkertoy suppressed one last shiver, before giving her an awkward smile. “Nothing much, just… I’ve a bit of a fear of spiders, you know? Never liked the little things, all hairy with their eyes and long legs and it’s just… something wrong about them. Bleh.” He stuck his tongue out, before shaking his head. “Anyway, sounds like we’ve got some sort of dinner to go to. Dinner on an airship. How’s that for a romantic idea?”

Luna beamed happily. “Indeed! It sounds most romantic, as long as we might freshen up first?”

“Whenever you’re ready!”

Roughly twenty minutes later, they had followed Careful’s directions, and were standing in front of the bulkhead. Luna had freshened up by brushing her coat almost immaculately, and after a little joking argument, dragging a comb through Tinkertoy’s mussed-up hair. She had, oddly enough, decided not to wear any of her princess regalia. Or rather, she hadn’t been wearing it since he’d woken up, and had decided not to put them back on.

Tinkertoy nosed open the bulkhead before them. “After you.” Luna smirked, before extending her wing over him again. “Come. We shalt enter together.” As they did so, a smattering of voices rang out around the galley, all shouting hellos, hi, and ahoy. The Captain in particular stood out, as he waved them over to the head of the table where he was sitting.

“Ah! Princess, Mr. Smith, glad you two could join us! Come, have some rum, or cider if that’s more to your taste. Sweet Apple Acres Cider, apparently, though how that got on board I’ll never know.” For the first time, Tinkertoy got a look at the eponymous Captain.

To say he was an imposing pony wouldn’t be quite right. He was an old Pinto-spotted Pegasus, with a rough brown beard and a blue sailor’s cap. He was well-built, with well-toned muscles from years of hard work making themselves evident even with his age, though his wings seemed to have atrophied without use. His Trottingham accent seemed to exude friendliness, almost as much as he did the smell of Hydrogen. A round blue crystal lens, worn like an eyepatch over his right eye, completed the image.

Around him, the mess hall seemed almost too large, but this was mainly because several of the long tables had been pressed together to make one long table, which he sat at the head of. He motioned to his left, where two chairs sat, empty. Two windows at either end showed a wide view of the night sky.

As Luna sat down at the chair closer to the Captain, Tinkertoy moved behind her, and shook the Captain’s hoof. “A pleasure to meet you, Captain…?”

“Aye, Skies. Crimson Skies, but some call me Stormy. What’s yours lad?”

“Smith, Tinkertoy Smith. And, of course, Luna. Or Princess Luna, I suppose.” Luna, after a moment of awkwardly looking at her own hoof, shook the Captain’s. “Luna is fine. Princess seems to be a title that many fear, nowadays.”

“Aye, perfectly understandable, lass. If ye be wantin’ to be called merely Luna, we’ll certainly oblige. Takes a little pressure off, actually. Ar, but where are me manners?” The Captain turned to a female Unicorn sitting on his right. “Spitshine, lass, pour ‘em a cider each!”

As Tinkertoy sat down next to Luna, he looked down the rest of the table, observing who he presumed to be most of the essential crew. Next to him was Careful Count, and behind him, Tinkertoy suppressed a shiver as he saw Dr. Scalpel, who caught the glance and tried to shrink into his seat. Past him was a plump white Unicorn with a paper nurse’s cap, who was taking large bites of a sweet roll. Across from him, next to Spitshine, was a Gryphon who looked him dead in the eyes, and smirked when he blinked. Down the rest of the table were other assorted crewmembers, but nothing else that really stood out.

Luna nudged him, motioning to a stein of cider in front of him. He hooked his hoof into the handle, and lifted it to look at the amber liquid inside. It fizzed, ever so slightly. Her voice caught his attention again. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve… I don’t think I’ve ever actually drunk anything alcoholic before.”

“No? And thou art how many years of age?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Well, It has been over a millennia since I last had such a drink, myself. I believe I have forgotten what it was like, so it shall be a new experience for us both!”

Tinkertoy smiled, and clunked his stein to hers. “Bottom’s up, I guess.” And with that, he lifted the stein to his lips. A burning liquid instantly filled his mouth, and he swallowed out of pure surprise, coughing as quite a bit of it went down the wrong tube.

“Holy –koff- crap! I –hack- wasn’t –wheeze- expecting that!” Cheers and laughter filled the hall, and Luna clapped her hoof on his back, which helped immensely. She giggled to herself, before taking a much smaller sip of her own. She blinked, before bringing it back to her mouth and taking a much larger swig, shotgunning the whole stein.

“Mmm! This cider, I enjoy it! Another!” The stein levitated back to Spitshine, who filled both of them, and back to their respective owners. With a little more prodding from Luna and the crew, Tinkertoy drank some more.

After that, really, the rest of the night was kind of a blur.

Broken images filtered through his mind, scenes of the party. In one, he was throwing darts, and failing miserably.

In another, he was talking to Dr. Scalpel, who was… apologizing? Yes, something like that, about how a Pegasus doctor would have trouble manipulating the medical tools and the crew liked to play pranks on him and his patients because of that. He was actually a perfectly decent pony.

No, he’d definitely been drunk and hallucinating that.

In another, he was holding a jar (Was that Sparky’s jar?) and handing it to Spitshine, who was gazing at it with wonder.

The he and Luna were building something, and then the Gryphon was carrying them back to their room, and then his memory failed him.

Bedsheets, once again. Normal bedsheets, thankfully. Very definitely not hospital bedsheets. And they were so warm and comforting…. He snuggled into them a little bit more. They were almost perfect. Almost. Not the fact that, at some point, he had to get up, mind you. He didn’t mind that, and it was going to suck, but he could put that out of his mind.

No, he reflected, cracking his right eye open against his so-warm sheets, it was the fact that- augh! Light! It burned! His eye snapped closed again.

So, this must be what being hungover felt like. He hadn’t realized he had such a massive headache until the light had made it oh-so-worse. He brought his hoof up to his face, to try and cover his eyes, but it was blocked by something. Which, he slowly realized, wasn’t actually a blanket.

Again, he cracked open his eye, carefully now. Blue. All he could see was blue. And a few strands of a…starry mane…

Oh. Oh! Oh crap.

Well, they were moving very quickly now.

There was going to be trouble when they woke up, that much he could see. At least from the position they were in, with Tinkertoy still lying between Luna’s hind legs, facing her barrel.

Well, the bed was perfect now. He could at least have that, before she woke up and freaked out. Might as well enjoy it while he could. He snuggled a little closer, and lost himself in her fur. It had the most beautiful smell, like mint and peaches mixed together…