//------------------------------//
// Inspection Concludes 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

At Gerardo's insistence, the group flapped and strode down a long, narrow corridor with a floor far finer and less worn than most... likely an indication of sparse usage. They were en route to the middle observation deck before the top of the dam first, as it was closer, and he had seen no reason to object. A way out, after all, was a way out.

Silently, he nursed his plans as he walked, the last elevator of the journey behind him. Get outside. Fly away. Find Starlight and Maple. Get back to Riverfall... and if he could obtain his sword with little hassle on the accompanying trip through Sosa, take that with him. Get outside. Fly away. Find Starlight and Maple...

A hairpin turn in the corridor startled him back into alertness. Looking behind, he saw Sharpie navigate it with utmost grace. She met his gaze, some question unspoken on her lips.

"Here we are," Selma announced, breaking into a broad, stout room with a thick metal door at one end. He nodded to the door, a perfect square that looked like it would retract into the ceiling.

Next to it, rather than a card reader, sat a large breaker switch, flipped to the off position. Selma said no more, and Gerardo took his silence as an invitation. Stepping forward, he extended a talon, preparing to grasp the switch and see if it opened the door.

"I imagine you think this room is out of the way," Selma interrupted, "and thus a place someone might put something they don't want to be found. A good idea, were it not shared by every single guardpony who believes they can get away with something they don't want to be found doing."

Gerardo pulled his talon back an inch. "Are you saying this switch is booby-trapped?"

"I'm saying this is one of the few rooms in the fortress not connected to the surveillance network," Selma replied. "A honeypot, to compare troublemakers to flies. Instead, we patrol it regularly by hoof. It's surprisingly effective at catching such miscreants."

"...What are you saying?" Gerardo asked, talon hovering in midair. "I can't quite see the point..."

Selma nodded. "I am saying that this would be one of the worst places in the fortress to hide something, when it is regularly patrolled by both the dishonorable members of the force and those who bring regulations. Anything that did not belong would be stolen or confiscated. In short, you're wasting your time here. There are other places far more useful to search."

"Well, there is such a thing as hiding something in plain sight," Gerardo answered with a shrug. "And you did say this room is presently closed for maintenance."

Sharpie frowned, pivoting her head around the room. "Yet you wait until after we lugged our tired carcasses here to mention that. Thanks, pal. Are you trying to waste time?"

Gerardo just had time to see Selma's half-smug glare out of the corner of his eye before he wrapped both talons around the breaker and threw it. CH-TUNNGGG!

Nothing happened.

He blinked, pushing it back up and throwing it again. There was the barest flicker in the ceiling lights, and the door remained solid. "This does do what I expect it to do, correct?"

"I told you," Selma growled, "this room is under maintenance and has been since yesterday morning. It's presently off-limits to all but those with proper clearances, primarily because lesser ponies aren't smart enough to understand that when things are broken, they don't work."

"That is... unfortunate," Gerardo answered, crouching at the door. It had no insulating strip at the bottom, and faint traces of sunlight and fresh air filtered through, confirming his hypothesis that it led outside. "I don't suppose there's any chance we can open it another way?"

Selma stared levelly at him. "Brute force, provided you're willing to explain why a maintenance inspector would tamper with repairs that are already under way."

Gerardo hesitated, scratching his chin. That wasn't as strict of a no as he would have expected, were there something truly important behind the door... or if Selma had caught on to his plan to fly away. In turn, that likely meant there was nothing behind the door. But there was a chance it was a reverse-psychology bluff and Selma intended him to reach that conclusion, and regardless he needed the door open to fly out. "Open it," he requested. "I desire to see what is behind."

With a single nod, Selma's horn flared icy blue. His aura surrounded the door, and there was a crunch, followed by a brief grinding of gears that sounded like they were being spun the wrong way... and the door rattled upward into its slot. Selma stood still, horn still aglow. "It won't hold itself up on its own. Conduct your inspection as you please, and I will hold it up and wait for you."

A thought triggered in Gerardo's mind that Selma was instructed to follow him at all times, never to wait behind. It was followed by a second thought that the door was something Selma could have guaranteed nobody but him would go through... as the area was blocked off, and he had effectively been goaded into searching it, from the unicorn's point of view. It could very well be a trap... which was why he tensed when Sharpie proceeded through ahead of him, reaching out a talon to grab her back.

He was too slow. She reached the platform beyond, a railinged deck of red wire mesh that looked out over a peaceful, undeveloped valley with a mountain range looming close beyond. A smattering of junk lay to the side, including an abandoned folding chair, a weighted-down magazine with a mare on the cover and an empty crate of some type of drink. For a moment, Gerardo watched as she gazed around, positioning himself halfway through the door... and then she looked back, and her face paled.

"What in the Seventh District is that!?" she hissed, jumping so far away her backside collided with the railing, eyes fixed on something evidently above the exit to the door.

"What is what?" Gerardo murmured in alarm, taking a step closer.

"Out of my way." Selma pushed past him, walked out on the platform, and turned to follow Sharpie's gaze. His face quickly melded in a mixture of shock, confusion and anger.

Gerardo followed them, looking up. Something that looked like a manacrystal was bound to the stone face above the door, only rather than being a single enchanted rock, it consisted of three or four in slightly different shades, all glowing and bound together awkwardly using liberal amounts of thin wire. To his right, facing the mountain, the dam extended like a vertical sea of gray, and more of the devices could be seen placed in a straight horizontal line along its full length, all wired together, twinkling cheerily and with a slight undercurrent of menace.

Selma stared thunderously at the nearest device, its colors alternating as parts of the core periodically flashed brighter than the others. "I last inspected this area myself the day before it was closed for maintenance," he ground, face iron. "These were not here then. I read the reports of both the door malfunction and the process to fix it, and these were not involved. And these. Look. Like. Bombs."

"Bombs?" Gerardo's mind whirled. This was the eastern dam, the far-side twin to the one he and the Sosan trade cart had traveled along that could be seen from all of Ironridge. A string of explosives, rigged halfway up at a place and time where nobody would see them... "What would be the meaning of this?" he asked, confused. "To destroy the reservoir, perhaps?"

Sharpie shook her head, and pointed north into the distance, where any floodwaters would inevitably rush from the shape of the topography below. Beyond a dense treeline, a faint cloud of smog hung in the air, accompanied by a forest of black smokestacks and the outlines of taller buildings.

"Sosa..." Gerardo whispered, feathers standing on end.

"Sosa," Sharpie breathed, standing next to him. "A cheating, no-good, freeloading district that's working with Yakyakistan to rob Ironridge..." She swallowed. "But still ponies. Whatever this is supposed to do, it... it would be genocide. A war crime. And Ironridge isn't even at war. Who could possibly hate them enough to erase their district?"

"Nobody from the Defense Force," Selma growled, horn glowing and enveloping the first bomb in an aura. "We are an organization that keeps the Stone District safe, and starting a war would be the most counterproductive act possible. Of that, you can be sure."

Gerardo's spine crawled. "But who would you go to war with if your enemies were gone?"

"...I'm going to warn Sosa," Sharpie announced, spreading her wings. "I don't care how little they trust me, I'll think of something. I'll- hey, leggo!"

A fragment of Selma's aura attached itself to her tail and grounded her in place, expertly splitting itself between three tasks at once. "Not so fast," he grunted, still staring at the bomb. "I was going to suggest that myself, but first let us be on the same page."

Sharpie relaxed enough for him to continue. "These bombs," he began, "are linked together in such a way that their trigger is being removed from the wall. If one comes off, they all explode. If the wire is severed, they all explode. So far, I haven't detected any alternate triggering mechanisms."

Gerardo gulped. "I suppose magical neutralization is off the table?"

"Not quite." Selma shook his head. "One of them... this one... is outfitted with an additional component that can forcibly detach it from the wall, which in turn is connected to a short-range unique key manatransceiver. In short, whoever has the trigger... and there is only one... can forcibly disconnect it from the wall and set off the reaction, provided they are close enough."

"How close is close?" Sharpie asked, wings and tail rigid in anticipation.

"Some areas near the middle of the fortress, and the top of the dam." Selma glanced straight up, where the afternoon sun was a sliver against the vertical mountain precipice. "As I said, this component's range is limited. Now, what I can do..." His horn glowed brighter, and a bolt of ice-blue mana surged at the bomb, shimmering around its base. "Is that. An adherence spell. It should maintain its maximum strength for at least thirty hours... likely tomorrow night. So long as it is in effect, I doubt the remote detachment mechanism will work. And I can refresh it myself as needbe."

Gerardo flexed his talons. "As it happens, I may have business that takes me near Sosa as well..."

"Very well." Selma nodded. "I'll excuse your report to Ambassador Herman. See to your friends, and whatever warnings you wish to deliver. I have a Defense Force to comb without end until I catch the one responsible for this." He lifted an eyebrow. "In the meantime, I recommend convincing them to evacuate. Sosa is not a residential district, so it should be possible. And I would certainly rather see Ironridge replacing loss of property than loss of life."

Sharpie paused. "Where will you start? Who do you think it is?"

"Who do I think?" Selma turned his head, already facing back into the door. "I haven't a clue. The usual prime suspect is out, as Valey is a creature of ruining lives, and that means she needs lives to ruin. But rest assured, I will find them."

He took another step back, and his aura faded, the door slamming down behind him, effectively locking Sharpie and Gerardo out. "Well," Gerardo muttered, "this is a twist."

"I told you... I... ugh." Sharpie sighed loudly. "I know how much you trust him, you know how much I trust him, and we both know how much each of us needs allies. We have to do something, unless he somehow made all that up just to make us make Sosa panic. What do we do?"

"If he's telling the truth..." Gerardo mused, "it seems we aren't in the world's greatest hurry. Only... second greatest. And as you said, he could be being dishonest, but this seems like an incredibly unproductive thing to do so about. Regardless, acting on this is in line with my previous plan."

"Which is...?" Sharpie's brow rose, the pulsing light of the bomb reflecting in her eyes.

"I need to see to the safety of my friends, first and foremost," Gerardo answered. "At the very least, that will involve checking the hotel we reserved. Ideally, they are already making their way to the Earth District, where they should be safer from the Defense Force. Then, I have business of my own in Sosa, which should be easily accomplished while telling them what we found."

Sharpie sighed again. "My first instinct is to take Brightcoil and all our money, board an airship for who knows where, and show this city just how much loyalty its treatment of me has bought. But then, if anything did happen, I'd have to live knowing I could have prevented it... even though the world doesn't work that way and anything I do try to help is just going to be a failure."

"...Admittedly, I'm doing much of the same." Gerardo hung his head. "I merely happen to be broke, and Sosa involves my ticket out. Not the most heroic of actions for a self-styled hero, but at this point I too have had my fill of this city's antics. I'll do what I can, and no more."

"Well, he wouldn't tell us we have fewer hours than we really have." Sharpie stretched, got to her hooves, and spread her wings. "Let's go find your friends and go to Sosa. But remember, the moment this city takes one step closer to eating itself alive, me and Brightcoil are gone."

"Fair enough." Gerardo nodded, spread his own wings, and leapt into the air. "To the Stone District!"