Gunner in the Works

by Hyperaggressive Porridge


Chapter 4 : Reclaiming Radio Receiver

Dave yawned and stretched. Judging by distinct lack of alarm signal, it wasn't time to get up yet, and he could savor some sweet sweet sleep.

Wait.

Could it be that the phone's battery went dead? He couldn't remember plugging it in to charge last evening.

Letting out a begrudged grunt, Dave pried his eyes open.

Once the world has come into focus, Dave started, nearly sending the pillows to the floor.
Twilight was hanging over him, eyes wide, trying to catch every little detail. On both her sides tall stacks of notes balanced, ready to come crashing down at a moment's notice.

"Oh. Right. I'm still... here. With... you." Dave finally remembered the predicament that he found himself in recently.

"Good morning! I'm almost done with volume three!" cheered Twilight, still keeping the eyes on Dave, who tried to find refuge in blanket. Either she didn't understand his sarcasm yesterday or understood it a little too well.

"Twilight, do you mind turning around or something? I need to get dressed and I'm definitely not comfortable with you peering holes in me."

"Oh, right! Sorry!.." Twilight finally turned away. The sound of vicious quill-on-parchment scratching signalized that she would be occupied with notes for now.

Dave rolled out of bed, and started pulling on garments with surprising speed. The adrenaline from the semi-startling awakening still hasn't worn off.
"You also should know that watching people sleep is considered creepy where I'm from."

"Right! Of course! I- I mean, same here!.. Sorry!"
Twilight stopped stuttering, inhaled and tried to mend the situation.
"When I research, I tend to get... a little carried away..."
She let out a nervous giggle.

"I noticed," deadpanned Dave.

This type of attention was starting to get considerably creepy. On one hand, Dave could understand Twilight's desire to know more, and compared to SOME people he saw during student years, her... insistence on research was rather tame, even charming, in a way. On the other hand, he was feeling more and more like a lab rat with each passing minute.

The only saving grace is that he didn't get dragged off to local equivalent of Area 51, assuming they even had one.

Speaking of fortifications...
Dave had some workshop-related news that could possibly hurt Twilight's feelings, so he had to choose his words carefully.

"Oh, yeah - before I forget, I will be moving out soon. Hard Hat is almost done putting together workshop-slash-house for me."

Out. Standing. Subtlety of a sledgehammer, smoothness of P12 sandpaper.

Twilight wilted at the news and suddenly took great interest in the wooden floor, digging at it with her hoof.
"Is it because of my research?" she asked quietly.

Oh no. Damage control team, on the double!

Dave knelt and reassuringly put his hand on Twilight's shoulder, prompting her to lift her eyes from oh-so-peculiar floor.
"No, of course not. I'm not mad at you or anything. I just need a lot of place for my professional work. Besides, I don't see myself working in the library with machine tools, you know, the things that go WMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! CLANG! WHIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Dave's exaggerated expressions and gestures with onomatopoeia mimicking heavy machinery got a weak smile out of Twilight. Whew. Crisis majorly averted.

"Feel free to drop by any time you want. On one condition - tone down the research shtick a bit, will ya? I mean, you're nice and all, but I can't even pick my nose without you writing a freakin' PhD thesis on it!"

Dave suppressed strong urge to slap himself. His mouth definitely was working against him today.

Contrary to Dave's expectations, Twilight's face lit up, "What does 'picking your nose' mean? Is that human-specific thing? I need to document that!"

"See? That's exactly what I'm talking about! Look- just forget I ever mentioned that."
Twilight's pleading expression was almost too much to bear.
"Okay, maybe I'll explain later. Let's grab a bite to eat first."


Twilight observed the kitchen silently.
Situation was getting out of hoof. Dave showed much more agency than anticipated. It was kind of worrying.

He also was hiding something.

What was that nose picking thing even? You couldn't tease her with knowledge and then go back on her just like that! She will get to bottom of this!

Meanwhile, Spike and Dave just finished wrestling for the last cookie - the scuffle lasted longer than one would expect, as where Dave excelled in reach, Spike made up in mobility. In the end they settled on splitting it.

Munching on his half of the cookie, Dave narrowed his eyes. He had distinct nagging feeling that he forgot something important. What was he thinking about? Twilight's creepy research practices? No... Towers of notes stacked precariously over his head with no regard for safety? No... His inability today to defuse potentially emotionally devastating situations? Definitely no... Check phone battery charge? That's it!

He tapped the pocket where phone should be and froze in pre-panic state. The phone wasn't there.

He slapped his forehead hard enough for the sound to startle both Twilight and Spike.

"Right! I dropped it in that dang forest!"


Dave went through the rest of morning routines on autopilot, his mind iterating on various options to retrieve the phone. The phone in question was essentially indispensable for his work.

Having access to considerable computation power and bunch of engineering apps would be nice, but it wasn't the main goal here. After all, engineering calculator could do most of the tasks, powered by nothing but itsy-bitsy solar panel and able to go on for months without charging.

The most important part was getting to Mandala.
Mandala was the name of a rather sneaky book reading, storage, sharing and indexing app. It's exact origins were shrouded in mystery, but it was pretty much given that nerds from Computer Science branch had a hand in this.

The app, or, to be precise, app and its ever-growing database file were traditionally passed down to freshmen from seniors. It was a real treasure trove of illicitly-acquired books, technical literature, research papers, standards and even bunch of patents that otherwise would've costed a fortune and a half to get your hands on legally. There was even an extensive collection of classical literature in plaintext, snuck in by some Data Science buffs under the guise of language corpus sourcing.

All the data was heavily compressed and even more heavily encrypted - which made app a horrible battery hog for sure, but apparently original programmers wanted to steer clear of any copyright infringement charges by any means necessary.

In essence - Mandala was a whole wealth of knowledge at your fingertips. While it was not nearly as broad as Wikipedia per se, books had much more deeper coverage, especially of all topics engineering.
Dave was pretty sure that there was enough combined engineering knowledge to build anything from space shuttle to nuclear power plant, provided you actually had time to read all of the books.

And now it resided somewhere in Everfree Forest. A place where Dave already got almost munched on once.
He needed to get it back - and fast. Battery charge wouldn't last forever. In fact, it's probably running dangerously low right now.
If he was going to get it back in working state, it would have to be today.

But how?


Dave's deep-dive deliberation continued all the way up to the workshop. Every half-decent plan required time, a precious commodity he could not spare at the moment.

Technically, he could ask his newfound pony friends for help, but... It was complicated.

Fluttershy and Rarity would be straight out as being too timid and civilized to actually deal with beasts that are out for blood.

Pinkie didn't fit the adventurous profile either.

Rainbow would probably approach the suggestion with her typical bravado, but how well would she hold up in a real fight? There's no telling, and gambling with her life didn't seem like a great option.

Applejack could probably kick the ever-loving snot out of these wooden wolves, but then again, there's many of them and she just ain't got no flight nor magic.

He could ask Twilight... If she caught the whiff of news that the phone has enormous collection of books - human books, even - she'd probably move mountains to get to it. Dave knew from recent experience that she had a lot of spells at her disposal that would make short work of wooden beasts. Heck, she could pave a six-lane highway through the forest if she was destructively creative about it. Would be a great option, but on the other hand, Dave could forget about seeing his phone ever again. The Mandala database had an outrageous amount of books - enough to last several lifetimes without repeating a read, and that's not even mentioning other things stashed on the phone, like Dave's favorite movies and tons of music. With Twilight researching the crap out all of that, heat death of the universe didn't seem that much of a distant point in the future...

Slightly disgruntled by another dead-end plan, Dave swung open workshop door. Looks like Hard Hat and the rest of construction crew were just about done. There was even some furniture to boot, a detail Dave didn't remember ordering. That was really thoughtful of them!

Dave's gaze fell upon stack of unused sheets of metal and slid to a nearby stallion rounding up his operations with what Dave unmistakably determined to be oxy-fuel torches.

And just like that, alternative solution presented itself.

"I see you have welding and cutting torches. Mind if I-" he rolled several bits through his fingers "-borrow them for a while? Wanna do a little project with all this spare metal."


On his way to buy a cartload of door hinges and bunch of other parts for his sporadic metalworking project Dave stumbled into some creature that was completely unlike the pony folk. Gears in Dave's head rattled and groaned. What was proper name for this type of creature? Half bird, half big cat... Was it a griffon or hippogriff?

While he was submerged in the thought, said creature tried to push him away but lacked the mass to put into the shove, leading to Dave only slightly rocking in place, but otherwise not moving.
"Move it, beanstalk!"

Wow. That was kind of rude and unexpected. Not that it hurt Dave on personal level - far from that. It's just that for a second he felt like being back home, on sinful Earth.
And as they say, when in Rome...

Dave retorted on autopilot before he could stop himself, "Who you're calling beanstalk, feather-brain?"

Not the brightest of ideas, considering the sharp talons on his immediate interlocutor, but Dave wasn't even surprised at this point. It fell perfectly in line with today's agenda of bad ideas and words just coming out wrong.

Judging by griffon's pupils shrinking into pin points, his trash-talking skills haven't rusted a bit. Granted, he wouldn't hold up a candle to Jimmy, who could make just about anyone see red with a mere couple of words, as well as he could disarm a brewing fight; but Dave prided himself on eloquently throwing some light trash talk where someone like Boris would throw 40 pounds of fist.

There was a second or so of complete silence. And then griffon practically exploded.

The street quickly emptied, sans some curious ponies peeking out from a safe distance.

Previously gentle and soft-spoken human seemed to barely show any restraint delivering verbal lashing to his rude opponent.
The griffon miss wasn't far behind, compensating for repetitiveness of her repertoire with sheer volume of her insults.

Sometimes human would spit out suspiciously innocent-sounding phrase, but the more you thought about the phrase, the less innocent it got. These seemed to tick off the griffon the most, to the point of not being able to articulate herself correctly.

The exchange continued for a while, threatening to grow into full-out fight, but then it sort of fizzled out, much to everypony's relief. The loud griffon took to skies, and human continued his stroll as if nothing happened.

Despite walking away with a facade of polite smile, Dave wasn't happy with the whole ordeal.
At the rate the current day was going, it'd be better for him to shut up completely for the rest of the day, lest he provoke another incident of similar caliber.

Still, it could be considered a beneficial shake-up and a good vocabulary exercise. It's not often you get to tell someone to get defenestrated.

Hopefully ponies that got in the crossfire of ear-withering innuendos wouldn't hold the whole thing against him. The poor bastards.


Dave stepped back and cracked a crooked smile.

The result of his metalworking efforts looked like unholy spawn of medieval plate armor and a F-117 stealth bomber. Pointy and angular, without a single curve, it looked like real life low-poly model from some 90's 3D game with rainbow heat tint accentuating welded edges. By some account, it could be even considered stylish.

However, nearby flanged mace that Dave welded together from steel rebar and remaining scraps of metal sheets, looked nothing but ugly. But it didn't matter, as long as it got the job done.

Dave turned his critical gaze back to armor.

Every single joint was protected almost in paranoid fashion. The shoulder joints were particularly painful to cover fully and properly, and some freedom of movement had to be sacrificed in process. The access to the jugular was simply nonexistent, covered by what armor expert would classify as bevor.

This left feet and hands as only unprotected parts. Feet already had enough protection in form of Dave's heavy-duty steel-toed boots, complete with kevlar soles and even additional metallic inserts shielding tendons.
Hands, on the other, er, hand, weren't in such luck. Making a gauntlet from sheet metal with nary but welding torch was nigh impossible, so Dave opted for just welding on some plates in general shape of a fist, turning it all into an armored knuckleduster. It would trade off some arm mobility for protection, but still leave enough room to get a proper grip on the mace.

Finishing his nitpicky observation, Dave mumbled, "I guess it's time to try it on."

It took some tricky maneuvering, unconventional belt usage and colorful language but in the end Dave managed to pull it off. Well, pull it on, to be exact, but point still stands.

Clanging horribly, he paced around, getting feel for the suit of armor. All the redundant metal that went in additional protection was weighing him down considerably, making motions sluggish. However, it also added considerable 'oomph' to the mace, as Dave found out after few tentative swings. Whoever was going to be hit by that would definitely feel it. The weight still was a problem, however.

"I better not fall down. If I go down, I'm not getting up without help. Or at least without a nearby tree. Or I could just go turtle mode and crawl out of the forest."

Dave wrinkled his nose.
Whilst this still was a tremendously stupid idea, at this point he simply ran out of smart ideas and was going with the least stupid idea out of the bunch.


Dave reasoned that it was best to start unrolling his frantic escape from the last known point.
It didn't take long to locate familiar cliff. Getting on top of it, however...

By the time he reached the top, Dave expended his pent-up obscenities vocabulary twice and was going for a third lap and some improvisation to boot. Taking a minute to steady his breathing, Dave headed into the forest proper.

Retracing steps was surprisingly easy - just following glaringly obvious breadcrumb trail of boot tracks in the mud and branches broken during his previous expeditious retreat.
But his unwelcome clanging intrusion could not last unnoticed for long.

With loud growling familiar Timberwolf pack announced their presence.

Dave carefully assessed tactical situation to the best degree that observation slits in helmet allowed him.

The pack approached slowly but surely, pushing him from different directions, gaining only a handful of inches at a time yet at startlingly steady rate.

Dave grabbed the mace with both hands, "It's time to go medieval on your wooden asses!"

Wide horizontal blow swept the least careful Timberwolf, sending it tumbling. And then it got all sorts of hectic.
The rest of pack jumped forward, clawing, biting and trying to push Dave off balance.

The apparent leader of the pack was even bright enough to bite Dave's armored leg full-force, snapping it's own jaw off and sending it flying somewhere in the bushes. Dave swung his improvised rebar mace once more, launching the unfortunate and very confused wooden creature in the same bushes. This turn of events seemed to shocked the pack into a mild retreat, but they weren't dissuaded from the fight just yet.

Not squandering the moment of respite, Dave immediately turned the the offensive around. With a monstrous overhead swing, closest Timberwolf was turned in a piece of modern art imprinted in the mud. Trying to pull the mace out of impromptu installation, Dave could see magic wisps escaping splintered wood from below the metal.

Finally yanking the mace out of the mud with a mighty pull, he waved welded abomination around threateningly.
"Who else wants some!?"

The clearing was empty. And only rustling leaves hinted that remainder of the pack decided to turn tail.

"Apparently lumberdogs don't like being pancaked."

The wave of strength and anger that had washed over him started to ebb. Dave leaned on the tree for support, breathing heavily, feeling his heart beat somewhere in the region of throat. The adrenaline comedown was not pulling any punches.

He tried wiping the cold sweat from the forehead, forgetting for a moment that he wore armor, attaining naught but some metal screeching.

Some movement just in the corner of his eye made him flinch and scramble for mace.

"What in the..."

Branches and driftwood comprising his recent addition to the world of modern art could be seen freeing themselves from the mud, and slowly rolling into the thick of the forest, enveloped in faint glow.

"Frickin' magic," Dave spat out through teeth.


Glowing eyes showed up several more times, peering from shrubbery, but every time boastful wave or two of flanged mace quickly sent them scrambling back to the safety of the forest depths.

"Looks like they have learned to respect the steel. Just you wait, you'll learn to respect fire too!"

As far as Dave could tell, it was the right clearing. The one where he appeared several days back.
Boot prints in the mud seemed to concede, just abruptly stopping in the middle of clearing.

In the center of the clearing there was a little mound of small sticks and pieces of wood that piqued his interest.

Wasn't it right where he dropped the phone? Brushing the wooden bits aside, Dave was greeted with a faint red light denoting phone's low charge.

How peculiar.


Gilda wasn't having a nice day. First this annoying pink pony messin' about and refusing to get lost, then that uppity ape, and now this party with annoying pink pony again. At least they didn't invite that lumbering idiot. The mere thought of another encounter got Gilda fuming out loud.
"Yeah, that watchtower weirdo better not show up! If I see him again I'm so gonna kick his-"
Her eyes focused on some gleams in the back of the room.

Could it be? No, it couldn't. But it was. It was that towering ape again, this time clad in metal. He gestured and swung some mean-lookin' mace around, apparently entertaining some guests with a combat story while greatly enjoying himself. Great. Just... great. This day was definitely conspiring against her.

At least it couldn't get any worse.

Or so she thought.


Door to the workshop has closed with a quiet click, and Dave immediately leaned on it, breathing heavily and clutching phone in his shaking fingers.

This was another proof that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The enemy in this case was Pinkie who somehow managed to spot him on the street and then proceeded to practically haul him to some party that he was apparently missing, not listening to his protests.

Normally Dave wouldn't be the one to pass up any half-decent party, but today he just could not afford to spend time getting down. Any and all pleas went straight over Pinkie's head, though.

And while the party was admittedly better than half-decent, it would be even better without the rude griffon that Dave tried to ignore to the best of his abilities, even as going as far as trying to blend in by retelling his today's raid into the forest to several guests. His precautions were largely unnecessary as griffon was already pretty occupied, finding herself on the receiving end of an entire series of pranks.

Noting the pattern, Dave even tried to use them as distraction in attempt to slip away, but alas, every attempt to leave the party early was put out of commission prematurely by the pink menace who somehow inexplicably knew when Dave was about to sneak out. There was just no winning with her.

So he played along and continued blending in with the crowd, until opportunity showed itself, or as the case might be, showed herself out. With rude griffon storming off and party starting to break down, he finally managed to skip under the radar, escaping the unexpected prison of partying.

And now he was at his new home.
"Temporary home until I can get back to Earth," he corrected himself.

Putting phone and mace on workbench carefully, Dave got to taking his armor off.
It was infinitely easier than putting it on - most of it held on several latch locks, and with them unlatched it all came off nicely with few tugs. The rest held on belts, but they were easy enough to undo.

After enjoying a minute-long hot shower, Dave felt ready to tackle the whole issue with the phone.

"First, gotta formulate a plan."

In short, he had to figure out how to charge the damn thing. Technically, USB standard could shine some light on how much voltage and where he'd need to feed. Standard that he wouldn't be able to read for long - so he'd better write it down in case battery dies. Standard that may not be there at all.

With a sigh, he woke the phone.

Eighteen percent charge. Not bad, but could be better.

Not wasting a second, he turned the brightness to lowest setting and punched in terms in Mandala's search field.

The search crunched through compressed and encrypted data, and the charge percentage started to dwindle right before Dave's eyes.

"Come on, come on..." he muttered as if pleading could speed up machine. Unfortunately the search remained cruelly unperturbed in its pacing, displaying loading animation with cold detachment worthy of a role in machine uprising movie.

Waiting in this sort of tension was getting really nerve-wracking really quick.
Was there even a USB standard in the database? What if there wasn't? No, there had to be, good half of university would be up in arms if it was gone.

His mind returned to the problem as a whole. Finding USB specifications wouldn't actually get him that far into solving it.
For there was a completely uncalled-for bonus challenge: he had to re-invent part of SI system to actually be able to measure voltage. Somehow.

Dave rubbed his temples.
The more he thought about the issue, the more annoying his inadequacy grew. Electrical engineering just never clicked for him, no matter how many times he went over the textbooks. It was embarrassing in respect to his grasp of other disciplines. Strength of materials? No sweat! Explaining quantum mechanisms that drive stimulated emission? Easy as pie. But ask him Kirchhoff's laws and he'd draw blanks if not start babbling as a loon.

As Jim would put it, "It just wasn't his forte". And if he was struggling while working in the lab armed with multimeter and adjustable power supply while under watchful eye of a professional, he'd definitely have trouble without all of that.

It was a miracle how he avoided flunking related disciplines. Well, less of a miracle and more like lots of help from electrically-inclined friends and mile-long cheat sheets, plus copious amounts of luck.

But forgetting skills for a minute, how was he going to measure things exactly? Weren't SI units chosen pretty much arbitrarily? Sure, there was a link to various universally-true anchors, like second being who-knows-how-many shifts of energy levels in atoms of super-cooled cesium, but where he'd get the equipment to measure something like that?!

Dave's increasingly more panicked train of thought got derailed by search finishing.

"Yes!"

Dave clenched his teeth, squinted his eyes and got down to writing down.

An hour later he threw the pencil aside and rubbed his right wrist that felt like it was on fire. The unpleasant feeling was swiftly joined by a headache. An entire day worth of misadventures started catching up to him. Every major muscle ached, angry at him for armor-induced abuse. Chafing from the belts wasn't particularly pleasant, either. To cap it all off, the sleep bore down on him unrelentingly.

"Screw it. Tomorrow, I'll solve this... Tomorrow," he mumbled and just dropped onto the bed, asleep even before his head hit the pillow.


Dave sat in the bed, rocking and swaying head, disoriented. Today's awakening was rather unpleasant.

It was one of these nightmares where everything felt like submerged in glycerine - motions slow, images blurry, but you still feel the creeping dread, as if you're being watched by something you can't see while it can see you very clearly. In these kind of dreams tension never snaps, never gives you the luxury of being simply jolted awake.

Dave shook head and stretched, shedding last bits of sleep.

Handful of days. It took only a handful of days for nightmares to be back. He almost started to hope that this colorful land could ward them off for good. Almost.
At least it wasn't one of them recurrent nightmares yet - those weren't blurry, on the contrary, they tended to be clear and stand with you for a long time.

Sprinkling face with some cold water to wake up completely and chase gloomy thoughts away, Dave groaned. Soreness from yesterday's armored antics hasn't gone away just yet. Not a great start for the day.

Phone's charge indicator still glowed with faint red - the battery made it through this night. Good.

With careful inspection of yesterday's scribbles a plan started formulating in Dave's head. At this point he pretty much came to terms with fact that he had much bigger chances of burning or even exploding the phone than charging it with his bumbling about.

The only remaining practical solution was to put the pride aside and ask a professional for help.

So a trip to a big city it was. Great.


In his search for train station, Dave got nearly trampled by Rarity, who took off in the rough direction of Carousel Boutique with all signs of severe distress. And her mane looking kinda strange. Which may or may not have explained distress.

Looking in the direction she came from, Dave spotted some sort of congregation in front of a stage that wasn't there yesterday.

Thanks to Dave's height compared to average denizen of Equestria, he could see the stage clearly all the way from the back of the crowd.
Some performer in wizard cloak and hat stood on scene and addressed crowd.

Seeing familiar rainbow mane, Dave pushed forward. The more he pushed forward the more ticked-off he felt.
The arrogance in the air was so thick Dave could practically taste it.

Did he mishear it or was the performer mare referring to herself in third person AND was insistently calling herself The Great and Powerful?
That's some ego, alright...

Emerging to see familiar faces, Dave could not contain his curiosity. "What is even happening over here?"

He had to stop the trio with a gesture; Applejack, Rainbow and Spike talking so emotionally at the same time were just unintelligible.
"You!" He pointed at Spike. "Sum up what's up in a few words."

"Trixie is using magic to pick on others! You gotta help!"

"So, it's some unicorn being uppity with magic? Great, I've got just what the doctor ordered! Correction: I AM just what the doctor ordered."
Rolling up his sleeves, he approached the stage. As soon as he started climbing, he found himself snagged on something.
Dave looked back. Twilight was trying to pull him back by his jeans, jaws locked tightly.

Once he stepped away from stage, she released fabric and just silently shook her head, eliciting a groan from Dave as well trio behind her.

"Fine, be a buzzkill!" he threw over the shoulder and walked away from the whole performance.

Dave closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.
She probably had a good reason to not let him do that. And antagonizing residents, even if they're arrogant, was not the best idea anyway. Especially after his recent griffon incident.

Besides, he still had a train to catch, and phone's charge was slowly ticking down.

"Are you deaf?! The Great and Powerful Trixie demands you on stage! This instant!"
Trixie stomped on the wooden floor to punctuate her demand.

"Nope, not interested!"
Dave kicked up the pace and rounded the corner.

"Jeez! It's like she's deliberately asking for it."


Unbelievable. Not only every town and city name was some sort of groan-worthy horse pun, they also were plays on Earth city names!
At first Dave even thought that train station staff ponies were messing with him. But then again, how'd they know names from Earth?
There simply was no way this all was a coincidence, this had to be parallel dimension shenanigans.

Dave sighed in exasperation. This place had too much logic for being this crazy and just when you thought that you found a method to it's madness, it'd get even crazier.
At least steam engine train was logical and train carts weren't too crazy either.

It's a good thing he didn't look out of the window that much, otherwise seeing pony variant of Statue of Liberty would have probably made him flip out.


"Electricians are all there," croaked the stallion and pointed toward one of doorways.

"I don't need an electrician, I need an electrical engineer, somebody who can make an electric appliance from scratch."
Custodian simply pointed to the same doorway and returned to mopping the floor.
"Makes sense."

Dave quietly closed door behind him, scanning the room he emerged into. He was a bit surprised he could get so far without any appointments or anything.
It was all in confidence, in rock-solid display that you, in fact, belonged here. Nobody tried to stop you as long as you moved with a purpose. Looks like certain aspects of corporate culture were universal.

"Alright, I need someone who's good with electrical engineering for a quick, somewhat tricky but"- he shook a ruby of considerable size in the air for everypony to see -"well-paid odd job."
That declaration gathered him several pairs of curious eyes from their respective workplaces.

As soon as bunch of interested ponies gathered round his table, Dave continued.
"So. There's this device"- Dave held up the smartphone -"it connects, or should I say, used to connect through this here cable to a power source."

Dave put the cable and the phone on the table and started pacing back and forth before the volunteers.

"What I need is you to construct several units of some sort of charging device to feed power with precise voltage and amperage, preferably from any standard outlet. Here are my scribbles from the standard that describes the necessary values."

He put papers on the tables and turned on the heels for dramatic effect. Next part was important and it's best he stressed this as much as he could.
"However! These are in units that may or may not be different to what you're used to. So you'll have to figure this out. Fret not - you got a lead in form of the device feeding specified voltage when you connect something with high enough capacitance to it, whatever that means. You can find related info on page two, under OTG section."

As he went in depth, more and more ponies left, heading back for their workplaces.
One of remaining ponies lifted up eyes from the papers and said, "Sounds easy enough."

Dave was waiting for it. Of course, it'd be a easy-peasy job for someone whose talent is electrical engineering. But it wasn't so simple.
"Now the catch. This is one-of-a-kind device. If you fry it, then there won't be a second chance. You also won't be able to peek inside - it's glued together tight and it's fragile enough that it'll likely break if you try to take it apart. The chip-work is so dense and delicate that you won't be able to repair it either. Or maybe you will, I dunno, but I wouldn't risk it if I were you. Battery's on last legs, so you might want to get to it sooner than later."

He leaned in on the sole stallion remaining near the table so closely that he could see sweat forming on his forehead.
"And I value this thing very much. Some wooden dogs recently found that out the hard way. So try to not fry it!"

He clapped his hands and smiled, shedding the ominously tense look he just had.
"Should be easy for a professional. I'll be back in an hour. Remember to not mess up! Oh and- don't use magic. This thing messes with magic."

Dave left the unicorn stallion to eye the phone and wonder what he just got himself into.


"Probably should've given myself more time than just an hour. Now I gotta juggle all of this like no tomorrow."

First, Dave planned to visit the library. On the off chance that the tragedy happens, he wanted to make sure that there was access to some semblance of engineering books.

In stark contrast to Twilight's library, public library of Manehattan had entire wings dedicated to technology and manufacture. Splendid.

Satisfied with results, Dave was more than ready to approach the main course of planned big-city activity. Tooling up.


Sight of shelves with powertools extending into distance elevated Dave's spirits immensely. Zipping around shelves like a child at candy store, he left no tool overlooked.

But power-tools were just appetizers. Main dish would be proper machinery. It was the main reason Dave hauled bags stretched taut with bits all the way here.

In search for machine tool goodness, Dave delved deeper in rows of industrial implements on display. And then he saw it. The shining beauty.
It had 6 spindles, and the multitude of moving parts inside only began hinting on it's capabilities: polygon turning, power skiving, milling on several axes...

Sound of hooves against concrete approaching him snapped Dave out of awe-filled contemplation. His chin felt strangely chilly - did he start to drool?

Wiping his mouth just in case, he turned to face the source of the sound.

It was a mare in blue coveralls. She bore overly polite, if slightly smug smile.

"Interested in this model?"

"I don't plan on mass-producing anything just yet. And I'm pretty sure this beaut's cost is through the roof."

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe," mare giggled. Her smile grew to be a little more genuine.

"So, I'm mostly after metalworking essentials now. You know, lathe, mill machine, box-and-pan brake, that sorta thing."

"Well, in that case, you might be interested in..."


Diode Bridge wasn't sure what to make of the device the recent visitor left in his custody. He carried out the request of strange creature rather quickly, after overcoming initial nervousness of high stakes, and now was turning the shiny rectangle this and that way, curious to discern it's purpose. Whatever it was, it looked high quality, well put together with no obvious way to open it. There was one additional round socket, and one of flat sides had what looked like several lenses. It almost looked like some alien technology from pulpy science fiction, although with less pulsing lights and beeping. Maybe that creature was an alien after all, but it definitely didn't act like one. I mean, alien just barging in like he owned the place, speaking same language, demanding somepony to fix his electrical appliance, paying with gemstone? On a second thought, that's exactly what an alien would do.

"What was your name, again?"

Stallion twitched, nearly dropping the device. How did somecreature so tall even manage to sneak up on him unnoticed? Alien invisibility fields?

"I'm Diode Bridge," he squeezed out.

Dave took phone in his hands and checked the battery status. Much to his relief, it was displaying that it was at 35 percent and charging.
"Well, congratulations, Mr. Bridge, you just earned yourself a hefty payday."

Replacing small pile of chargers with one ruby, Dave said, "Name's Dave, by the way. In case we work together in the future."

Wow, now that was definitely an alien-sounding name. Wait, 'work together'? What could he work on with some alien, a heat ray? A flying saucer? Would he mind elaborating?

Ah, rats, the alien already left!


By the time Dave boarded train back, it started getting dark.

All available space on Dave's seat and seat immediately opposing it was taken either by boxes or various stacks and bundles of metal blanks. Dave himself was squeezed all the way in the corner, smiling like a total loon and lovingly cradling some sort of reciprocal saw.
Shame about lathe and other machine tools, though. They'd arrive in a few days by delivery.

On a midday train his heap of stuff would probably gather a lot of weird looks, but this late there was barely anypony on the train. It almost felt like he had entire train for himself.

The landscape sliding by the the window, coupled with finally listening to music, put Dave in soothing, contemplative mood - just going with the flow of the endless trees, lush hills, cliffs, trees again, flying bears...

"Wait, what?!"
Dave propped up window glass with his forehead, intent on finding out if he was going crazy or not. The unusual sight defied all odds and stubbornly refused to dissipate, appearing to be genuine.
"I leave town for ONE DAY, and there's already some sort of Unidentified Flying Bear sighting going on! Is this normal?! Is this what ponies do when I'm not looking?!"

The window glass remained silent to his questions.

"Looks like Twilight has some 'splaining to do..."