Twilight groaned as her eyes fluttered open slowly. The sight that greeted her didn't make sense at first, until her awareness of gravity kicked in and she realized that she was looking at everything upside down. She moved to roll over, but cried out in pain as her right foreleg shot a sharp bite of agony through her, causing her to roll back the other way and relieve the pressure on her shoulder.
Dislocated for sure; better than a broken leg, but equally painful. She carefully rolled across her other side, wincing as her injured leg dragged, jarring her shoulder. With a little more careful maneuvering and some magical assistance she was finally able to get back up on her three good legs and get a look around.
She was in some sort of office building, that much was clear. Empty cubicles and abandoned swivel chairs filled one side of the room, while the one that she was on was mostly empty.
Mostly, because directly behind her was the pony who had attacked her. Twilight whirled on the armored menace, horn flaring and ready to give the entire fight another go, but her magic faded suddenly as she noticed that the suit was empty.
The black shell stood on its own, like the husk of some insect: hollow and lifeless. Although it didn't move, it stood facing her with the face panel lit and those same strange, blue lines of energy pulsing all over its onyx plating. Wires ran to its hooves from the wall behind it, plugged into various outlets.
Gearrick had explained to her that in most buildings ponies could pull electricity straight from the same power system the streetlamps did. The system was only supposed to support smaller appliances, but Twilight had studied electricity a little and knew enough to know that this armor suit was not a small appliance.
Seeing it now that it wasn't trying to kill her, she was able to get a clearer picture. It had no engines or steam pipes, so she quickly came to the conclusion that it couldn't power itself. In that case it was probably charging itself up.
If this suit didn't have the energy it needed to run itself, Twilight could toss the stupid hunk of black metal around like a rag-doll; and the pony inside of it.
She looked around, realizing that if the suit were left here, its owner would have to be around also. Twilight didn't often find herself outsmarted, so she had a hard time believing that her enemy would be stupid enough to leave her weapon unattended.
She peeked around the corners of the nearest cubicles and, finding nothing, headed for the next row of them. Her next hobbling step came to a very sudden halt as the suit behind her emitted a high-pitched whine. The memory of what that sound meant was too vivid for Twilight's liking, and her heart skipped a beat as she braced herself for the worst.
A shimmering field of electric-blue energy descended in front of her, only as wide as she was at the shoulder, but reaching all the way between the floor and the ceiling. Having not been slammed by a door or blasted by a laser, Twilight let out a sigh of relief, but couldn't deny her curiosity regarding the light-wall. It was clearly some kind of barrier, but it wasn't magical in nature. Just like her own barriers she could see through it, though everything was stained blue by the flickering light.
Cautiously, Twilight inched closer. Balancing on her back hooves, she moved to touch the screen with her good leg. Before she ever made contact, electricity arced out from the light-wall, striking her hoof. It was like a miniature bolt of lightning, and the shock floored Twilight instantly, her muscles clenching uncontrollably for a few moments before she was able to force herself back to her hooves.
The brief convulsions she had suffered left her breathing hard and aching everywhere, and she backed away from the wall, looking around. There didn't seem to be anything around it, just a Twilight-sized wall of light. Moving to the side, she was dismayed to see that the patch of light followed her, always blocking only as much of her path as it needed to.
Twilight shook her head to clear her thoughts. So she didn't understand what the suit was capable of yet, that much was obvious. Clearly it could still fight her without a user, though it seemed more like it was just trying to contain her for the time being. If she was going to get out, she would need to learn more about her situation.
To do that, hobbling around on three legs just wasn't going to cut it. Twilight scowled as she realized she was going to have to relocate her shoulder before she could even think about escape methods. Taking a few deep breaths to steady herself, Twilight sat down and grabbed her injured shoulder with her magic. Her mind did battle with the fear of pain for a few more minutes, many more deep breaths going by.
At last she gritted her teeth, and with all of her magnificent control of magic, pushed with all her might. She groaned with the pain as the joint resisted her efforts to reassemble it, and tears formed in her eyes as she twisted her leg as gently as she could to try and ease it better into position. She cried out as she pushed again, even harder this time, and with a final, sharp blast of pain and a loud pop, Twilight let her magic fade.
She simply lay there for a while, panting after her efforts. Her shoulder still ached badly, but at least she could move her leg again without it nearly causing her to pass out. After many more minutes of rest, she forced herself back up to her hooves, testing her weight. Her leg held underneath her, and though each step she took caused her shoulder to burn, she simply did her best to ignore it.
With the pain mostly resolved, she was finally able to try and think about her imprisonment. The machine was clearly able to keep her from simply walking away, and a quick circuit of the room revealed that it was keeping her in a pretty much circular pen, the light-wall following her everywhere she went.
Twilight smiled as she realized that machine was probably designed for anti-magical purposes; that's why she hadn't been able to beat it. However, lasers and barriers were pretty run-of-the-mill where magic was concerned. Luckily Twilight knew a few tricks that were very far from standard.
Standing in front of the light-wall, Twilight focused on the area she could see beyond it. Teleporting to a region she could see was as easy to her as lifting a pebble, and so without batting an eye she made the jump.
As always her vision simply cut out for a brief moment while the spell transported her, but her smug smile vanished as she realized that she hadn't arrived where she had meant to go. The light-wall hummed behind her right where it should have been, but somehow she was still inside the radius of the suit's influence.
Twilight trotted across the room to where she had been standing when she tried to teleport. Looking over her shoulder she found that where she had wound up was directly on the other side of the circular area she was confined to. Confused, Twilight readied her spell and jumped again, only to find that she ended up on the other side of the circle once more.
So, trying to teleport out one side of the circle only spat her back in the other. Twilight tried again, this time for somewhere above her, through the ceiling. Sure enough when her vision cleared she was left standing in the middle of the circle. Her attempt to go through the floor was worse yet, dropping her nearly ten feet suddenly when she came back in at the ceiling.
She groaned with frustration, having a hard time believing that this machine could have anticipated or been built to specifically counter such an advanced magic like teleportation. There had to be some kind of general principle that prevented all magic, but nothing she knew about electricity would have made that possible.
So she couldn't walk out and couldn't teleport. The armor was the source of all this mess, so if it were to turn off, she would be able to leave. Following this simple line of reasoning with renewed hope, Twilight approached the suit, only to find her way blocked by a light wall.
"Of course," she muttered. Her frustration got the better of her and so she spat at it grumpily, watching the spittle crackle and evaporate as the light wall fried it. "Can't get near it," she grumbled, looking at the wires tied to it instead. Unfortunately none of them fell within the range of the light-wall, so Twilight couldn't get her hooves on one.
It didn't stop her from trying to yank one out of the wall with her magic, but no matter how much she tried nothing happened outside the suit's influence. She even used a little trick she had learned from Korrick, trying to blast the suit with a ball of air, but it just smashed into the light-wall and the air dispersed. Her magic was completely ineffective anywhere outside the circle.
That sparked an idea, and so Twilight trotted to the center of the circular area. She created a barrier and pushed it outward, growing the bubble until it started pushing on the light-wall's border, thinking to push the wall out far enough to reach the wires or the suit.
The room lit up like a blue super-nova, the entire circle becoming one giant barrier of its own. Anywhere her shield touched the wall of light it would simply fall apart, the magic fizzling out and leaving behind only the pulsing blue wall. Twilight could still feel her magic going outward, and knew that the spell was working, trying to create the barrier like she wanted. Sadly, the magic was just being wasted; negated by that wall.
Twilight gave up on her barrier, breathing a little heavier from her magical exertion. She had tried everything she could think of, but nothing seemed to work. She couldn't touch the suit, couldn't break the wall or leave the circle. As long as that thing was plugged in and getting power, she was trapped.
She sighed in defeat and sat down. This problem had to have a solution; there had to be a logical explanation for why her magic was failing, but Twilight didn't understand the first thing about the suit itself. How it was stopping her was a mystery.
"I wish Gearrick were here," she said tiredly, looking across the room and out the office windows. All she could see were the walls of other skyscrapers, but she knew that she was still in the city, and that Gearrick was out there somewhere. He knew so much about steamtech; surely he would know how to stop the suit.
Her despair, the feeling of being trapped and helpless, weighed heavily on her thoughts of him. Maybe he would know how to help her, but he wouldn't come. The fourth stage of the contest was today; he would have to go, or be disqualified. Why would he risk his dreams just to come looking for a girl he had only known for a few short days?
"He's not coming," Twilight sighed, tears forming in her eyes as she laid down, too tired and hurt to lift her head anymore. "Oh Celestia, what do I do?"
"I'm coming, Twilight," Gearrick muttered to himself, the sunset reflecting in his red-tinted goggles, the soot of his welding staining his face. He had been working since morning, harder than he had ever worked on anything before. The equations that he would normally have to write down and work through for hours came to him with ease in his head, and he didn't question the results. He had no time, had to believe that all of his calculations were correct.
For hours he had heated and shaped, melded and cut. Jack brought him water and food, but he never took a break, eating while he worked. His goggles were fogged from the sweat of his breakneck pace, but he paid the haze in his vision no mind. He didn't even need to see what he was doing with his eyes; it was in his mind, down to the last burr on the shredded bronze plate he was welding into place.
This invention was no Nomad. The welds were ugly, but strong. The rough edges of the ruptured plating and cracked gears were left as he found them, for he hadn't the moments to spare to make it beautiful.
It would have been ugly anyways; all weapons were. A tinker's inventions were supposed to be the springboard for even further creation, yet here was a tool of his trade solely built to destroy.
He had no choice, and he told himself those exact words for the thousandth time that day as still more sparks filled the air around him. It was nearly finished; the worst work of his career. A work that would help nopony.
Nopony except Twilight, but nopony except her mattered right now. She was somewhere, frightened and alone at the mercy of those twisted sisters and that terrible machine from the guild.
Another hour passed, and the sun drifted down below the horizon somewhere far beyond the city. The Veil remained lit, gently showing rays that no eye could catch as the last pink and orange vestiges of daylight stained it.
It was finally finished. A masterpiece if ever there was one, but a dark and terrible sort. Gearrick sighed, knowing that Brass Tacks would never have forgiven him for making such a thing.
"You okay, kiddo?" Jack asked, seeing the sad look in his eyes, even through his hazy goggles.
Gearrick pulled those goggles down at long last, letting his disappointment go. "I'll be alright, Jack. I'm only doing what I have to," he said calmly, looking at the invention before him. "It's done."
Jack eyed the device, what appeared to be a half-suit of armor. It was designed to fully cover Gearrick's front legs, shoulders, and chest, with a hefty bronze pack that rested between the shoulder blades. Around the hooves on each leg of the armor were strange, metal rings that were driven by small gears. One leg had three of these rings running around the hoof, the other only one, though the one was significantly larger and sported several metal spikes, though they didn't appear to be for doing damage.
He watched as Gearrick sighed one final time before making his way toward it, sliding his legs into the waiting guards. A series of scorched leather straps laced themselves together under his magical influence, binding the chest and leggings tightly to him. At last the bronze pack fell across his shoulders, obscuring the straps and clicking into place with the rest of the armor.
He was a terror, a walking mess of shredded metal, his goggles back in place and hiding his usually cheerful eyes. What little of his face Jack could see was a mask of cold resolve. Every step he took was accentuated with the subtle rumbling of gears as they aided his movement in the heavy suit, making his steps fluid.
Like the other suit, this one had no engine, but Gearrick had planned for that. He knew, though unsure how, that Twilight was still in the city. The city itself was alive with energy everywhere. Power lines, street lamps, everything used electricity. Even his enemy's own suit used it.
Gearrick stared at his left foreleg, and at the spiked ring at its hoof. This suit would have no trouble taking that energy away from whatever he desired; energy he would use to find and save Twilight.
"What's she do, lad?" Jack asked, a slight tremor in his voice as he eyed the invention.
Gearrick stopped testing the suit's motion, fixing Jack with a look the old pony would never forget; one of mixed sorrow, fear, and necessary resolve.
"Something terrible," was all he said.
The lights flickered dimly before returning to full strength, drawing a lazy glance from the security guard lounging in the front lobby. "Lousy wiring," he muttered, flicking his hooves to spread the newspaper he was holding back into place.
Most of the other ponies had gone home already, but of course he was stuck with the night shift. A few of the harder working ponies from the research divisions were still around, as always, but they were free to leave whenever they pleased. The little lights on the security panel showed him which rooms were still in use, mostly a couple labs and the lights for accounting on the twenty-second floor.
The guard chuckled to himself as he noted that the lights for Mick Magnet's office, and his secretary's, were both still on. Big surprise there, they were always the last two out. As with any workplace, rumors abounded at headquarters about just how professional the relationship between boss and secretary really was. Whether they were true or not was none of the guard's business, but he didn't find it too hard to believe that there might be a little bit of a late-night office affair going on up on the fortieth floor.
The lights flickered again, this time dimming almost to nothing for quite a while before finally coming back on. The guard scowled up at the ceiling, glaring at the offending lights. "For Pete's sake, can't a guy read at work anymore?" he growled, snapping the paper back into place again. "I mean hell, we run the damned power plant for crying out loud," he muttered.
A knocking sound on the ornate, glass doors to the main lobby drew his attention. Outside, only utter darkness greeted him; all of the streetlamps were out, a very unusual thing for this late hour. Perhaps something had happened to the power lines. The guild headquarters had its own backup facility, so that must have been why the lights were flickering.
The knocking drew his attention again, so he scoured the dark outdoors for the offender. He was startled to find only two red, glowing dots staring back at him, and the very slight outline of a pony from the light of the lobby filtering through the doors.
The knock came again, this time a little louder.
The guard swallowed his fear, noticing that the glowing red eyes were simply a pair of welding goggles reflecting the lobby lights. It was probably some engineer who had forgotten something, but policy was policy. After close, nopony came in.
"We're closed, buddy," the guard called loudly, stuffing his nose back in his paper. "Come back tomorrow!"
The knocking stopped, so the guard checked to make sure the pony outside was gone. Even knowing what they were, those red eyes startled him again as he found the pony still standing at the entrance and staring at him.
"I said we're closed!" he growled, getting out of his chair and heading for the doors. "If he ain't gonna leave, I'll make him," the guard muttered to himself, honestly glad to have some action for once in this lazy line of work.
He hadn't gone more than three steps when the lights flickered again and suddenly went out, stopping him dead in his tracks. With the building lights out and the streetlamps dead as well, it was pitch black except for the slight glow of lights elsewhere in the city reflecting off the Veil above. As his eyes slowly adjusted, he could once again see the outline of the pony outside, though the otherworldly red light reflecting off his goggles was now thankfully gone.
"I-I said we're closed!" the guard stammered. He was a little unnerved to find the pony still standing there, especially with the lights out and all.
A steady luminescence suddenly flared at the hooves of the pony outside. That light was the same familiar blue of electricity that the guard had seen a dozen times patrolling the labs. Rings spun around the stranger's hooves, the electricity gathering on them, or so it seemed. The blue light lit his jagged armor from underneath like the pale ghost-light from children's tales, casting menacing shadows on the walls and ceiling of the entryway. In an instant the stranger had become a glowing creature with wings and claws of shadow, and those terrible red-eyed goggles.
"Oh Celestia..." the guard whispered, terrified and frozen on the spot, unable to take his eyes away.
The rings around the stranger's hooves stopped spinning suddenly, and the pack on the pony's back opened up, flipping two triangular contraptions out to his sides, like the flared wings of some twisted demon.
Suddenly the world was a blaze of electric-blue light, reflected off a million surfaces. The guard tried to cry out as glass rained down all around him, the lobby doors suddenly shattered to bits. A powerful wave of sound, the same bass wave that had shattered the doors, rocked through him and drowned his cry with its own powerful volume. The pressure wave lifted him from his hooves, tossing him backwards like a leaf in a storm.
His ears were ringing as his vision finally settled again, and he could barely hear the hoofsteps of the pony who had blown the lobby wide open, even as it drew closer. The guard's hearing slowly returned, the soft clicking of the intruder's steps growing louder and louder.
"S-stay back!" the guard cried, jumping to his hooves and pulling out his billy club.
The advancing armored pony halted, but did not seem to be worried. "Drop the weapon. I don't want to hurt you," came a quiet reply.
"Like hell!" The guard roared, not about to part with his only countermeasure now that he was face-to-face with something that had just thrown him across the room without lifting a hoof.
"Fine, keep it," grumbled the pony. "Just tell me where I can find Mick Magnet."
"Why should I?" the guard asked stubbornly, some confidence returning since the intruder hadn't managed to disarm him yet.
The rings around the mystery pony's hooves started spinning again, the triangular 'wings' folding back down. Raising his right foreleg, the trespasser pointed his hoof at the security desk.
The guard never saw anything happen, never heard a sound. The desk simply cracked down the center, and then blew apart, sparks flying as the electrical implements within suffered the desk's fate. There was no shockwave like before, but the destruction was clear, and it was instantaneous.
"That's why," came a calm, cold voice from the shadowy silhouette of the dangerous intruder.
"F-fortieth floor!" the guard yammered loudly, finding himself sitting after the shock of watching the desk explode. "I-it's the only office on it!"
The rings stopped spinning once more, the electricity on them dying out. "Thank you," came the simple, serious reply. "You've been a big help. Why don't you take the rest of the night off?" the stranger asked, never looking at the guard on his way past as he headed for the elevators.
The security guard had never heard such a wonderful idea in his entire life.
Mick was still flicking through the daily accounts and just enjoying the quiet of his evening when the intercom suddenly crackled to life on his desk, startling him and causing him to knock over his whiskey glass, spilling the golden-brown liquid all over his mahogany desk.
As his heart rate settled down he realized that something was strange. All he could hear through the intercom was Melody's panicked, labored breathing; not the usual calm and concise words he had hired her for. Somepony in the background was talking, a deep voice whose words he couldn't make out.
"O-okay," Mick heard Melody say quietly, her distress clear. "M-Mr. Magnet? You h-have a visitor," she stammered fearfully. Her tone had Mick's heart pounding fast again, the nervousness easily bleeding through in her words. His eyebrows shot high at the mention of a visitor; the building was supposed to be closed! Melody certainly would have turned any straggling employees away, that's why he kept her around so late.
Whoever this was had come through security.
"Who is it?" Mick asked, pressing the button for his own reply intercom.
"Why don't you go home for the evening?" Mick heard the stranger in the background say politely, the volume muffled by his distance from the intercom on Melody's desk.
"Y-yes sir," he heard Melody say, her voice equally far from the microphone and still sounding panicked.
"Melody, who is it?" Mick roared in frustration, unable to believe that whoever it was outside could have sent his loyal assistant away so easily.
The voice that buzzed back through was clear, crisp, and cold.
"This is Gearrick Tinkermane."
"I guess he doesn't want to see me," Gearrick muttered, forcing the large office doors open slowly with his magic. He'd tried to be civil and wait for Magnet to come out and see him, but if the shady businesspony wasn't coming out, then he was going in.
Despite his destruction of the lobby doors and security desk, he'd done his best so far to not wreck anything else. That incident had been necessary to scare the security guard, otherwise he might have had to actually hurt the poor fellow to get past him. Luckily the guard had been terrified enough to leave and hadn't even radioed for backup. Likely some other guards were downstairs investigating all the noise he had caused, but he had already been in the elevator and long gone.
Mick Magnet was sitting at his desk, his salt-and-pepper mane out of place from his shouting match with the intercom. Gearrick immediately noticed the shameful waste of whiskey splattered all over his desk, but put that to the back of his mind. There were more important things.
"Good evening, Mick," Gearrick said coldly.
"Good evening. You do realize business hours are closed?" Mick asked back, his voice clearly strained with stress. He was on the verge of shouting, Gearrick knew.
"I had an appointment" Gearrick said, unable to deny himself a chuckle.
"Oh really?" Mick asked through gritted teeth. "I didn't see you on my calendar."
"Don't you remember? You made that appointment yourself when you kidnapped Twilight," Gearrick said coldly, his face dead serious once more.
Gearrick smirked as he watched Mick go stiff, thinking that perhaps his gruff tone combined with his dire suit of armor had scared the poor unarmed bastard. His smirk faded though as Mick's next words came out, words that for the first time ever sounded sincerely terrified.
"D-did you say Twilight?" Mick asked, licking his dry lips and looking at Gearrick without really seeing him.
"That's right, Twilight Sparkle. Now tell me where she is!" Gearrick growled, not in the mood for games.
"Oh Celestia," Mick stammered, shaking gently. His eyes wavered badly, as if he simply couldn't find anything to focus on. He calmed down suddenly, taking heavy breaths and clutching a hoof to his chest. "N-no, it's fine... This can't reflect on the guild. Phyla assured me... Nopony knows."
"I know," Gearrick said fiercely. "Twilight knows."
Mick fixed a fierce glare on Gearrick. His eyes were no longer afraid, but infuriated. "Do you even know who that girl is?" Mick roared angrily, slamming a hoof down on his desk and rising out of his office chair.
Gearrick took a step back, confused and startled by his reaction. "Um... she's my marefriend?" he replied uncertainly, quirking and eyebrow.
"You idiot!" Mick roared, slashing a hoof through the air in his anger. "That mare is the personal student of Princess Celestia, and master of the Element of Magic!"
Gearrick's eyes went wide for a moment, then narrowed suspiciously. "So that's what you're really afraid of," Gearrick said quietly.
"What?" Mick asked, sweat beading on his brow as he realized that Gearrick, clever as he was, could certainly put two and two together.
"If word ever reached the Princess that your company... no, that you were involved in the kidnapping of her personal student, banished to the moon would be a light sentence. You could probably weasel your way out of charges of cheating with the contest or swindling non-guild engineers..." Gearrick kept talking, but Mick's shaking lips let out a single, hushed word.
"Stop..."
"But you wouldn't be tried in the court of Manehattan. You would be sentenced directly by Celestia..." Gearrick continued.
"Stop!" Mick hissed.
"Your business would be ruined, and a whole hell of a lot of good that steamtech degree you've always been waving in my face for the last two years would do you then!" Gearrick finished.
"I said stop!" Mick roared, slamming his hooves down on the sturdy desk. He was breathing heavily, looking only at his hooves and not at Gearrick. "If I had known... It was all Phyla's idea. If I had known I never would have let her..." he gasped, his words disjointed.
"But you did let her," Gearrick growled, the rings springing to life at his hooves, buzzing with electricity. "You're going to tell me where I can find her. Do that and maybe the Princess will go easy on you for helping me get her back. If you're lucky, I'll go easy on you too. This 'Phyla' is the one I'm really after" Gearrick offered. Doubtless Mick would still be arrested and expelled from the Gearbox Guild, but that wasn't so bad compared to what could happen if he tried to run; or worse, fight Gearrick.
"The Princess wouldn't know a god-damned thing if I took care of you!" Mick growled, his disheveled mane swishing violently as his eyes snapped back to Gearrick. "Phyla's working on her own, and you're the only one who knows she had my permission to act the way she did. You're the only one who sees her connection to the guild! Even Phyla would deny it if she were caught, and without hearing what you've heard, Twilight wouldn't have any proof to bring me down..." Mick stopped, his furious glare dissolving suddenly.
He laughed, cackling madly. "No... nopony knows but you!" he cried between his mad laughs. "What a simple equation! To solve for everything else, I just have to subtract you from it!"
Gearrick didn't like the mad laughter or the matching look in Magnet's eyes. He took another step back as the clearly insane CEO tipped over his desk lamp. The lamp didn't fall to the floor, like physics would have demanded, but hung off the edge of the desk, revealing a hinge and a previously-hidden button.
Mick pressed it and the desk rocketed a few feet away from him. The sound of gears and a blue light emanated from behind the desk, and Gearrick clenched his teeth as he realized his new weapon would get a thorough testing much sooner than he had hoped.
A second of the electromagnetic suits rose up from the floor, and all the while Mick just laughed.
"Another one?" Gearrick whispered to himself in disbelief.
The suit lit up suddenly and emitted a high-pitched whine, catching Gearrick by surprise. His own metal armor was easily picked up and flung by the field it emitted, slamming him into a bookshelf to his side.
He retrieved himself from the wrecked shelves and piles of books, shaking off the impact. So, the suit could work without an operator, or at least to some degree. He hadn't though of that.
It wouldn't go without an operator for long though, for Mick was utilizing the surprise attack to climb into the suit. By the time Gearrick was back on his hooves, Mick was in it, his maniacal laughter tinged with the metallic sound of speakers.
"You didn't honestly think I only had one Markiver device, did you?" he asked smugly, though his confident tone was awash with the shakiness of insanity.
Gearrick sighed, steadying himself on his hooves and preparing for the fight he had hoped not to have. "No, I didn't think you only had one... but you're about to."
Gearrick grunted with pain as Mick slammed him again into the heavy bronze door of his office before dropping him. He had counted on his enemy's suit being more powerful, but he hadn't realized just how much it would be. The difference in the amount of energy their two inventions could control was staggering.
Scientifically though it made sense. The Markiver device, from what little Gearrick understood of it, was designed to work with electromagnetic fields. Projecting a field strong enough to not only manipulate an object, but manipulate it with precision, would require an absurd amount of energy. It was, for all intents and purposes, the technological equivalent of magic.
It could levitate objects, crush them or throw them, even bend light into a laser and fire it if the field were sufficiently powerful. Gearrick knew that whatever basic magic could do, that suit could likely replicate it with electromagnetism. Few ponies knew it, but even the inexplicable and powerful force of magic still worked within the confines of physics. A laser was just highly condensed photons, a barrier simply a static field that bound the particles in the air into a rigid form. In reality most of these things could easily be duplicated with electricity. In magic, spells required energy, and so would the Markiver device.
Gearrick had been banking on the fact that the suit would not be able to sustain its high energy use for long and eventually run out. Unfortunately, a quick glance at the floor showed that the device was wired in for the time being.
"What's the matter? Not half the tinker I am?" Mick taunted as Gearrick pulled himself back to his hooves for the second time.
"I'm ten times the tinker you are," he grunted, cracking his neck to ease the pain in his back from the impact.
The banter infuriated Mick, and so the suit emitted a high-pitched sound for just a brief moment before another EM field tried to pick Gearrick up and throw him. It got as far as lifting him from the ground before Gearrick raised his left hoof and pointed it at Mick, the solitary ring there spinning like mad.
The field stopped suddenly, dropping him on the floor. He sighed with relief, glad to find that much had worked, but dismayed to see the reading of the modified pressure gauge on his left shoulder. He had tampered with it enough to get it to read electrical energy instead, and the simple negation of an EM field had cost his suit far too much.
"What?" Mick hissed, dismayed to see his simple trick failing. "How?"
"Simple," Gearrick muttered. "An EM field is polar, just like a regular magnet. All I have to do is be able to emit a field with opposite poles."
"Why you little..." Mick growled, grinding his teeth. "Don't you talk down to me!" he roared, the room shuddering as anything with metal attached to it slowly pulled nearer to Mick; Gearrick included.
Various metal objects suddenly became projectiles, rocketing through the air towards Gearrick and his invention. The field pulling Gearrick had stopped in order for Magnet to control the myriad metallic objects he was now flinging violently about. Free of the restricting aura, Gearrick did his best to dodge everything from a paperweight to a globe. Even a few books with brass binding labels came fluttering at him, spewing pages in their wake from the wind generated by the force of their motion.
A few books hit him, not that they much mattered; Gearrick was more concerned with dodging the paperweight, which kept coming back around for another pass whenever he lost track of it. The globe managed to shatter itself after a very close call with it, but as he had both suspected and feared, the metal portions came back around for another swing.
The room was a whirlwind of metal objects, all trying their damnedest to slam into him. He couldn't hope to negate a field of this magnitude even if it was mono-directional, but it was far too complicated for such a thing to work anyways. To be moving objects like that the suit would have to constantly readjust the poles of its current field, changing the direction every object was moving second by second. It would be too hard to predict and counteract.
Electromagnetism wasn't what his own suit was designed for anyways; he could do a few small things with it, but his trick was something entirely different, something even the strongest EM fields would have a hard time manipulating.
Sound.
Even if Mick made a barrier, the sound wave would only transfer even more clearly through the more tightly-packed air particles. Unless Mick was able to figure out precisely what his own weapon did, Gearrick doubted he would ever be able to stop it. He would never get the chance to see it in action, or hear it. Sound was invisible, and not always audible.
Hundreds of thousands of frequencies existed outside the normal pony's range of hearing, and they could affect matter in magnificent and powerful ways. His suit was based on the simple principle that sound, if its frequency and magnitude were just right, could break even the sturdiest of things.
The Resonance Amplification Device was the Markiver Device's worst nightmare.
The heavy, bronze-inlaid desk suddenly pried itself from its hidden track in the floor with a horrible metallic screech. All the other metallic objects whirling about dropped as Mick focused his magnetic abilities on the mammoth chunk of wood and metal, lifting it high over his head.
"Die, Tinkermane!" He roared, the desk rocketing for Gearrick with all the force of the Nomad itself, and then some.
Time seemed to slow down as adrenaline in his system prepared him to either flee the oncoming desk, or do something to stop it. The decision was simplified by the realization that there was nowhere to run, as Gearrick had dodged himself straight into a corner; not surprising considering it would have left fewer sides for things to fly at him from during the metal maelstrom.
Scowling in determination, Gearrick lifted his right hoof and prepared to put his device to the test. The first ring on his right hoof spun, emitting a low-frequency sound pulse that Gearrick couldn't even hear. That pulse echoed off of the oncoming desk at the speed of sound, and the second ring spun the opposite direction, sensing the change in frequency of the echoed wave.
His suit reacted instantly, emitting the automatically calculated resonant frequency of the desk. As if he had been wielding a sword of legend, the desk split straight down the middle, and then blew apart, just in time for the pieces to part ahead of Gearrick's upraised hoof, missing him completely.
Mick wouldn't have been able to see or hear what Gearrick had done to destroy the desk, and so he simply resorted to cursing at his latest failure. Keeping an ear out for the high-pitched sound that would signal the next incoming electromagnetic barrage, Gearrick checked his energy meter.
Luckily it didn't seem like the frequency detector or emitter required much in the way of electricity, but just moving around in the suit used quite a bit of energy, especially dodging like he had been. He was already below a half, and once the capacitors got that low, they would only bleed off all the faster.
On came the whining, and Gearrick quickly blasted the incoming office chair and a heftier piece of the shattered desk into tiny bits. A piece of the chair kept on coming though, and as Gearrick moved to dodge, the gears that helped aid the movement of his left foreleg locked up, groaning against a small piece of metal caught between them.
Gearrick yanked the piece of metal out with his magic, but realized a little too late that he should have redirected the incoming chunk of chair beforehoof as it crashed into him. The impact threw him into the wall directly behind him, and bent one of the plates on his left shoulder.
He hurried to his hooves, but cried out in pain as the bent plate gashed the skin underneath it. It didn't restrict the movement of the suit, but any motion with that leg was sure to cut him again.
Groaning with the effort, Gearrick focused his magic on the bronze plate. It was solid, but where it had bent was thin, and so he tugged as hard as he could with his copper aura, bending it moment by moment until it no longer gouged his shoulder.
Panting from the pain of the injury and the magical strain, Gearrick turned his eyes back to the oddly silent Mick Magnet.
The pony simply stood there, grinning behind his blue-tinted face-plate, waiting for Gearrick to finish his repairs. He noted the blood dripping from the badly-bent shoulder plating and grinned. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?" he chuckled, the suit emitting another high-pitched whine.
"Cocky bastard," Gearrick groaned, blasting apart another piece of the desk. A beeping sound made him aware that his energy gauge was nearly empty. This constant defense was only wearing him down, whereas his enemy had an infinite supply of energy.
Gearrick's suit could pull the electrical energy out of anything it contacted, so long as it made contact long enough. It was how he had cut all of the power to the lamps outside the lobby, draining that system to charge his suit, pulling enough current to trigger the breakers.
With the desk and its lamp destroyed, the only remaining thing he could reach to pull electricity from was Magnet's invention itself. It would be risky to try and approach him in a metal suit, and Gearrick would quickly burn all of the remaining energy he had just trying to get there. What he needed was a distraction.
Focusing on Magnet's brightly glowing face-plate, an idea struck him. Before Mick could act again, Gearrick pointed his right hoof at the ceiling. The lights there shattered suddenly, raining tinkling glass down all across the room and dropping it into darkness, except for the pulsing blue light of Mick's suit.
Gearrick's red-tinted goggles had saved him this time; red light helped to preserve vision in the dark, and with Mick lit up like a torch it was easy for him to see. However, with his glowing face-plate Mick's vision was unable to adjust to the sudden darkness easily, and Gearrick was careful to ensure that the electric rings of his own suit were dark as he slowly crept his way into a more optimal position in the gloom.
Unable to see his enemy, Mick's suit pulsed again and again, emitting high-pitched whines as he blasted around with heavy EM fields at random. The office doors screeched as one such field tried to fold them in on themselves, and Gearrick was glad that such a crushing force hadn't been directed at him. It would have easily broken his legs and caved in his chest in the half-suit he was wearing.
It was only a matter of time, of course, before Mick eventually hit him, or started using push-and-pull fields that would affect the entire room. Gearrick didn't have the energy left to negate a complex field like that, so he would have to act quickly. Magnet's suit seemed to be limited as to how often it could emit a new field, though it could sustain or modify one it had already emitted for quite a while, as earlier with the flying metal problem. That high-pitched sound coupled with the delay probably meant that Mick's suit housed a series of capacitor banks to make itself tick, and that was something Gearrick could work with.
Timing it carefully, Gearrick raised his right hoof and let the rings charge up, lighting his new position behind Mick and to his left.
"Found you!" Mick roared, the suit emitting the high-pitched sound Gearrick had been waiting for.
His own suit emitted the exact same noise, the three rings on his right hoof spinning faster and faster, the noise growing in volume.
Mick's suit flickered, the lights flaring brightly for a moment. Suddenly one of his armor panels popped loudly and sparks flew from his shoulder, the lines of light in that section fading to nothing. The magnetic field he had been trying to project did little more than rattle the plating on Gearrick's armor.
Gearrick wasted no time as Mick looked over his damaged shoulder plate. He knew that the armor was far from disabled; he had only managed to pop a single capacitor bank at the most, and Mick was still plugged in. If he could get close enough, the fields emitted by the other suit would be less powerful, because Mick would risk affecting himself.
Gearrick closed the gap and punched with his left hoof, slamming it down on Mick's other shoulder, the one that was still lit. Sparks flared as the large ring on his left hoof spun, metal grinding on metal. The shoulder plating hummed loudly and suddenly the orange light of the sparks was mixed with the blue light of electricity.
Bolts of miniature lightning arced from the shoulder plating and into the ring on Gearrick's left hoof. He watched in satisfaction as the meter on his left shoulder started to rise, siphoning the electricity out of his enemy's armor by touch alone.
Mick growled and pushed at him with a new EM field, but again Gearrick pointed his right hoof and matched the sound of his suit, blowing out another bank of capacitors and halting the Markiver Device's progress for the moment.
Time was of the essence, and so Gearrick watched his energy meter like a hawk as he continued to draw energy from his foe. When the gauge finally read that it was full, he leapt back from Mick, the triangular wings flaring from his back and all four rings on his armor spinning like mad.
This was it, the last standoff; all of the energy his suit could muster would have to go into this offensive, Gearrick knew. Mick jabbed at him with an EM field, and at that exact second Gearrick fired.
The triangular wings on his back clicked and then rocked backwards, dragging Gearrick a full step with them as they produced a massive wave of low-frequency, high volume sound. Mick's magnetic field picked him up and threw him hard into the doors of the office, just as he had expected, knocking the wind from him.
His work was already done. The heavy wave of sound blasted into Mick, picking his suit up from the ground. The wires tethering it to the power system snapped, electricity arcing for a brief moment before the connection was fully severed.
Then the shock wave shattered the windows of Mick's office and propelled him through them, into the cold night air just below the Veil.
Gearrick gasped, struggling to his hooves and staggering to the shattered window as fast as he could. He had thrown the stallion out the fortieth floor window! Oh Celestia, he had killed him!
His heart stopped as he looked down to see Mick stuck to the side of the building. He was using magnetism to hold himself to the metal struts that helped the sturdy building stand so tall, but the blue lights on his suit were fading fast, and he was slowly sliding down the side of the building.
This was Gearrick's fault. With the capacitors he had popped now out of commission and the suit unplugged, Mick didn't have the energy he needed to climb back up; or hold himself steady for long.
He was diabolical, but Gearrick was no murderer.
Using his magic, Gearrick caught Mick just as the lighting on his suit gave out, the older Stallion crying out in horror as he fell a few short feet. But the copper glow of Gearrick's magic held Mick steady as he pulled the old stallion up the few yards he needed to set his trembling and now harmless adversary on the floor of the ruined office.
Both he and Mick were breathing hard and trembling with nerves. Still gasping for air, Mick finally spoke up.
"You... saved my life..." he panted, eyes closed behind the dim, glass screen of his powerless suit, his voice muffled without the speakers to amplify it.
"I... almost killed you..." Gearrick panted back. Many more minutes passed before their breathing had settled, but Mick wasn't finished.
"You certainly could have," the older pony said tiredly, the adrenaline in his system wearing off and leaving him fatigued. "But you didn't."
Gearrick's reply came short as he realized that Mick was right. He could have let him fall, left him to die. The very idea that that power had been in his hooves sickened him, and so his reply was heavy with growling determination. "I never would have. Hell, I didn't even mean to blow you out the window."
"I should have had the blinds down," Mick muttered, referring to the metal barrier that would block out all light and sound from the city below, a barrier that would have kept him from flying out into the night.
The mental image of simple, wooden household blinds caught Gearrick off guard. With his nerves still itching and that ridiculous picture in his head, he began to laugh. After only a moment's hesitation, Mick lost all composure as well, and joined him. The two of them laughed like stallions who had fought against death instead of each other, and emerged victorious.
As the laughing faded at last, Mick sighed in defeat. "You beat me. My greatest invention, and you managed to beat it with nothing but scraps."
Gearrick didn't know what to say, surprised by the sudden, simple statement.
"It took me years to design this suit... What's your secret?" Mick asked, still simply lying there and eying Gearrick's armor.
"Sound," Gearrick said quietly, unable to find the harm in telling him after a moment's deliberation. "Simple waves, transferred particle to particle. You were so focused on me that your suit's magnetism couldn't have stopped a sound wave. Even if it wasn't directed straight at me, a powerful EM field would have bent any light-based weapon, or any fields of my own, so those were out of the question. I had to improvise, and when I recalled the sound that your suit makes before emitting a field..."
Mick let out a single, disbelieving chuckle to himself. "Resonant frequencies... Like an opera singer breaking a wineglass with her voice. That's how you shattered the lights and destroyed my capacitors."
"And your security desk," Gearrick replied idly, finally leaning back to ease the various aches and pains of his body as his nerves settled some. He looked over the office his sound wave had obliterated, just as amazed by the power of his own invention as Mick was.
"High-frequency waves to disable my armor, and then a low-frequency wave to create air-pressure... Absolutely brilliant," Mick admitted, his tone sounding sad but sincere. "I never would have thought of it; it's no wonder you bested my Markiver device."
That statement shocked Gearrick. "Brilliant?" he asked quietly, unable to believe he was hearing those words from the same pony who had talked down to him at the last contest. The same pony who had barred his entry into the guild was now begrudgingly offering him praise.
"I've underestimated you too many times now. Too many to keep on believing that you're an idiot..." he grumbled. "It seems that the degree isn't everything after all. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have taken you more seriously, treated you with more respect. Then none of this would have happened," he sighed, the obvious consequences of his unlawful actions coming to the forefront of his mind.
Gearrick was honestly speechless, unable to comprehend the praise he was receiving. It was everything he had wanted to hear for the past two years; an admission from Mick Magnet, the stallion who had turned down and laughed at his guild application, that he was a great steamtech engineer. It certainly wasn't a friendly admission, but it was real.
"Are you saying that if you could do it all again, you'd let me into the guild?" Gearrick asked, needing to hear those words so that he could know beyond a doubt that it was exactly what Mick was saying.
"No," Mick said simply, but he didn't seem cold or spiteful; his tone remained neutral for that single word.
"No?" Gearrick asked, frustration growing in his voice. "Then what the hell are you saying?"
"You'd be wasted on the guild," Mick sighed. "I've met my match in you. I lead a life of double-talk and shady business, and that's what this company is founded on. I've never met another tinker like you, and having had my life flash before my eyes tonight, I can honestly say I'd rather not see you or anypony else make the mistakes I did, or be a part of this whole mess. I'll face my arrest like a stallion, and I'll admit to what I've done. I never meant to stoop so low, but I have; my pride got in the way."
"Mick..." Gearrick said quietly, unable to comprehend what the old stallion must have relived in that moment where he was certain he was going to die. Something horrible enough to make him rethink his life as he lay on the ruined floor of his once-proud top-floor office.
"Don't feel sorry for me, I did this to myself!" Mick growled suddenly, seeming much more his usual self as he lifted a hoof and shook it before letting it fall back down weakly. "I let Phyla's fast-talk get me into kidnapping, for Celestia's sake. There are no excuses; I even tried to kill you," he muttered. "And not even two days ago I was afraid that Phyla would be a killer, yet here I am much closer to the mark."
"Well, neither of us are killers, at least," Gearrick said coarsely, grunting as he forced himself up to his hooves. "If you're lucky, Princess Celestia will forgive you enough to give you a fair trial."
Their moment of mutual understanding, however brief and begrudging it had been, was finally past. There was too much bad blood to allow things to change between them, no matter how much it seemed that Mick had realized his failures. Gearrick was not in any hurry to forgive him, but he had already had his chance to judge Mick Magnet. It was the Princess' place to decide his fate now.
"If I'm lucky," Mick muttered, with an empty chuckle at the end.
"In exchange for saving your life, you owe me something," Gearrick said gruffly, the two of them enemies once more.
"On the corner of seventy-third and Oak Avenue. Our old offices used to be there, before the company really took off. If Phyla took her anywhere, that's where it would be. It's in the old business district, so I doubt anypony would have noticed; the perfect hiding place," Mick divulged quietly.
Gearrick was already heading for the door, not willing to waste anymore time. "I'll make sure some paramedics come looking for you... and the police."
"When you find Phyla, hit her once for me," Mick grumbled.
Gearrick stopped, scowling back over his shoulder. "I won't hit a mare, Mr. Magnet, but I bet Twilight will."