//------------------------------//
// Chapter One: The meeting 
// Story: Rivet's Tale: How We Got Here 
// by SilverEyedWolf 
//------------------------------//

Twilight blinked sleepily in the barely post-dawn light, yawning before she nodded. "That sure does sound like a hassle."

"Doesn't it just?" Rarity replied, nodding her head and batting her eyelids against the shining light of the sun. "I mean, he only let me get three-quarters of the way through the order before he decided it needed to be redesigned from the ground up! I had to start entirely over! The nerve of some ponies," she said with a sniff before gently elbowing Twilight's leg. "Drink up dear, I know you're not a morning pony, and I would hate to see you snoozing in the street. Again."

Twilight blinked another couple of times, a couple of shadows passing between her and the sun, before gently shaking her head and taking a long sip of the waxed paper cup floating in her field.

She pulled a face and made a gurgling noise in her throat. "This tastes like construction crew coffee," she said, sticking out her tongue and looking at the cup. "Ugh."

Rarity looked at her for a moment, face carefully blank, before nodding slowly. "Yes, Twilight, it does. Because that is where we are. We're looking over the designs for the new town hall for the mayor today."

Twilight glanced at her doubtfully before forcing herself to gulp down the rest of the coffee.

Shivering and shaking in place, Twilight looked up with much fresher eyes and took in the sight of several different kinds of creatures crawling all over scaffolding that encased all five floors of the town hall.

She watched as a large dragon, barely out of puberty based on the healing zits on his face, picked up a massive timber and flew it up to the second floor before he started calling out to the ponies there. A zebra slowly walked past her, marking out several key locations on a clipboard and muttering under her breath.

Her ears flicked back as she heard the heavy sound of a hammer ringing through the air, and a deep voice called out, "Keep that rivet steady!"

"Ah, and there's our forepony now," Rarity said before raising a hoof and waving it widely back and forth. "Yoo-hoo! Forepony Rivet! We're here about the—"

Twilight barely acknowledged Rarity's sudden drop off of conversation as she raised a hoof to block out the sun to see the figure behind it.

She watched as a pegasus waved back from the third floor, hanging upside down from his back hooves as he turned back to the underside of the piece he was working on. With another two powerful blows of a massive hammer, he called out, "She's done! Ah'll be righ' back, gotta talk up to tha bosses!"

There was a collective laughing and hooting as he set the hammer down on the nearest scaffolding before disengaging whatever harness held him. Dropping a yard, he let a wing come out and flip him right-side-up so that he landed on the platform beneath him with all four hooves, sagging a bit before he used the momentum to push himself back up into the air. With a couple of slowing flaps from a frankly impressive wingspan, he landed before the two mares with barely a disturbance of the dust below them.

"H'lo there, ladies," he said, his almost caramel hoof raising to lift the hard hat from between his ears. "Ah, Princess Twilight! Muh 'pologies," he murmured, lowering his head in a bow that showed off his light brown mane, still in a domed shape from the hat.

"No need for that, forepony," Twilight giggled, holding out a hoof that he slowly met with his own before shaking. "It was Rivet, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am, Rivet Clovah, ma'am."

"Really, Twilight is just fine," Twilight said, still blinking. "We're actually here to look over your plans for the town hall's expansion. Mayor Mare forgot a couple of old breaks that had been informally repaired and wanted us to look over them with you."

"Informally repaired," he chuckled, nodding as a pair of massive sheets of rolled paper floated over in a light blue field. Unrolling, he pulled a pencil out of the bag he had on his haunch and gestured to Twilight. "Alrigh' miss, where's them breaks? We'll get 'em sorted 'fore ya coul' say yer own name."

But now it was Twilight's turn to be speechless. The pencil was being offered to her in the same blue field that held the blueprints of the town hall, with another very thin page over it showing the intended expansion.

It was all being held in the same blue field that currently surrounded the pegasus's horn.

"Buh?" she offered. The best she could come up with at the moment.

"Buh?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. "The old fixes? Y'wanna just mark 'em here, an' we'll take a good look at 'em."

"Buhbuhbuh," Twilight said again, her tone one of bargaining.

He cocked his head to the other side before scratching his ear with one of his hooves. "I'm sorry, Princess, I ain't gettin' yuh."

Drawing in a deep breath, Twilight pushed all of her focus to the forefront of her mind and pushed from between her lips, "Horn."

Blinking, he looked up between his eyes. "Ayuh. It'sa horn."

"Wings," she ejected next, nodding to his back.

"Ayuh, they are," he said, nodding as he rustled and shuffled the two limbs on his back. "They even work most'a the time," he chuckled.

"Alicorn," she said, pointing at her horn then at his.

"Nah, pegacorn," he said, shaking his head. "I wus born wit' a lil' bit of all three tribes, sure, but I ain't no alicorn. Ah'm, whatcha callit," he murmured to himself, placing a hoof on his chin as he thought for a bit before his eyes widened. "I'ma freak gene'ic mutation, from more 'n one recessive trait bein' active at one time."

Twilight stared at him for a long moment before pushing out a, "Huh?"

Rivet chuckled before turning around and yelling at his crew, "Early break boys, wrap up and stick aroun'! Got'a 'nother biologist!"

There was a scattering of chuckles and cheers before Rivet turned back to the mares.

"Ladies, this usually turns in'ta muh life story. How's some brunch sound?"

Rarity was the one to speak up. "That's the first sensible thing I think you've said this entire conversation."