• Published 18th Dec 2011
  • 10,137 Views, 530 Comments

Tinker, Tanner, Hunter, Spy - Shamus_Aran



A human explorer crosses realms into the kingdom of Equestria.

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Closer to Earth

They say that when you’re near death, your life flashes before your eyes.

Of course, “they” have never been in any situation where “their” life is in any remote danger. Anyone who works in any suitably dangerous field (say, for instance, scouting) knows that the whole life-flashy thing is absolute hogwash.

The only things Archer saw flashing before his eyes as he and the hovercart dove towards oblivion were the clouds.

Suddenly, the cart’s downward motion ceased. The inertia of the sudden stop lurched Archer and his three young troublemaking copassengers forward in their seats.

“What the-”

A blue, rainbow-topped head peeked above the vehicle’s front bumper.

“Hey,” Archer muttered, still shocked by the stop. “It’s... that one!”

RAINBOW DASH!

And Scootaloo still had no volume control.

“Monkeyman? What are you doing up here? And for that matter, what are they doing up here?”

“IT WAS THEM!” Archer scooted to his side of the cart, pointing at the all-too-innocent Crusaders in the back. “IT WAS THEIR IDEA THEY DID IT!”

“What are you-”

She was interrupted by Archer shoving the three fillies into her arms - well, front legs.

“Women and children first!”

“What are you talking about!?”

“ABANDON SHIP!”

Archer threw himself off of the front of the craft, landing heavily on Rainbow Dash’s back. The impact caused her to lose her grip on the cart, which resumed its rapid downward course.

“You drill bit! I was trying to save that!”

“I was not going to spend another second in that deathtrap. Your little...” He gestured furtively toward the crusaders Rainbow was holding under her, “...gremlins saw to that.”

“Hey!” yelled Apple Bloom. “We ain’t gremlins, we’re ponies!”

“You are pure evil and I will be tarred and feathered before I let you near anything of mine ever again!”

Archer huffed, crossed his arms, and pointedly refused to continue looking at the front half of his unwitting getaway mare.

With a trace of forlorn regret, the four Equestrians and one human watched the hovercart scream to the ground. It landed with a flash of fire and a plume of smoke, scoring a crater a good ten meters wide in an empty field.

A whole morning’s work, gone.

“Aww, ponyfeathers,” murmured Apple Bloom. “Applejack ain’t gonna be happy when she finds that thing stickin’ outta the potato fields.”

“Should have thought of that before you set the repulsors to eleven,” Archer snapped. “I didn’t even know they went to eleven!”

Scootaloo laughed at this.

“They didn’t! We made them go to eleven!”

Archer was briefly impressed. If that was true, then these three did indeed have the makings of great tinkers in them. Just so long as they didn’t blow themselves up first.

Or as long as they didn’t blow him up, at least.

***

Pinkie had slipped out of Sugarcube Corner unnoticed to pick up another capacitor. She’d spotted a flaw in the wiring that would turn the hovercart into a meteoric death sentence for anyone stupid enough to turn the thing on.

Thankfully, the only licensed tinker in the lab at the moment was Archer, and he wasn’t nearly stupid enough to actually- FWOARNCH -turn it on and aim it straight up and out of the sweet shop.

Sure enough, Sugarcube Corner was now missing a sizable section of roof, and the cart was shooting up into the air like the world’s biggest, least pleasant-looking firecracker.

Her tail twitched.

If previous similar incidents were any indication, that meant the runaway aircraft wasn’t going to stay airborne for that much longer.

***

“Hey, Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah?”

“I weigh about 170, 180 pounds.”

“And you’re telling me this, because...?”

“Because you’ve been carrying me and the Three Stooges over there for a good minute and a half.”

“Eh, it fits, it ships.”

“...What?”

“Pegasi can carry pretty much anything smaller than they are. Natural magic makes everything better!”

Archer gave this some thought. A wild grin appeared.

Reeeallly, now...?”

“Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?”

“I just had the weirdest idea,” he muttered, shifting to a sitting position on Rainbow’s back. She merely looked at him, worried.

“What are you doing?”

“This.” He grabbed a fistful of her hair, whipping it and digging his heels into her side. “HYAH!

And for the second time in ten minutes, Archer received a very sudden, very unexpected shift in velocity.

***

Pinkie saw and heard the impromptu missile land somewhere far off. In an optimal situation, that would mean she could get up and move again without fear of being brained by falling objects. Unfortunately, the subtle mental cue that indicated her previous tail-twitching prognostication had come to pass had not triggered.

Something else was about to fall.

So she waited.

And fall it did.

A tangle of blue feathers, multicolored fur, and one really out-of-sorts human fell to earth with a series of fleshy thumps and a considerable number of instances of the word “OW”.

Archer stood up shakily, sporting a weirdly drunk-looking grin. He shot his arms into the air.

“Behold, mortals! I am Archer, pegasus rider!”

“‘Rider,’ nothing, you drove me into the ground!” Rainbow Dash sputtered, rising wearily.

“Fine then. ‘Pegasus driver’ sounds cooler, anyway.”

“Oh!” yelled Sweetie Belle, scrambling out of Dash’s grip. “Maybe one of us got a death-defying Cutie Mark!”

All three fillies simultaneously checked their rear ends, and all three simultaneously gave a disappointed sigh.

“Nope.”

“Eh, don’t worry,” Archer said. “There’s always next time. I’m sure there’s something to be made out of - oh, I don’t know - monster slaying!”

Rainbow Dash scoffed and flew off. Archer watched her, confused.

“What’s with her? I was being serious.”

***

“Hey, Big Mac?”

“Eeyup?”

“I don’t wanna get yer hopes up or nothin’, but I think we mighta just adopted a superbaby.”

And to be fair, that was a reasonable conclusion to draw from the scene. A strange metal machine had fallen from the sky and landed in one of Sweet Apple Acres’ produce fields, turning a good dozen square meters of unearthed potatoes into dirty french fries.

Applejack circled the contraption warily. Who knew, after all? Maybe it was an explosive, like one of those eye-see-bee-ems that spaz unicorn from the next town over kept churning out.

Then it toppled forward, revealing a single familiar decal on the underside, depicting a trio of balloons.

“Oh. False alarm, Mac. It’s one o’ Pinkie’s.”

With what Applejack could swear was a sigh of resignation, Big Macintosh turned and left the crash site.

“Don’t worry. If it ever turns out to actually be a superbaby one o’ these days, you still have dibs on naming it.”

***

“Pinkie Pie, I really don’t think-”

“Oh, hush! We need to see if there’s anything we can get back from the wreck! Don’t tell me humans never salvage a failed invention!”

“Not to worry you or anything, but when a human invention fails, there’s usually nothing to salvage.”

After managing to ditch the Cutie Mark Crusaders through judicious (and opportunistic) use of a passing flock of interesting-looking birds, Pinkie had somehow managed to shanghai Archer into checking on what was left of their massive shared mistake - Archer’s in allowing the crusaders onboard, and Pinkie’s for leaving the three unattended with that poor, unknowing crash test dummy... I mean Archer.

“Are you sure Applejack isn’t going to be mad?”

“Oh, I’m sure I’m sure! This sorta stuff happens to AJ all the time.”

“Really, now.”

“Yeah-huh. Why, just the other day - oh, before you came along, of course - this craaaazy unicorn had been building this things... what did he call them? Oh! He called them ‘icybeams’, and he was shooting them all-”

Archer’s suddenly suffered a considerable deficit of attention (a borderline disorder, one they really should get around to naming one of these days) and allowed his gaze to wander. He would rather it not have wandered onto Arrowhead, who had decided to randomly sprout pegasus wings and float upside-down above them for the rest of the trip. But that’s just the way these things go sometimes.

“You know,” said Arrowhead, bobbing along on the breeze with not a care in the world, “you’ve racked up quite the tab over at Sugarcube Corner.”

“Yeah, so?” Archer muttered.

“I’m just saying, you’re headed to a farm.”

“And?”

“And a farm is just the sort of place one goes to make a sterling or two when they don’t know of anywhere else. Not to mention the havoc that holding a steady job will play on anyone’s plans to prove you’re still trying to escape.”

“I’m not, thanks to you. And who thinks I am?”

“Inkwell, for one. Didn’t exactly get around to telling her about the change in plans, did you?

“Well, no. Are you trying to get me to turn around?”

“Perish the thought, my boy! I’m rather certain she’ll come to you first.”

Archer shrugged. “Alright," he muttered. "Whatever works.”

Arrowhead looked down at him with a strange mixture of worry and smugness.

“Man, if I had known near-death experiences mellowed you out this much, I would have thrown you out of a window a lot earlier.”

“Technically speaking, that’s the first thing you ever did. You can’t go much earlier than that.”

“Here’s the thing. You can argue with yourself all day, or you can pretend to listen to Pinkie Pie as she finishes rambling. I’ll let you decide.”

“What?”

“-And then is it went BANG! ZOOM! And it landed right in Carrot Top’s cornrows!”

Archer shook his head, clearing his throat and returning to the land of the living.

“Cornrows, you say?”

“Yeah! It took her, like, a whole day to fix the damage! But if you ask me, that hairstyle did not flatter her at all. It was probably for the best.”

Archer could swear he heard Arrowhead snickering above him. He did his best to ignore it.

***

The newly-christened Cutie Mark Crusader Ornithologists (Archer gave them the name, saying it had something to do with birds) were so far not living up to their recently-changed name. Apple Bloom blamed Scootaloo for being too loud and scaring the birds off. Scootaloo blamed Sweetie Belle for not being able to catch any of them in time. And Sweetie Belle was bored of bird-catching already and wanted to move onto something else.

The half-crazed unicorn who came barreling up and chased the rest of the flock away was as good an excuse as any.

“Girls! Please tell me you’ve seen Archer somewhere around here!”

“Oh, hey, Miss Inkwell. I think Archer went somewhere with Pinkie.”

“Which way?”

The three fillies each thought for a moment. Three different hooves pointed Inkwell in three different directions. She sighed, picked one, and took off.

“So, what do we do now?”

“Cutie Mark Crusader Crazy Pony Watchers?”

“They have those?”

“Sure, why not!”

***

“Well, it’s a lot better than I normally do.”

The hovercart was battered, broken, and upside-down. But it was more or less in one piece, which far outstripped the condition of the last tinkering project Archer had lost his hold on.

“How good is ‘what you normally do’?” Pinkie asked, peering over the side opposite him.

“Well, there was this one time, at scout training. I accidentally sent a model gyrodyne into our instructing sergeant’s teapot. He didn’t notice until he took a sip and got a mouthful of lubricant and rotor parts.”

“That actually sounds pretty good,” she remarked, giggling.

“Yeah, it was... at least until he lined us all up and had us run ten miles because nobody would rat me out.”

“Ten whole miles?.”

“Yeah, he must have been in a good mood that day.”

“I knew a guy like that once! He runs a bakery.”

“He sounds like either the most repressed individual on earth, or the most hilarious case of missed calling I’ve ever heard of.”

“Ehh, there’s a little of both in there. Toss me that wrench.”

He chucked the tool over the vehicular carcass, leaving Pinkie to mine away for reusable parts.

As she worked, he stared across the empty fields of Sweet Apple Acres. It was fittingly named, if only because of its reference to the farm’s size. From out here on the very edge of the property, he could barely make out a homestead and a couple of barns, and that was only on a stunningly clear day like today.

His thoughts wandered back to the advice given to him by Arrowhead - who was now lounging somewhere above him on a cloud, the lazy sod.

A bit of innocent farm work certainly couldn’t hurt. He wasn’t exactly the up-at-sunrise, “let’s haul rocks from one side of the field to the other for fun” type of person who, you know, did farming. But it would make money, it would pay off his tab at the Corner, and most importantly, it would keep the Equestrians from making any real effort to keep him from escaping... not that sheer rotten luck wasn’t doing a marvelous job of that already.

Yes, it seemed more and more likely that Sweet Apple Acres could serve as the perfect means to burn up his considerable free time. And it’s not like it was a dirty, smelly, nasty farm either. It was nice, as farms go. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the crisp scent of fresh fruit and vegetables hung in the air, Pinkie was clanking on something underneath the- Wait, hang on.

“Pinkie?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just - hrrgh - trying to unfasten this capacitor coupling.”

“The capacitor coupling shouldn’t be making that noise,” he observed, walking around the wreck to where she was.

“Yeah, well, it’s busted. Broken parts do all sorts of weird stuff.”

“Still, couplings can’t exactly make that noise under most-” He finally rounded the cart, espying the part in question. “...Pinkie, that’s not a capacitor coupling.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s-” WRNCH.... fwwsssssst! “-the fuel line.”

And once again, there was an explosion in the potato fields down at Sweet Apple Acres.