//------------------------------//
// Moon Colony - 2185 
// Story: The Journeymare Project 
// by Scarlett Haze 
//------------------------------//

	Gauge's vision returned to the sight of a departing spacecraft, leaving the base as it went into starry space. The sight alone made Gauge pause, taking in the vastness of space and remembering his first moments of learning just how far that the world had reached out into space and its planets.

"Shuttle One has just departed from the east gantry," a male voice announced over the intercom, snapping Gauge back into focus as to why he was here.

"Good first choice," Eris cooed. "We go a little bit into the past, head up on the moon, maybe take a few photos of where Nightmare Moon may have rolled around in boredom before she came back, save an entire colony of ponies, zebras, griffons, diamond dogs, and whatever else is up here, and then-" Her lengthy speech was cut short as Gauge moved forward toward the colony entrance and the doors opened, showing a large bipedal robot start coming their way. It stood above him as it spun its four-pronged left claw, the right arm consisting of a high-powered plasma rifle.

The robot kept moving forward toward Gauge, its one optical lens focused solely on him. Gauge could barely react as the robot gripped Gauge by the throat and lifted him up, making Gauge gasp for air. With one scan of the robot's lens, it pulled back and then sent Gauge flying backwards back down the hallway, eventually skidding to a halt.

Gauge groaned as he felt the impact slowly subside before he got up, seeing his attacker go down a separate hallway.

"Not very much of a talker in that one," Eris commented as Gauge checked his energy levels, seeing no effect caused.

"I'll garner a guess and say that robot is what we're looking for," Gauge determinedly said, a fire in his eyes.

"Tunnel pod has just departed off the transport sector," the friendly male voice announced over the intercom.

With little prompt, Gauge went after to where the robot had went to, passing the sliding doors that read 'Maintenance Transport'. Entering the dark room, Gauge could only see dull orange lights in a tunnel that seemed to indicate where the robot had run off to. Carefully attempting to not trip over something, Gauge checked around to see if there was a way to call back the transport pod, but found nothing.

"Well, this isn't going to get us anywhere," Eris mentioned as Gauge gave a sigh.

"Maybe if I can get into the mainframe, I could get a few more clues and maybe another way in," Gauge mumbled to himself, already moving to the exit back to the main hallway.

Gauge went back to the hallway and stepped into the crossroads he was at previously. Looking at the four directions, he saw the colony main entrance, the shuttle pod section, a door reading 'Restricted Area', and then back to where the maintenance doors were.

Approaching the main entrance, Gauge stopped and pressed a button on his prosthesis, activating a scan that would detect lifeforms roughly fifty feet around him. "No detection, good start."

Entering the main entrance, Gauge noticed the area where he would check in was completely barren, puzzling him. "I would've thought that someone would be here, a guard, receptionist, maybe even just a simple check-in computer."

Eris chuckled, "Maybe we caught them during a lunch break and that's why that robot wasn't being chased after by anyone."

Gauge gave a nod and peeked over the counter, noticing a chair was knocked over. Even stranger was the fact that a keycard was left behind, giving maximum permissions to different areas of the colony. Picking up the card, Gauge gave a scan to it, only noting that it was just recently printed. Stashing the card into his inventory, Gauge moved to a computer. "Alright, time to learn some more about this colony."

With little more than a few quick keystrokes, Gauge had brought up and stored various pieces of information about the colony. "Let's see, Tourist information, not really. Sights of the moon, no. This looks like what I want, Colonial History."

Gauge waited patiently as the program talked about the fascination of the moon, early build designs, and finally what he had been looking for, information on the maintenance section and restricted areas.

"The generator of this colony's atmospheric shield lies far beneath the moon's surface, leaving a legacy behind of the miner's caverns that have been made underneath. While construction of the colony still remains incomplete, the project should be finally completed by the end of this year. The maintenance tunnels and restricted areas are the only places on the colony which are inaccessible for the moment as many of the tunnels and supports are still being worked on. However, life can still be made capable and eventually the entirety of the Samurai Moon Colony will be opened for the public."

With one final pull of information, Gauge placed map information into his mapping biochip so he would figure out where he was; should he become lost.

"Aaaaand, we should be able to ride the tunnel pod," Eris finally spoke up. "Sent a message out to have the pod come right back, so we should be able to chase after that robot." She went quiet as Gauge left to go back to the maintenance tunnel. "What exactly are you going to do with that robot, anyway? I did notice that you don't really have anything to protect yourself with, like, you know, a gun or something."

Gauge entered through the sliding doors of the maintenance tunnel again, seeing the lights of the approaching pod come. "It would be too risky to bring weapons of any kind across time," he began explaining. "If for some reason I was disarmed, or worse, someone else could hear my shots, the risk of the timeline being altered in a different way would be there. The gun would show technology that would have yet to be perfected and perhaps in a worst case scenario, we would undergo another Great War if someone had the bright idea to use it for themselves."

Eris only seemed to slightly understand, just nodding the entire time Gauge spoke.

The pod finally docked at its station as the lights of the room came up, letting Gauge get a better view of what was around him. It was a small room, but there was really nothing of value that was being stored. Curiously, Gauge set around the room, peeking around barrels and boxes to see if he could find something. "There has to be at least something around here that may have been left behind, hand drill, welding tool, something."

Entering the pod, Gauge opened a compartment door, revealing a collapsible power crowbar. Taking it out and putting it to its full length, Gauge could hear the power crystal inside the tool hum as the tool revealed its ultrasonic nature. "It'll at least do if I get jumped by that giant again, but I don't think I can take it out with just this."

Gauge whipped the crowbar back into its collapsed state and put it into his inventory as Eris called out, "All aboard! Next stop, erm, the... place this pod was last. I thought I had something."

Gage turned to the controls and noted the screen asking for his identification card. Out of habit, Gauge reached for his own personal keycard before pausing and instead grabbing the Samurai keycard he had grabbed a few moments ago. Placing in the card, Gauge pushed the lever forward on the pod. The pod warmed up momentarily before running forward on its rails, letting out a bright light in front of it to let Gauge see in front of him. The trip was not of any spectacular nature, but Gauge let his thoughts focus once again at the issue at hoof.

"Any guesses as to why anyone would not want us to interact with the aliens?" Gauge shouted over the loud rumble of the wheels.

Eris thought over the question for a moment. "Best answer I could think of would be over a personal dispute, whoever it is that's causing this doesn't like humans, period."

Gauge's face contorted in anger and confusion of his own, "It has to be more complicated than that."

The pod finally rested at its terminal and Gauge stepped out. A quick look at the map told him that he was further into the moon's core, but the map was having difficulty receiving information from the main computer of the colony.

Passing through the maintenance transport doors, Gauge found himself looking into a much darker area, with lights only spaced just enough to light a single section of the area going to a crosswalk.

Eris gave a noise as she shuddered. "Whoa! Major temporal flux nearby."

Gauge checked around him to see if something was off, but all he saw was a lone oxygen mask station, a door leading to the Shield Generator that kept the atmosphere in check for the colony, keeping the oxygen in and blocking the outside atmosphere. The other door was an air lock leading to... well, Gauge wasn't sure. Bringing up the mapping biochip again, he grunted, now getting no signal from the mainframe. Setting the map biochip into manual mode, Gauge could only hope that if he was lost down here, he'd know where he was before at least.

Before he could make a move, the Shield Generator doors opened, showing the same bipedal robot from before. Gauge took a defensive pose and began thinking of any way he could perhaps disorient or confuse the colossus.

It again got close to him, staring down with its optical lens before an unearthly low toned voice came from it.

"Out of my way, pony, or die."

Gauge gave a quick look around him before ducking into the small section where the oxygen mask station was. Looking back at the robot, he watched it enter the room of the Maintence Transport.

The male voice on the intercom confirmed the worst case scenario that Gauge could face as it said, "Tunnel pod has just departed from lower transport sector."

"Yeeuh-oh," Eris quietly gulped. "I have no way to tell the transport to come back from this far away."

"That's fine," Gauge said, gritting his teeth. "Let's see what that robot was doing in that generator room."

Having the doors opened, Gauge had to blink a few times because of the brightness that came from within. A column of pure white energy rested at the center of the room, no doubt the generator that kept the shield up.

"That's some heavy magic energy in there," Eris said before giving a sniff. "And it's the really nasty kind, like the roast you like a turkey kind, if its not checked."

Gauge paused, still not wanting to pass through the doors just yet. "My biosuit can protect me from a lot of the elements around me, including magical energies to an extent. See if you can't alter the suit to compensate for what is in there."

Eris hummed and gave her tongue a few clicks before she gave a huff. "It'll hold captain," she said in a Scottish accent. "But if ya stay in there too long, the ship canna handle it."

"In general terms," Gauge said with annoyance.

"If you stay in there for more than five minutes, your entire body is going to fry," Eris responded.

Gauge remained still for a moment before stepping onto the platform in front of him. The platform's glass screen lit up, showing Gauge that this was a diagnostic and repair platform which could spin around the area of the shield generator. Pressing the arrow to begin moving, Gauge kept an eye out for something out of place. He stopped the platform when he saw a panel ripped from the generator and pressed another button to move forward towards it.

Approaching the torn panel, Gauge didn't need to wait for the system to tell him something was wrong as he stared down a blinking device that was jammed into a card reader.

"Warning, foreign object detected in access card slot, analyze object or attempt removal?" The platform read back to him.

Not taking a chance, Gauge let the platform scan the object, unsure of what would happen if it was suddenly tampered with. Sure enough, the scan checked the object and confirmed it to be a timed detonation device connected to an explosive charge. His only hope in disarming the bomb was to try and get a disarm signal sent to it.

"Can you hook up a link to the bomb, Eris?" Gauge hoarsely gasped, not wanting to make a move so close to something so deadly.

"Do I look like an expert bomb handler?!" Eris screamed at him. "I don't know about you, but I'd much rather let a professional handle it besides me."

"You're not going to handle it, I will," Gauge quickly said, knowing that time was against him both with the radiation and now this bomb. "Just link up to the bomb and bring up the electrosynaptic connections on the platform screen. If my gut is right, all I need to do is make sure the right nodes are in the right place and this explosive can be shut off."

Eris gave a noise of uncertainty before Gauge saw the platform screen present the screen, but what he expected was something entirely different. Instead of a simple logistic code, it was a puzzle asking to fill in the connections with colored nodes.

"What is this?" Gauge said, already knowing who was the cause behind it.

"I did what you asked," Eris whined. "Don't blame me if I wanted to make disarming a bomb a bit of a challenge by making it a puzzle."

Gauge began placing the three colored nodes he was given as a choice into the three connection slots. On his first run, the system let him know he had only placed one node in the right place. The second time around was simple as he just swapped colors on the second and third connection and the puzzle was completed.

"Now accessing level 2."

Gauge watched as the screen presented the same three connection slots but now a fourth node had become available. Ignoring every urge to groan in frustration, Gauge pressed on. After two failed attempts to get any of the combinations right, Gauge continued down the line of possibilities. "1,2,3 didn't work. 2,3,4 was also a bust, so let's try 4,1,2."

"Zero nodes correct."

Gauge gave a grin, knowing there was only one possible outcome remaining as he put in nodes 3, 4, 1 and watched the screen move into the next level, only adding an additional node.

"Damn you, Eris!" Gauge screamed as he saw a fifth node now available for the choosing. Gauge could already feel his suit warming up considerably, his time was running out to get out before he would suddenly burn up by the magical radiation emanating from the generator.

"5, 4, 3," Gauge quickly began tapping. "Damn! 1, 2, 4! Bucking hell!" His attempts were being rushed as his head tried to keep in control to figure out the combinations remaining. "4, 5, 1! Not it!" His heart began racing as his eyes kept searching for something remaining he wasn't aware of. "3, 1, 2!"

Expecting the bomb to go off, Gauge braced himself, but heard the machine give a whir and a click as the bomb came out and landed on the platform Gauge was on.

Eris began applauding, "You did it! This must have been what caused the explosion of the colony! But, the time anomaly is still hanging around... It's the robot! See if you can find it and put a stop to whatever else it may be planning to do!"

Gauge had little time to celebrate as he hurriedly retracted the platform from the generator and moved back to the door. Upon reaching the door, Gauge swept up the card bomb and leaped from the room as the doors shut behind him. His biosuit smoked as it began cooling off from the outside air of the underground hallway.

"Nice moves," Eris commented as Gauge picked himself up from the floor. "However, we still have the problem of us not being able to get out of here."

Gauge looked to his Pegasus chip and contemplated jumping back and then forward back where he was. "It won't work," Gauge mumbled to himself. "The Pegasus is only meant to store one moment of time in its jump. If I jump back to the present and then back again, all my efforts will be moot."

Eris groaned in annoyance, "So many rules you agents have to follow, no wonder you don't want to let the world know of your existance. You're all a bunch of dull office workers disguised under a neat suit."

Gauge stood in the hall and thought of his options when he looked back at the oxygen station and then the air lock.

"We're going to be stuck in these mines for a long time, aren't we?" Eris asked before Gauge removed an oxygen mask from its place.

"I have a thought," Gauge quietly spoke. Sticking the mask in the air refilling station, Gauge heard a low hiss and a red light appear.

"Warning! This air station has just run out of viable oxygen. Please make requests for refills of the air station as soon as possible."

Gauge removed the oxygen mask and scanned it for a moment. "Only three minutes of air."

Eris gave a look of concern to Gauge, "What are you planning in that head of yours?"

Gauge approached the air lock and watched the doors spin open. "Call it a hunch, but if this is a mine, then we can get out."

"How?" Eris questioned. "You wander around aimlessly in a dark shaft before you pass out due to oxygen deprevation?"

Gauge smiled as the doors swung shut behind him and he pressurized the air lock. "No, we find where they're dumping the rocks and ride up and out... hopefully." As he finished saying this, he latched the oxygen mask to his muzzle and spun the air lock to the opposite side.

Stepping out of the air lock, Gauge knew he had little time to focus on the carved walls of the mine he found himself in and began making his way around the area. He continuously checked his Mapping biochip to see where he had been and was seeing that he was in a rather large and extensive area. Occasionally, Gauge would see a working mining bot as it ate through the moon's walls, but his focus was solely on finding where the dumping ground was.

Eris kept her eye on Gauge's timer and barely reacted to anything around when suddenly her ears gave a twitch. "Gauge, we're getting closer to the mainframe again, keep moving forward and I'll try to get a viable map of this place."

Gauge remained quiet, not wanting to waste what little air he had.

Further and further in, Gauge kept getting close to being eaten alive by the mining bots and was pelted with occasional welding sparks by dromes programmed to keep the mine shaft from falling apart. It was becoming clearer as time went on that his breaths were also becoming few and far between as he started to become light-headed.

Stumbling down a hallway, Gauge tried to focus his eyes on something moving and noticed multiple carts of rocks lifting upwards to an unknown destination. He went to turn back when Eris gave a "YES!"

"Get on the cart, Gauge! It's a one-way ticket to the ore processing room!" Eris excitedly screamed.

Gauge nearly collapsed into the cart as it rose, his motor functions now being hindered. He tried to remain awake as he tilted forward on the cart and toppled into a room filled with gears and an air lock on the other side.

"Almost there!" Eris cried. "C'mon, secret time agent pony, get up!"

Gauge struggled forward as the timer of the mask ticked down to the final seconds. The spinning doors of the air lock opened up as Gauge crawled inside. With a final push of effort, Gauge hit the pressurize button and hit the floor. The mask coming off of him as a rush of fresh air entered the air lock.

Eris briefly took consideration of leaving Gauge's AI biochip to try and wake him when Gauge began gasping loudly, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. Gauge used the air lock's walls to support him and pressed his head against the window to see the same hallway he had entered from the beginning. His moment of rest was halted as he watched the robot that forced him to take this desperate action, strut across from him toward the shuttle bay.

"You're not getting away that easy," Gauge scowled as he pushed the spin button and faced the door.

The doors opened as Gauge sprinted forward toward the direction of the bot. He watched it as from the far end it entered a shuttle pod and prepared to rocket off. With little thought, Gauge rushed toward the last remaining pod and entered in it, preparing to give chase.

As the computer went through its systems check, a series of communications from the colony began to come up.

"Shuttle 2 has just departed, but according to scans there's no one inside. Do we have permissions to bring back the shuttle due to faulty launch?"

"Roger that, Shuttle 3 has just been approved for... uh, hold on a moment. Shuttle 3 is preparing for launch this instant.

"Who is it? None of the security team is scheduled for drop launch!

"We're unsure, but we are reading a lifesign in the shuttle. As it is, its too late to stop its launch sequence."

"Very well, then we're going to try to establish communications between shuttles 3 and 2, perhaps see if we can understand what's going on."

Eris shut off communications and gave an innocent face, "Ooops."

Gauge rolled his eyes as the shuttle shot forward, the computer was on auto-pilot as Gauge noted the shuttle ahead of him and waited until both of them were beyond the moon's gravitational pull to activate the weapons system.

"Ohohoho," Eris laughed, "We're going to blow that bot to smitherens!"

"I've got a better idea," Guage said as he activated the energy dampening beam. "It's clear that bot has information on why its here, and I'm going to pull whatever info he has out of its head."

Gauge took a couple of shots at the ship ahead and watched as it began to struggle to maintain its speed.

"Alright, time to haul this ship back," Gauge grinned as he activated the tractor beam.

At first, it seemed the beam wasn't working, but Gauge was shocked when he saw the thrusters on the other ship blow up.

"What'd you do?!" Eris yelled.

"Scans of the ship indicate damage caused in attempts to break away from tractor beam. All onboard electrical systems have been overloaded. It is safe to transport within ship at this time."

Gauge let his shuttle teleport him to the opposing ship. He stood behind the chair of the bot and brought out his sonic crowbar, not taking chances on what was going to come next.

The robot spun around as the electrical systems sparked all around him, it wasn't going to last for too long.

"Alright," Gauge yelled out. "Robot, state your name and purpose!"

The robot recieved a large bolt of electricity from the console as it spoke its final words. "The alien ship... must... be... dessssttttrrrrrooooooyyyyyeeeeedddd." The robot bent forward, exposing the top of its head to Gauge.

Gauge eased back and put the crowbar back in his inventory. Carefully pulling back a panel on its head, Gauge looked down at the biochips that rested inside. Besides a mapping biochip that gave Gauge proof of where the robot was, Gauge recieved a Shield biochip and an Optical Memory biochip.

With satisfaction, Gauge closed the panel and watched as the robot suddenly vanished from sight.

"Let's go home, time agent," Eris said with determinism. "We've got two more times and places to go."