Clockwork Moon

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...