//------------------------------//
// Those Pesky Backstories 
// Story: An Old Mare's Tale: Gadgets, Bringer of SCIENCE! 
// by Forevermore 
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	"...absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! Have you no common sense in that head of yours?! You could have been killed! You could have been hurt! You could have gotten lost!"

Mama "The Indomitable" Gears' fury broke over her adventurous foals with all the force of a tidal wave, threatening to send them sprawling upon the wood paneled floor or out the window into the cobblestoned streets of Punkstill. Gadgets and Minion had returned home some time earlier with the unicorn just barely scraping a win in the final stretch, and now her friend was paying the price of his own bet.

"How could you have been flying again?! Have you learned nothing, my little pony?! What were you going to do if you lost more than a leg this time?! I-"

"Yes, Mom, you're completely right. But there is just one thing we should mention-" Minion cut in.

"And what is THAT?!"

"-this time it worked."

Mama froze, and for a minute or two, the house went silent as the full implications of what had happened on the cliffs sank in. Minion was pleased to note that her father, Mino "Dominoes" Gears, was staring dumbfounded from his cushy armchair, his jaw threatening to touch the floor.

"It...It worked?" The older mare managed to stammer out, dark blue eyes shifting from one innocent face to the other and back again.

Gadgets nodded solemnly before breaking into a huge grin as his adopted mother crushed him in a fierce hug, joined not a moment later by the white, black spotted form of his "father". Minion was pulled moments later into the squealing, bucking maelstrom as her parents danced round and round, squeezing her "brother" between them in sheer bliss.

"It works, it works! This little pony flies! This little pony we all knew could see beyond the rise! He stamps, he sings, with all those things, this little pony guy! With bells and whistles, steam and bronze, this pony built himself some wings!"

Minion felt tears of joy trickling down her cheeks as the family chanted their terrible song, knocking over several tables, a lamp, and even Mr. Gears' favorite armchair as they celebrated with the wild abandon that only comes from a decade of failure followed by unquestionable success.

That night, Mrs. Gears cooked Gadgets favorite dish of honey porridge and blueberry muffins with hot cocoa and cold vanilla ice-cream. Mr. Gears got out his old guitar and led the family through a number of songs concerning the values of friendship, hard work, and bravery, and Minion sat with her foreleg around the little pony who, just twelve years prior, had forgotten how to laugh.

It wasn't long before the neighbors grew curious as to the commotion and came to investigate, knocking politely at the door and calling for somepony to explain. They were greeted by Mrs. Gears, who quickly told them "It works!" shortly before slamming the door in their stunned faces. Tonight's party was just for family. The ponies of Punkstill, all painfully acquainted with the little family and its youngest son's penchant for disaster, were soon laughing themselves as they raced to spread the word.

Soon the entire town was celebrating, the festive mood spreading from door to door on wings and hooves as stallions in thick coats and mares in coveralls ran door to door, shouting "The crazy foal's actually done it!" Fireworks of a thousand shapes and sizes whizzed down alleyways or shot into the air to rain light and noise over the heads of the ponies crowding the streets, shaking hooves and dancing to the sound of a dozen different bands.

Well past midnight the party was still going strong. It's celebrant, exhausted by the events of the day and the subsequent celebrations, was collapsing on his hooves when Minion finally guided him upstairs and into bed. As they clopped up the stairs, hooves ringing on the polished steel, Minion thought back to when she had first met the colt who would become her world. It had been dark that night, as dark as it gets.

The wind of the storm howled outside, carrying away anything not bolted to the ground whether that be stalls, tables, automatons, or any pony foolish enough to be outside. Storms such as these were common to the mountains, nature easily rebuffing the efforts of pegasi to temper its fury, but the citizens of Araea had found ways to combat them and Punkstill was no different.

Through the use of their advanced knowledge of science and magic, ponies had developed houses that bent and swayed with the wind and lightning rods that drew the electricity from the air, gathering it for tamer purposes. The inventors used this natural energy to power the heavy machines that built and defended the town. Massive automatons the size of houses, trucks and tanks that could reshape mountains, and walls of bronze and steel riddled with traps and other anti-monster devices.

Minion sat in the parlor of her childhood home, directing two small ponybots against each other in a mock duel. Mr. Gears relaxed in his armchair, idly reading the paper while sipping coffee, Mrs. Gears busy in the kitchen preparing dinner and cursing noisily every time the thunder made the flighty machines who assisted her jump and spill their contents. The heavy pounding of hooves on wood broke the comfortable monotony of a family waiting out bad weather.

Curious, Mr. Gears laid down his paper and walked over to the door, horn shining with power as the lock unlatched. Immediately, the fierce winds blew the door in, exposing the soaking wet colt on the other side, completely still despite the rain and the cold.

Minion had seen this pony once before, at a dinner party her parents hosted a few years back in celebration of her first successful magic trick: floating a bottle of baby formula across the room to her cradle. He was just a little colt, a few years younger than her own five. He should've been inside with his parents playing on the hearth room rug, but instead he was soaked to the bone, wearing only the tattered remains of a blanket against the pounding storm. His eyes cold and dead as polished stone.

"Gadgets," Mr. Gears asked tentatively, staring at the colt with a mixture of disbelief and dawning horror, "what are you doing out there? Where's Jackies? Marith? Why aren't you wearing the new coat they gave you?"

Minion peaked around her father, her eyes seeing only the lifeless pony in the doorway, rather than the cutie mark of a chair and rapier emblazoned on his flank which fascinated her. Without a word, Gadgets stepped past his father's oldest friend, his wetness staining the freshly-cleaned carpet, his hooves making no sound on the plushy fabric. Mr. Gears closed the door with a brief spurt of magic, never taking his eyes off the little pony.

"Who is it, dear? Did somepony get lost in the storm?" Mrs. Gears called from the kitchen, poking her head around the corner to see into the room. Her cheery smile faded as her eyes lit upon their visitor, her expression morphing instantly from that of a blissful housewife to a scared and worried mother.

"Gadgets? What's wrong, dear? Are you hurt? Sweetie, what happened?" She rushed into the room, scattering Minion's toys as she did, and assaulting her husband with questions. Under normal circumstances, the little filly would have found this lack of respect for her things highly rude and scolded her mother accordingly, but even she could tell these circumstances were anything but normal.

"Dead. Everypony's dead."

The small voice cut through the room like a super-heated knife through butter. Everypony turned at once to look at its source: the blank stare of loss and pain etched into the features of a newly orphaned Gadgets.

Minion shook herself, cutting off the train of painful memories. That had been long ago, and Gadgets was no longer the miserable little colt that had appeared on her doorstep in the rain. He was a big pony now, strong and tough and crazy.

It had been painful, more painful than she could have ever imagined at the time, but he'd pulled through. It had been six months before he'd learned to smile again, and a year before she'd heard him laugh, but he'd done it. Now his laugh was like music to her ears, never ending and always bubbling beneath the surface of that brazen smile.

But as they reached the landing and Minion directed her drowsing friend into his room, stepping over the piles of scrap and tools that littered the floor, the memories came unbidden. Gadgets' parents, the nicest unicorn/pegasus couple a pony could ever hope to meet, had died during the storm in a rock-slide brought about by a malfunctioning steam engine and a sudden ground quake.

The Gyros family had been sheltering in one of their many secret hideaways, having been caught in the storm on return from aiding the nearby town of Rocketplaza with a sudden infestation of parasprites.

The citizens of said town had often been heard to blame themselves for the accident, insisting they could have done something even though nopony had ever blamed them in even their darkest, most private moments. Gadgets himself had threatened to thrash anypony who dared say a word against the townsfolk, themselves included. He did not blame them for his parents death, and woe be unto anypony who did.

"How much farther to the town," Marith "Magicka" Gyros called ahead to her husband over the howling wind, clutching the hammock that held her most precious burden ever closer to her chest. Her horn glowed bright as the sun, serving both to light their way and shield their son in a layer of magical protection, keeping safe his dreams from the horrible storm.

Jacqueline "Jackies" Gyros spat out a glob of something or other, his eyes idly registering as it was whipped away by the very wind that had hurled it into his jaws. "About a hundred yards,” he shouted back, “but I don't think we can make it in this weather, not with Gadgets."

The pegasus cursed vehemently to himself, why hadn't he seen this storm coming? Why hadn't he insisted they stay in Rocketplaza for a few more days? But he knew the answer to that, as he always did.

Pegasi could shape the weather and lessen its effects, not predict its whimsy. This rule was even more so in the mountains, where the fierce winds made cloud-shaping all but impossible. As to the second, Marith had wanted to be home in time for Gadgets' third birthday, and he'd been quick to agree with her, especially since his father would be in town for the first time since their son was born.

"Damn it, what should we do?!" Marith called, her light a mere twinkling in the distance, even though he knew she was less than a few yards behind him. Jackies cursed silently to himself once more, scanning the area with his goggled eyes. With a whoop he found what he was looking for: an oddly shaped obelisk rising between the trees, placed there by somepony ages past.

"Honey look, our old sign! The hidey hole's nearby; we can rest there till the storm lets up!"

Marith's reply was lost to the wind, but the movement of her light indicated she'd heard him and the two soaked, thoroughly miserable ponies trudged their way to the obelisk and its promise of safety.

With her magic, Minion carefully removed Gadgets’ aviator's vest, goggles, and mechanical wings, and levitated him gently into bed. Ignoring his feeble protests about subtests and the importance of science, she drew the covers up to his chin and watched until he finally drifted into sleep. With a loving hoof she brushed the hair from his eyes, tucking it behind an ear, though she knew the gesture was futile.

Gadgets' hair was one of the things she loved best about him. It was pale-gold, almost white, the tips always black no matter how often it was cut, and it absolutely refused to do anything you told it to. It was, in many ways, as wild and free as the head upon which it grew.

Hanging his first successful flier up beside the charred, broken, and occasionally half-melted remnants of a thousand failures, Minion was about to flick off the light when something caught her eye. It was a book, an old, faux-leather bound tome as thick as a filly's leg, battered and worn, and covered with symbols and equations that baffled the mind. All written in shiny gold ink that refused to fade, even after all these years.

Levitating it from the shelf, in the process displacing perhaps a dozen different inventions Gadgets had crafted during school from bits of wire and scrap metal, Minion left the room, closing the door softly behind her. Heading back to her own little piece of paradise, she heard the soft click of her parents' door closing, heading off to bed as well.

Minion left her door open, as she had every night since the time Gadgets had crawled into her bed after a terrible nightmare and fallen asleep, curled up against her tummy. This had happened three more times that week, until Mr. Gears had finally built a bunk bed on top of Minion's own, and Gadgets had moved into her room semi-permanently. She hadn't minded, she enjoyed having the colt close to her. It gave her something to hold, something to love, something warm and real where before there had been only plushies and the occasional pillow.

But five years later, Gadgets had moved out, citing the need for space and a desire for a place to call his own. Minion had objected to this, stating she would happily give him as much space as he needed, but the stubborn pony would have none of it, reasoning that he had already asked for too much of her life. Mrs. Gears had cleaned out the old storage room down the hall, and Gadgets had been moved in within the week, leaving a sad and lonely filly behind him.

Those feelings had changed quickly, however, once she’d gotten a good look at what Gadgets had been doing with his new space. He had filled the drawers and shelves with inventions and parts from his grandfather's workshop, covered the walls in diagrams of fantastical machines and buildings, and littered the floor with so much discarded parchment and scrap metal a pony could hardly tell it was there at all. It was then that Gadgets had expressed his desire to fly through the skies on the wings of his father, proudly displaying his half-finished prototype and the dozen plans he'd already drawn up in anticipation of trying it out.

Since then, Minion had always accompanied the roguish inventor on his many misadventures with the science of flight and the far more successful ventures in the fields of automatons, heavy machinery, and household tools. But no matter how skilled in every other field of science and engineering he became, the power of flight eluded him. From his farm equipment that doubled harvests, to his medical machines that restored life to terminally ill patients, his inventions revolutionized the life of Punkstill, yet his goal continued to elude him.

Mechanized flight was nothing new to Araea, airships having been invented long ago. Most were small, one cabin things used largely for leisure trips between towns, and even the largest, made for transporting heavy machinery and automatons, were rarely more than fifty-hooves from stem to stern. The small size was a necessity of navigating through the jagged, dangerous peaks of their mountain home.

But Gadgets hadn’t wanted an airship, declaring them "unfit" for his purposes, and turned his attention to constructing a method of flight focusing more on the speed and agility enjoyed by pegasi. These efforts had cost him dearly, but a hundred broken bones, a few dozen concussions, and one missing limb later, he'd done it; he'd literally built himself into a pegasus. Foregoing the use of magic, gas, or any other conventional means, he'd found a way to fly through the sky as perfectly as those who had been born to it, as Minion herself had witnessed mere hours ago.

Climbing lightly atop her bed, the mare settled herself comfortably onto the covers, levitated the book to a comfortable height, and began idly leading through it. Passed dozens of thick pages depicting countless equations, diagrams, and notes on various inventions (written in the spider-like writing Gadgets had perfected in detention), she finally came across something that sparked her interest.

An old photograph, taken nearly ten years past, wedged between the pages. The photo had been taken on an old-fashioned pictograph and was cracked and faded with time, but its image was still clear as day to those who knew how it once looked.

The photo depicted a much younger Gadgets at the tender age of five shrouded in his father's old coat, goggles resting on his forehead, face split with a grin, and his eyes burning with the manic fire of a genius or a madpony. Behind him stood Minion and her parents wearing their absolute best, sporting strained smiles at the familiarity with which their adopted family member treated the picture’s only other occupant. A strange pony who smiled down at the young colt with a mixture of motherly understanding and friendly affection, and towered over even the adults by a few good hoof-lengths.

Princess Celestia, from the faraway land of Equestria, had arrived in Araea that day on official business. Though separated by incalculable miles of ocean and earth to the point where Araea had had little to no contact whatsoever with the magical land, or with anypony else for that matter, Celestia had traveled to them of her own initiative with the noble goal of spreading friendship and trust throughout the world.

Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria, Keeper of the Elements of Harmony, and beloved matron of all ponykind, alighted upon the cobble-stoned streets of Punkstill to the awed gasps of the town's assembled citizens. She had landed in the middle of the town square after circling overhead several times, marveling at the stone-and-metal houses covered with thick iron pipes and machinery whose purpose she couldn't even begin to guess at. She couldn't help but laugh silently to herself as a number of ponies collapsed outright, overwhelmed by the shock of seeing such a legendary figure.

Among the assembled townsfolk were machines the immortal princess had never imagined: robotic ponies several sizes too large, ape-like automatons with oversized hands and cannons on their shoulders, copper birds, critters, and dragons, and countless other devices that defied logical description.

As the awed stillness dragged on, Celestia began to feel slightly uncomfortable and she shook herself violently, if her potential friends were too scared to speak than she would be the one to greet them. Just as she opened her mouth to make her first attempt, however, a harassed-looking stallion pushed his way through the crowd. He was an old earth pony with a dark blue coat, silver mane and mustaches, monocles over both eyes, and a tailored jacket set to emphasize his cutie mark (a quill and spear). On his collar he wore a gold name tag reading "The Headmaster". Looking around, Celestia could see that everypony in the crowd was wearing one as well. How odd.

"Good day," Celestia began, extending a hoof, "I apologize for my sudden arrival but you of all ponies must know how difficult it is to travel here. I am Princess Celestia, and I have come to offer the Hoof of Friendship to you and your people."

It looked for a moment as if this had broken the spell. Ponies began to whisper among themselves, pointing or smiling nervously, still too nervous to speak directly to her, but comfortable enough to let go of their silence. The Headmaster tentatively extended his hoof to hers, opening his mouth to speak, and managing to muster up a weak smile.

Sensing that things were going well, Celestia gave him her most encouraging smile, which instantly turned to sour surprise as he toppled over, unconscious. The Princess sighed and gently levitated the sleeping pony onto a pile of cushions she conjured from nowhere with a flicker of thought. The muted whisperings ceased immediately, everypony no doubt thinking she had cursed their leader and was going to curse them next.

"How come you have wings and a horn? Were your parents a unicorn and a pegasus? My parents were a unicorn and a pegasus but I'm an earth pony. How's that work anyway?"

Celestia started in spite of herself and began searching frantically for the source of these questions, eyes scanning the crowd as he her wiggled back and forth. Nopony in the crowd had moved, still too afraid to speak, though a family of unicorns almost directly across the square was staring in dumbfounded horror at something near her hooves.

"Look down, silly filly. Can't ya see me?"

The voice popped up again, and this time Celestia managed to identify its source. Looking down at her right hoof, she saw a slightly smaller than average colt staring up at her with wide, eager eyes of blue and turquoise.

He was dressed in a dark green jacket several sizes too big for him, covered in pockets and what looked suspiciously like burn marks, a pair of ruby-red goggles festooned with switches, dials, and smaller lenses around the edges rested on his forehead. His coat was a shining bronze color, catching the light of her sun and giving him the illusion of a magical glow, his mane a mysterious shade of white tipped with black.

"Hello, my little pony," Celestia greeted him, struggling to remain calm as the colt grinned up at her, his open friendliness amongst so much suspicion threatening to throw her off balance. "I'm afraid I can't answer that question. I'm a bit different than most ponies, you see."

The colt nodded solemnly as if this made sense, though Celestia herself was at a loss as to how to explain her origins to this little foal. He kept nodding for a few minutes, head bobbing up and down as if it had a mind of its own. Celestia barely managed to catch herself in time to stop her own head from joining his as the mesmerizing sensation continued for a few minutes.

"Well, you're obviously different from other ponies, since you're all immortal and stuff. Even though Mrs. Gears is always telling me nothing lasts forever, I guess that doesn't apply to you, does it?"

For once, Celestia found herself at a loss for words. She stood in dumb silence, unsure of what to say to this curious little colt.

"Well, not entirely my little-" she glanced down at the name tag he wore, "Gadgets Gyros", "-Gadgets. I'm afraid everything ends at some time or another, even for ponies like me who have lived for a thousand years."

The colt waved a hoof as if dismissing the subject, "Immortality's over-rated, anyway; what's life without the fear of death? It's the briefness of our time on this world that drives us to make as big an impact as possible. If nopony ever died, nopony would've ever accomplished anything worth talking about."

Celestia blinked, completely stunned by this little pony's astounding grasp of the nature of the world and even more surprised at how greatly his views on mortality reflected her own.

"You're quite clever, Gadgets, I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony quite like you before," she told him, gently rubbing his mane with a hoof.

Gadgets grinned up at her, "If you think I'm clever, wait till you meet my family. They're something else entirely."

With that, he quickly turned and called across the plaza to the horror-struck unicorn family she'd noticed earlier, "Mom, Dad, Minion, come over here and meet the Princess!"

With slow, nervous hoofsteps, the family departed the safety of the crowd, hooves clicking loudly in the stillness. With a flash of sympathy and heart-ache, she noticed that the tags of both the ponies he addressed as his parents read the surname "Gears".

Minion started awake with a shudder, she hadn't even noticed she'd fallen asleep. But with the light peaking through her window and the noises of her mother in the kitchen, she was forced to confirm that it was indeed morning. With a groan and a stifled yawn she pulled herself out from the tangled mess of sheets, tucking the picture of that first, awkward encounter with the Equestrian Princess back into Gadgets' journal. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she levitated a comb to her mane and prepared to greet the day.

As she shambled along the hall towards breakfast, she was jerked suddenly awake by the banging of a door behind her. Turning quickly she found Gadgets, fully dressed in his jacket over his aviator's vest and numerous belts hung with various inventions and tools, grinning at her from behind his goggles. The same jacket he’d worn all those yars ago, now far more heavily patched and singed, the pockets bulging with Celestia-knew-what.

"Minion, come here, I wanna show you something,” he disappeared moments later as something behind exploded. The mare sighed and trotted over to his door, her scientific curiosity dampened by the lethargy of interrupted sleep. She ducked reflexively as a metal sphere attached to a propeller whizzed over her head and into the hall, a thick scroll clutched in its tiny hands.

Gadgets himself stood beside his suspiciously uncluttered desk, a charred and incredibly sturdy piece of equipment that had withstood the test of time and, more importantly, the test of being the property of a mad inventor. Where normally the polished finish was hidden by layer upon layer of schematics, tools, and spilled breakfast, today there was only one abnormally thick stack of parchment laid neatly in the center.

"What is it, a time machine?" Minion asked sleepily, stifling another yawn as she slid into the chair and glanced down at the first page. Gadgets snorted and simply waved for her to begin reading.

Minion scanned the page quickly, her eyes growing larger and larger in shock as the work of a lifetime unfolded before her. Suddenly it all made sense! Everything about Gadgets life had been leading to this, this thing contained on the parchment, these plans for the impossible. His determination to fly, his constant fiddling with machinery, his midnight discussions with the Headmaster in the aging pony’s lab, his pursuit of a gasbag-less airship, and his unwavering courage even in the face of crippling disaster.

"Gadgets," Minion said in a very small voice, her mind already working frantically, piecing together the puzzle of just how these plans could become reality, "you can't be serious, this...this thing...it's...it's inconceivable."