//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 : Undjentlemanly Ungulate Undoing 
// Story: Gunner in the Works 
// by Hyperaggressive Porridge 
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Dave hated going to dentists. The bright blinding light, whirring of drills, the smell and taste of heated enamel, the texture of fresh fillings, it all just made him want to shrivel up and die.
For this exact reason he tried to keep his teeth in superb condition, paying extra attention to oral hygiene to minimize the possibility of surgical intervention. 
Ever since settling down in the town, he put even more effort in maintaining his teeth. After all, the only option is pony dentist - and how much practice could they have with human teeth? None, that's how much! 

But still, it was about time for him to go for a checkup, and it would better to figure things out with local dentists before any sort of real issue comes up.

It was almost Dave's turn now. However, pony who went before him has been in there for an hour already and all the waiting was putting the engineer on edge.
"Well, Shuffle, what you got for me in stock?"

Dave turned on shuffle mode and switched to next song. Sound of familiar hour-long EDM mix filled his headphones and the nervousness started to retreat, beat by beat.
The pony in the seat across him - Vinyl Scratch - seemed to have same ideas, rhythmically nodding her head with ears plugged shut by her own pair of massive headphones. Suddenly she perked up, pushed one headphone ear aside and started listening in on music emanating from Dave.

"Interested in human music? Here, you can have it while I get my teeth checked." He put the phone carefully on the seat and handed the headphones to Vinyl.
Door clicked and a pony emerged with half his head bandaged - never a good sign - before groggily stumbling out of dentist's office.

"Come on in!"

Dave sighed and stepped into the door.





Frankly saying Dave was expecting the unicorn dentist to freak out, but not only Dental Gloss wasn't too surprised with having to inspect and possibly operate on someone other than a pony, he also took great interest in his teeth.

"Remarkable! It's not often you see someone with teeth this small, neat and tightly packed."
Dave would like to object but having mouth full of dental instruments wasn't exactly conducive to chit-chatting, so he contented himself with an eye roll.

"You seem to be in great dental health. There are no fissures or caries."

"Thank goodness." Dave started inching off the seat - the pony ergonomics made it uncomfortable but thankfully not unbearable.

Dental Gloss turned back to patient and put hoof on Dave's shoulder, prompting him to stop.
"Now if you don't mind - I'd like to take a closer look at each of your teeth and take notes on your anatomy. This way it'll be easier if you require, say, emergency treatment."

Dave crossed his hands with resignation and hopped back into dentist chair.
"Alright, fiiiiiine. I'm just hoping my teeth won't NEED any actual emergency treatment."





After about an hour Dave stumbled out into the corridor, rubbing his jaw. Dental Gloss sure was a workaholic on par with, or maybe even worse than Applejack.
It was this moment that he noticed that all of Vinyl's hair was standing on end and there was this unmistakable two-thousand yard stare only slightly hidden by thick purple glasses.

"Oh crap!"
In a single bound he crossed the distance and ripped his headphones off her ears.

No reaction. He put two fingers oh her neck. 

Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.

"No fibrillation... Wait, I'm dumb! There's not enough voltage to electrocute!"

It occurred to him to check the phone.

Of course. Of course it had to be Meshuggah. Thanks, Shuffle!
Dave buried his face in hands.





Hospital doors slammed open and all that couple of startled patients and staff could see in the doorway for a second was a print of industrial boot basking in the morning sun.
"Make way! Coming through!" Dave announced, pushing forward with resolve of freight train, grown mare in his hands.

He practically froze passerby nurse in her tracks with a piercing gaze. "Which way is ER?"
She could only nod in the direction.

Once the catatonic mare has been safely placed on a hospital bed, attending nurse got to work, checking vitals.
"What happened to her?" Nurse asked.

Dave, who was a perfect image of unstoppable determination just a second ago, found himself gasping for air, as words seemed to elude him all of a sudden.
"Uhhh... I-I don't know, cultural shock maybe? I accidentally let her listen to certain unconventional music band from my world."

"Can't be. You're pulling my hoof," nurse answered, incredulously.

"What, you don't believe me?"
He held out a pair of headphones. After all, he could pause the track instantly, should things go wrong.

Dr. Greymare was enjoying a pleasant morning that usually would preclude a really nice day. Usually.
His hopes of having a nice day only lasted till he was caught in the corridor by one of his more... unusual past patients.

"Doctor, we have a problem," Dave motioned to the half-opened door behind him.

Behind the human, inside the room there were two mares with hair standing on end and two-thousand yard stares.





It took Dr. Greymare a while to convince Dave that both victims of human music will be fine. While that was true, doctor's intent was chiefly to get the human out of ward lest another incident should occur.

Finding himself outside of hospital, Dave paced nervously back and forth. 
Who knew that djent was this bad for ponies? And out of all the songs, it absolutely had to be that one song by that one band. In fact, Dave was willing to bet it was another of Shuffle's antics.

Dave ran a hand across his face in frustration. With every such mess-up it became harder and harder to execute original plan of "Lay low, play harmless cute teddy bear while trying to contact authorities to get yourself outta here". To add fuel to the fire, Vinyl was probably the only one who shared his love for electronic music in entirety of this crazy town, and he just went and messed everything up out of the blue. Way to go, pal!

Should probably get her some card or a little present to let her know it was an accident. Dave recalled a very fitting option being sold at Sugar Cube Corner. So it was decided - the only additional purchase would be a 'Get Well' card, but finding where one could actually buy such a card would prove troublesome in Ponyville's non-sequitur arrangement of shops and goods sold by said shops. Who even sells sofas and quills in the same shop? Why this particular combination? If this happened on ol' good Earth, Dave would immediately point out the daring marketing strategy to make the shop stand out, but ponies didn't seem to be so... insidious as businessmen back home.

With these thoughts Dave walked towards sweets shop energetically. It didn't occur to him that streets that usually were bustling with activity at this hour were suspiciously empty. Almost barren, in fact.

While approaching Sugar Cube Corner entrance, he got nearly trampled by six of his friends making an expedite egress out of shop.
There were some accidental head-to-stomach hits. There were some euphemisms hissed under breath, and finally, there were some poorly-coordinated attempts to pick up Dave and dust him off.

Shaking unhelpfully helpful hooves off, engineer finally obtained upright position once again.
"Jeez, what's wrong with you gals today?"

"No time, we'll 'splain on the move," Applejack dropped before renewing the pursuit.





The news of Apple Bloom's apparent kidnapping, or as Twilight put it, foal-napping, sent Dave into eye-twitching fit.
His right hand instinctively lightly slapped a certain pocket, making sure that the large knife - all things considered, probably the deadliest thing on his person - resided where it should.

If there was one guaranteed way to invoke Dave's ire, it was messing with the weak and helpless, especially with kids. Though granted, it was kind of hard-wired into most humans - kidnapping bow-adorned ball of energetic curiosity that Apple Bloom was would infuriate even Boris, with his dubious flip-flop moral compass. But definitely not Jimmy. Jim was a special case.

These grim news also explained why Applejack alternated between expressions of resolve and despair.

Sense of uneasiness crept in as they went deeper in the Everfree Forest - thankfully, that particular part of the forest was nowhere as dense packed with dangerous creatures, at least according to both Applejack's and Fluttershy's accounts.

"There she is!" Dave whispered loudly, pointing into thick fog ahead. 
With some squinting, a mohawk-sporting figure could be indeed seen ahead of them.

Engineer crouched and faced the group.
"Alright, here's the plan: you go ahead and draw her attention and I'll flank her."
Not wasting a second, he darted into thick vegetation.

Twilight stared back in confusion, "You what her?"

Rustling of the leaves was her only answer.

"Great."





Having dropped exceptionally cryptic rhymed warning, Zecora started retreating in fog, content with her sage-like appearance.

At this opportune moment large figure suddenly burst out of the bushes and crossed distance to zebra in one bound.

Zecora found herself hoisted up in air and facing the sky, leaving all of her four legs dangling in air.
Someone or maybe something bellowed into her ear, "I don't know about beware, but you're not going anywhere!"
She kicked and flailed around in panic, but the perpetrator held tight and was just out of reach.

Her hood slid off, leaving Dave with face full of monochromatic mane.
He spat out the hairs that got in his mouth, "Dang, your rhyming is catchy."

Dave's legs shook from stress and he let out strained grunt as zebra swiveled around trying to wriggle out of hold.
"Guys, get Apple Bloom, I can't hold her forever!"

"I'm here!" came high-pitched and vaguely familiar voice.
Dave tried peeking out from behind the zebra's mane, but was unsuccessful in seeing... just about anything, really.

"So Apple Bloom is safe?"

"Yea!" came Applejack's voice.

"And you," he addressed zebra, "didn't steal her away?"
Zebra just shook her head.

"Um, sorry about that then..."

Dave dangerously lurched forward, but managed to put held zebra back on her fours safely.
"There you go."

He grasped his back and inhaled air through teeth sharply.
"Ugh, I'm going to feel that in the morning."

Twilight and Applejack arched brows almost in sync.

"I'm OK!", he waved reassuringly, still hunched over.
Despite his words, when he straightened out something in his back gave a nasty-sounding crack and Dave's face contorted for a split second.
"See, totally okay!"





Trip back to town was uneventful, except for Dave grasping for his back every now and then, and Applejack telling off Apple Bloom non-stop.

Pinkie was first to break the ice.
"So, Dave, what brought you to Sugar Cube Corner this morning?"

The slight smile on Dave's face evaporated in an instant.
"Oh. Right. I wanted to order one of your 'I-am-sorry' cakes. I messed up big time today. Actually, make that two cakes."

"I don't mean to be prying..." began Twilight.

To which Dave immediately quipped, "Of course you don't."

"...but what happened?"

"Well, Vinyl Scratch was curious about human music and, well, one thing led to another and now she's catatonic in the hospital. Greymare said that she'll get better very soon, though."

"Cata-what?" Inquired Applejack.

"Unresponsive," Twilight blurted out, clearly too lost in her current train of thought to bother with sugarcoating terminology.

"Oh," was Applejack's response.

Remaining part of the trip to local Confectionery Central was spent in silence. Dave was so coated in thick gloom that even Rainbow looked several shades less colorful.

Obtaining the cakes from Pinkie, Dave was about to make a beeline to the hospital, but was stopped in his tracks by a hoof on his shoulder. It was Pinkie, standing on the counter and giving him widest and warmest reassuring smile yet.
"Cheer up! I'm sure it will turn out fine! After all, you didn't mean for this to happen, you can always say you're sorry!"

Dave's glum expression lightened up a little and he even cracked a smile of his own. 
"You're right, no time to sulk, gotta make things right!"

Pink mare jumped down behind the counter, and continued bouncing up and down in place.
"Be sure to tell me how it turns out!" 

"Sure," Dave shot back over a shoulder.

It didn't take long for him to return. In fact, it took him exactly one thousand three hundred and thirty two bounces, according to Pinkie. And she never messed up her counting.

The spring in his step, beaming smile and lack of cakes betrayed impending good news, but Pinkie like nopony else knew how important it was to let people share good news at their own pace.

Dave leaned in on the counter, causing it to creak in protest.
"I've got good news and... good news! I guess I'll start with good news as good news can wait."

Waiting out a bit for dramatic or perchance comedic effect, Dave dropped the news.
"Both nurse and Vinyl made full recovery! And they're not mad at me!"

"Yaaay!" Pinkie gave Dave a congratulatory hug mid-jump, causing him to grasp for his back once again.

"And Vinyl Scratch liked the human music, you know, the EDM thing she was interested in. It's a shame that I got delayed so much that hour-long mix switched to some track of heavier genre, djent in this case. But it's all good now."

"Uh-huh!" Pinkie didn't know many of the words Dave just said but nevertheless was still excited for a friend.

"Oh and they loved the cakes, so I guess I have you to thank for that, Pinkie!"

Pinkie's cheeks did the impossible and became even more pink with the blush at the compliment.

"The only thing that was concerning, well... Vinyl asked to listen to that dreaded track again. I politely declined, for obvious reasons, and that's not counting Greymare peering holes in my back. Anyway, it's getting late, I should probably go hit the sack."
Dave waved goodbye to her.
"See ya around, Pinkie!"

"See you!" She waved at him back.

Evening air sure had a way to submerge Dave into a reflective mood.

It was truly a weight off Dave's shoulders to learn that both mares were pretty much back to normal, if still a bit shaken by the experience.
But otherwise they held no grudges against him. After all, as Pinkie said, he didn't mean for this to happen.

But both mares were alright and in the end of the day, it was all that mattered. Oh, and getting Apple Bloom back to her sister.





Concrete hovered close to Dave's face. Dave's face betrayed no concern of proximity to such a material; instead, it was contorted in exertion.
With a grunt Dave pushed the concrete away, launching himself up in air, immediately following it up with barely-audible clap and catching himself just in time to not hit the ground.

"Hah, at least my hands still got it!"

Eleven reps of clap push-ups later he was ready to beg any passerby pony to put him out of his misery. Luckily for psyche of local population, there weren't anypony around this early in the morning.

Still on the ground, Dave shuffled and turned to his back. The 10 lap run weighted with armor beckoned him, promising more pain and possibly some gains. Well, more like loss of fat, but good all the same.
With a sigh he got up. Getting back into workout routine was going to be a ROYAL pain, especially since all the equipment in local gym was strictly pony-oriented last time he checked. Thankfully he knew a thing or two about calisthenics by virtue of hanging out with muscleheap Russian.

The whole ordeal was kick-started by simple realization that he was getting out of shape, and the sugar-rich diet had already resulted in him taking on a couple of pounds, despite his allegedly much-envied ability to just annihilate any amount of junk food without any consequences to his physique. Knowing how easy it is to slip into complacency, Dave took rather drastic measures, adopting the old workout routine and diet.

Yesterday's encounter with local zebra clearly showed that he lacked proper core strength and his leg muscles were completely out of whack too. Boris probably would have taunted him mercilessly about skipping leg day, if he was present, that is.

Besides, it would be a long time before his recently-drawn grand project would be built, so growing some muscular strength was a decent alternative for the time being.

After swinging by the workshop for parts of armor to act as additional weight, Dave started doing warmup stretches for upcoming parts of the exercise. It was then when he noticed his pony friends making their way to his plot of land, looking mighty weird. Rarity looked like Komondor, Pinkie wasn't far behind the dog looks either, with her tongue hanging out, Twilight's horn looked... bent? And Rainbow Dash couldn't stop flying upside down and experienced seemingly unpredictable bouts of turbulence. There was one exception: Fluttershy looked exactly like her usual self.

Twilight found a bit of relief in the fact that Dave apparently shrugged off the mysterious curse, as opposed to her apprehensions. Seeing that Dave didn't turn up at the library with some ridiculous magic-induced sickness, she assumed the worst. After all, certain spells did affect him, often with completely unpredictable results.

It didn't take long to explain the core of the issue with the curse laid upon them by the treacherous zebra. 
Fluttershy's particular flavor of ailment left quite an impression on Dave - if clutching for heart and calling out for sugar-coated religious figures at the sound of her deep voice could be considered as such.

But upon hearing about the Apple Bloom disappearance, all traces of jocular attitude vanished from Dave in an instant, replaced with a scowl of brewing anger. He hit palm of his hand with other hand, balled up in tight formation, and squeezed down on it, producing sickening crackling sounds. 

The color drained from Twilight's face. 
Did he just break all of his human fingers in anger? That must have hurt!

Not paying apparent attention to self-inflicted injury and not saying anything, he disappeared into his workshop.
Assorted clangs and other sounds of rummaging could be heard from the inside for a bit before Dave dragged out bunch of metal implements into the daylight and dumped them into existing metal pile.

The only thing immediately recognizable was flanged mace; rest of heaped gleaming metal pieces offered no hints to their respective purposes.

Meanwhile Dave fussed about, reducing said heap by picking out and strapping various bits of metal to himself with considerable speed, working his fingers as if nothing has happened to them, much to Twilight's relief.
"So yesterday we got blatantly tricked, and today we're paying a visit to our local kid-stealing Registered Hex Offender, huh?"

Once he was done putting leg and arm armor, Dave picked up particularly large piece of metal that was almost as tall as him, and fastened it to his metal gauntlet.
"Was messing around with riot shield concept lately."
That earned him some bewildered looks. Oh, right, it's likely that violent protests and consequential suppression thereof don't exist here.

"Whatever, let's move out already."





Dave, Twilight, Rarity, Pinkie and Fluttershy all pressed against the bark of a house-tree, carefully listening in on what was going on inside. Rainbow Dash was nowhere to be seen, but that was unsurprising with her current condition. Dave banked on her returning once curse has been lifted.

They circled around the house, propping up the house-tree wall, in various stages of readiness. The most ready was Pinkie, who, despite tongue hanging out, was so in-character for a grizzled cop that she was only a black helmet and bulletproof vest away from completing the SWAT operative image. The rest were more or less clueless. 

Satisfied with inspection, Dave slowly crept up to the door, stopped and quietly whispered to ponies stacked up behind him.
"Okay, everybody - get ready. Once I enter, we split up and sweep the building."

The engineer proceeded to fish out box of matches and some sort of cylinder from one of his numerous pockets, and now intently fiddled with it, encumbered by his shield.
Once one end of cylinder lit up, he opened the door and threw it inside the house, slamming door shut behind it.

There was a second or two of silence, then a loud bang came from inside, followed by startled vocalizations from Zecora.

"Go-go-go!"

Almost yanking the door off it's hinges, Dave rushed inside, holding his tall shield in front of him with mace at the ready.

"Ponyville Fast Response Team! Get on the floor! Hooves behind head!"

And it would be rather striking entry, if it wasn't for Rainbow Dash flying headfirst into his back, sending both tumbling to the floor.

Suddenly Dave's shield became his impromptu snowboard, sliding him right into the...

"Oh no!"

CLANG!

...right into the cauldron.

The non-human part of entry team didn't fare much better - there was no small amount of everypony stumbling over everypony, with Rarity being first one to tangle in dreadlocks and meet the floor, initiating the chain reaction.

Twilight was having none of it and hopped back to her hooves only to have the wind knocked out of her by Rainbow, who just couldn't stop, acting like a jet-powered wrecking ball zooming through the room at the most unpredictable trajectories.

Just as Dave recovered from his face-to-face meeting with cauldron, he saw what he definitely didn't want to see.

The remaining two cylinders rolled right into the hearth.

"Oh crap! Take cover!"

There was another resounding bang and a blinding light.





"What in the hay happened here?"

Apple Bloom found Zecora's house in absolute shambles. Not a single creature was left standing inside, not a single element of decorum left unbroken. Everything that was previously hanged on the walls now resided on the floor, but to make up for that, the ceiling now boasted a mace embedded in it as some extravagant chandelier. Not even the cauldron escaped ubiquitous destruction - it was toppled over, had a considerable head-shaped dent in it now, and the brew got spilled all over. 

The silhouettes of bodies strewn about were groaning on the floor, rubbing their bruises.

Dave sat against the wall, shaking his head, trying to merge two pictures into one. He caught himself with absentmindedly petting none other than striped owner of the house, who was similarly out of it.

Retreating the traitorous hand, he wagged a finger at it with remaining hand and gave it a stern look. No fraternization with the enemy will happen today!
Wait a second. Apple Bloom does not appear to be happy to be rescued. In fact she doesn't appear to be kidnapped at all. This begged the question - did kidnapping happen in the first place?

"Twilight?"

With a groan purple floppy-horned head peeked out from behind the cauldron, scanning area and evidently having same trouble focusing on the source of sound.

"Twilight, I swear to god, if this is another misunderstanding..."





With Zecora's help all puzzle pieces fell together. No kidnappings or hexes, just a series of very unfortunate coincidences.

Needless to say, Dave was nonplussed and a bit mad with whole double-misunderstanding thing. 
He turned to Twilight, "Morale of the story?"

She tentatively glanced at the green book that apparently contained the cure.
"Don't judge book by it's cover?"

"-yes, but also-" Dave lifted one of industrial boots and pointed to it for all to see "- WEAR PROTECTIVE CLOTHING!"

Rarity chimed in, slightly muffled by dreadlocks, "But dear, who could have known that the plant was poisonous?"

"It's not about knowing that you will encounter something for sure, it's about preemptively ensuring... eh, you know what, whatever. Who cares?"
Dave sighed and returned to contemplating the wrecked house. Fixing it up is ought to be more fun than messing it up was...





Pinkie was first to walk back in the Zecora's house. Her tongue indeed was back to normal, as promised.

She looked around in awe.
Every surface shined and gleamed, and the whole place almost didn't reek of industrial cleaning agents. Furniture was repaired, shelves reattached, knick-knacks glued together and reinstated back to their rightful places almost pedantically. Even the accursed cauldron had it's dent evened out and was polished to a shine. 

"Wow, Dave! I thought you'd need help with this, but you did it so fast! You're really good at this whole cleaning thing!"

"Hah, you've never had to clean up a whole dorm's worth of after-party with mere minutes before The Inspection's arrival!"

Pinkie leaned closer and asked in hushed tone, "The Inspection?"

"Back at uni, when The Dean of the Campus was in a particularly foul mood, he'd grab at least two heads of faculties - who also technically were deans, but they weren't The Dean - and go for a walk, or more like, a prowl. Woe is you if you get busted breaking ANY rules by The Inspection, no matter how small or insignificant. That brought an untimely end to many a party, and got many, many people expelled over littlest things."

Pinkie was thoroughly filled with reverent terror. The Inspection sounded like a truly horrifying enemy of all things partying.

In the resulting silence Applejack let her opinion be known, "Whoowee! You really did up the place!"

Fluttershy, Dash and Rarity just stared at the restored dwelling with curiosity.

Zecora sounded amazed and concerned in equal measure, "My home you have polished to shine; the work you've performed is... fine."

Twilight was the last one to enter, "Since this is a more or less controlled environment, and we got antidote on hoof..."

Something in Twilight's tone made Dave go very alert.
And for a good reason - a bunch of familiar blue flowers floated in air towards him, coated in purple magic.

Particularly sly, perhaps even guileful expression streaked across Twilight's face.
"Science still doesn't know how humans react to Poison Joke..."

Dave jumped from chair and held it up as improvised shield, "Oh no, Twilight, no you DON'T!"