Clockwork Moon

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…