//------------------------------//
// Hoof It 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
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Maple shook herself, heart beating far too quickly. She was alive, and that was what mattered... and that Valey was alive too. The black mare was still checking herself, tugging her limbs one by one and making faces.

Eventually, Valey stood up. "All right," she said, "one of my wings got wrenched pretty bad. It'll be fine, and should still work in an emergency, but I'll need to stay off it for it to get better, and the longer I wait to do that, the longer it's gonna take." She stared up into the smoky heights of the cavern, wings coiled firmly at her sides. "Even if they were fine, I'm not really sure I'd be down for flying you back up there in the first place."

Maple's ears folded in resignation. "I... guess I shouldn't have suggested flying in the first place. Sorry."

"I'm pretty ticked at you for that," Valey mentioned, walking past her. They were on a solid platform connected to the central machine shaft, and her ears were perked toward a bank of flickering terminals connected to a wall of pipes and wires. "Not as ticked as I am at Pancake for dropping you, but still. I decide to bail on my job... a complete and total license to do what I want, as well as security from all the bozos who want to see me at the bottom of a lake... to hang out with you guys, and the first thing you do is take a dumb gamble and make me save your life. What's the payoff? Being faster? A better chance to, I dunno, go tell Herman and Selma how much of jerks they are at the Water District?" Her green eyes flashed back at Maple. "If I cared about that, I wouldn't be ditching Ironridge. What I'm interested in is your safety, and not much else."

"You're more concerned about me than yourself," Maple said, following her. "Even though you got hurt and I'm fine."

Valey reached the terminals, staring at them. "Yeah? You've officially hired yourself as my reason for living, haven't you? Stay safe, don't do anything dumb, and it'll make my job a lot easier."

Suddenly, there was a great boom from far, far below, as if a house-sized boulder had fallen and impacted the floor. The terminals all flashed. Maple gasped, glancing around... and her eyes fell on a series of fire vents on a complex metal appendage that stretched from the core to the wall. As one, their flames slowed, withered, and retreated, until even the orange glow from within died out. The room's rumbling still resonated in each of her internal organs, but it was noticeably less than before.

"...Did you do that?" She swallowed, looking again at the terminals behind Valey.

"Nah." The batpony tapped something on them with her good wing, watching as lines and numbers sped past on a two-tone display. "...Huh. Looks like there's a shutdown sequence in progress. I was wondering why there were so few ponies present. Must be getting ready to begin a maintenance cycle, or something. Kind of hard to crawl around in tubes that are full of water, steam or fuel."

As Maple continued to stare, Valey moved up beside her, sitting by the railing and looking out over the pit. Eventually, not making eye contact, she said, "You know what the biggest difference between batponies and other kinds of ponies is?"

That got Maple's attention. "What?"

"Our cutie marks," Valey replied, shifting so that the boxing glove on her flank was more visible. "Normal ponies... Well, you know how they work. But we're born with our marks, without fail. There's no such thing as a batpony without a mark."

Maple pursed her lips. "Really...?"

"Yeah." Valey continued looking away. "It's not a 'you figure out you like doing this' kind of deal. And typically... at least as far as I know... we really do like doing whatever it is. Mine is obviously for fighting, and if you don't get that, go think about how I creamed Shades back in Blueleaf. But the thing is... I need something to fight for. That used to be keeping Ironridge from blowing itself to smithereens... which is kinda ironic, when you think about it, since it's basically a mark for destroying stuff. Before that, it was something else. Odds are, it'll change again in the future. Right now, it's you."

She stood up, setting her sights on a catwalk leading into the rising fumes. "I figured you were going to chide me about being self-deprecating, saying you were my reason for living. That's why. Thought I'd save your breath. Now let's get out of here! I don't like what this is doing to my mood."





Walking across the narrow, grated catwalks of the Flame District core brought a hot wind rising against Maple's belly, curling the hairs of her coat and making her dance slightly from contact with the hot metal. The floor wasn't latticed to improve traction, she realized, but to create less contact area to transfer heat to hooves.

Valey had insisted they walk side-by-side, since she both knew the way and didn't want to let Maple out of her sight. Both being thin, average-sized mares, they managed it, but the walkway clearly wasn't designed to let two barrel-chested stallions pass by without extreme maneuvering. The likes of Arambai might not even fit, period. Maple imagined it must have mostly been maintenance work that far up, with the bulk of the heavy equipment and machinery being in use farther below.

"This place's design is pretty cool," Valey rambled, explaining the workings of the drill to pass the time, apparently not in the least starved for breath. "The central column's built out of these rings, with the actual drill at the very bottom. They build a new ring on at the bottom in a collapsed form, and once it's done, it expands, lowering the drill further and making room to build the next one between the drill and the finished column. While they go down, each ring has this arm that can rotate all the way around and drill into the walls with a really long reach, basically letting them strip-mine and cover far more ground than just this shaft. Really, the entire point of the main drill is just to make more room for the strip-mining rings. They're the flame belchers you see all over the place, and the reason it's fierier at the bottom is because the ground there is fresher and richer, so there's more there to mine and they run them harder."

"How do you know all this?" Maple asked, realizing after a second of delay that Valey wanted to turn left at an intersection. "I thought you were more interested in security than technology."

"Eh. I come down here for flying practice." Valey grinned. "Before you ask, that's how I knew the trick with the grate would work. And if that look on your face means you think I took so long saving you because I was showing off, nah. You're just heavy. Ironflanks." She stuck her tongue out. "Nyaah."

Maple recoiled. "First off, I got rid of my ballast! But I was going to ask why you'd do something as insane as practicing in here."

"It isn't that insane when you can tell if there's a pipe heading for your head even with your eyes closed, you know." Valey patted her flank. "But the ponies who work here don't need to know that, and unless they have a personal grudge against me are usually like 'Wow, that's so cool!' and get kinda chatty, wanting to impress me back, show me up, whatever. So I hear a bunch of bragging about the drill." She waggled her eyebrows. "Also, this isn't Defense Force turf, which means mean old Selma can't fire all the mares."

"You... do it to impress..." Maple's eyes focused, and she shook her head. "Of course you do. Never mind. Forget I asked, even! Let's just hurry and-"

"Woah ho ho," Valey interrupted, eagerly brushing past her and charging ahead. "Hold that thought, Ironflanks. I think I just spotted someone I know!"