The Pegasus machine returned to Gauge's senses as he gave a sigh of relief. He could proudly say that he was the first agent to not only find a time anomaly, but to also correct it. His rump found the steel floor of the Pegasus to be comforting as he rested, letting his A.I. connect to Pegasus' databanks and monitors.
"Ready to see a movie?" Eris questioned, her face appearing in one of the many monitors around Gauge.
"Yeah," Gauge forced himself back up, his bones giving little pops as he stretched. "Bring up the optical memory chip we pulled from that bot. With any luck, we'll get a look at the creator and maybe a look into what they're planning on accomplishing by doing this."
Eris gave a nod before her face shrunk away and a video player came up.
A series of static came up before finally clearing up to show a haggard looking light-brown pony with dark-brown mane as he pulled away from the eye of the now active robot.
Gauge's voice couldn't make it out as he mouthed a single word, "No."
"Ares. I'm sending you to Equestria's colony on the Moon in the year, 2185. There, you must accomplish two events, simultaneously. First, you will plant the delayed-action explosive device I've given you in such a way that you will WIPE OUT the entire colony by blowing up their atmospheric generator!"
"Ah," Eris nervously coughed. "Should've made that easier on you if I knew it was going to nuke an entire section of the moon."
"But, before the bomb detonates, you must hijack an armed escort shuttle and DESTROY the alien who is reported in that vicinity at that exact time!"
"That was what that robot was doing," Gauge pondered. "It wasn't running away, it was going to try and take out the ship we tried to make first contact with."
"The result of this plan is two-edged."
The pony began chuckling to himself as a smile crept on his face. Gauge's heart continued to sink as the face of the pony that came up with the creation of the time machine looked back into the lens of its creation.
"Equestria, will THINK that the aliens wiped out their colony. The aliens will think Equestria destroyed their ship. What better plan could I have? To keep everyone reminded of WHO the real enemy is and where the real danger lies."
The video cut off and Eris returned on-screen, her focus on Gauge as he sat back down again. "You, uh... You feeling okay there?"
Gauge remained quiet as he tried looking around himself, possibly attempting to fool himself that he could find what caused him to see an unreal possibility. He wasn't aware that Eris had moved back to his prosthesis until she began letting out alarm warnings.
"Hey! Get your head back in the game," Eris yelled out as she shut the alarms off.
Gauge continued to not answer Eris; to her annoyance. Putting his focus toward the next anomaly, Gauge set the Pegasus to prepare for the time jump. Finally, as the Pegasus began to warm-up, Gauge found his voice.
"If Time Turner, the creator of the time machine, is really behind this..." Gauge began as he focused on the year of 2310 and the World Science Center. "Then he has a lot to explain for himself after I fix all of this!"
Gauge pressed the button to activate the jump and shut his eyes in preparation for the dizzying effects that awaited him.
As sure as the effects took hold and Gauge found his hooves on solid ground again, his eyes opened to a robot at the opposite end of a room.
"I've been expecting you."
Before Gauge could react to his situation, he only saw a flash come from the hand of the robot and a sudden pain strike him in the chest. His vision began to blur all over again, but he knew it wasn't because of the time jump. His legs began to buckle under his weight as he noticed the robot had altered its form to a pony and trotted away.
Placing a hoof near the spot that had hit him, he fast realized that he was struck by a needle. Gripping it between his hoof groove and yanking it out, Gauge's vision faded once more and his body hit the ground.
***
"Gauge?" Eris asked for the twelfth time in a row. She took a quick look at Gauge's vitals again, seeing his heart rate going lower and lower as time continued to pass.
"That does it, I'm going to have to use desperate measures!" Eris yelled out to no one. The draconequus phased out of the ocular prosthesis and stood out in the lab they had transported in. Her physical form had all the pieces, but many were out of place as she took a step with her right foot, I mean, head.
"No time for serious business!" Eris determinedly spoke to herself. "Gauge is in need of something to fix that knockout juice and I'm going to have to find one!" Sweeping up the needle with her paw, Eris focused on the last remaining liquids inside. "Neurotoxin, a lethal dose of it too." She kept spinning the needle as her eyes bore into the glass like a laser. "Dimenhydrinate compound. I think I can work something out."
A snap of her fingers later, Eris was surrounded with test tubes, bunsen burners, beakers, and a variety of colors in different containers. As she reached for a tube with her claw, she froze in place, "Wait a minute!" Reaching into an invisible back pocket, she pulled out goggles for her eyes. "Safety first, children! Always wear eye protection when you are attempting to build Thorazine molecules from scratch!"
Cautiously, she slipped the goggles on her eyes before immediately headbutting the table and splashing liquids everywhere. "Lookit! I'm doing science!" Eris yelled out over the loud banging she was causing before finally holding a test tube with a multi-color liquid over her head. Lowering the tube, she gave a smell to it and tilted her head back. "Didn't expect science to smell like that! The things I do for the sake of adventuring."
Moving over to Gauge, she placed his head on her knee and moved his head to open his airway. "Down the hatch, Gauge, you can thank me after the cure is in you."
***
Violently, Gauge found himself waking up on the polished stone floor. Pushing off the ground, his stance was too shaky to keep as he slid back to the ground. "Easy, easy there," Eris spoke into his ear. "Let me help you up."
Gauge felt a cloth wrap under his barrel and chest before it tightened and started lifting him up. "What's going on?"
Eris kept pulling on the rope that was attached to the cloth until Gauge was looking at her eye-to-eye. "Can't keep away from nearly dying, can you? First at the moon's mines and now here."
Gauge felt a pain at the side of his head and put a hoof on it to try and relieve himself. "I got shot by something."
Eris kept her grip on the rope as she revealed the needle that hit him. "Whoever sent that morphing machine knew that he'd be chased after."
Gauge gripped the needle and scanned it, looking at what may have been inside. "Poison?"
"Neuro-toxin," Eris responded. "Enough to make Cerberus woozy. Plenty to kill a pony." Eris set Gauge down on his own hooves again, allowing him time to balance himself. In a flash, Eris was gone from sight and back into Gauge's prosthesis. "Let's go after that machine before it can cause any more damage."
Gauge went to go towards the door, when a floating hologram caught his eye. The image was strikingly familiar to him. He watched as the image spun around, making him tense up. "It's Turner's robot, Ares. Same model, same design."
"Like, the robot from the Moon, Ares?" Eris questioned. "You think Time Turner took this design?"
Gauge shook his head, "He'd be too smart to just take ideas without converting it to what he would want." Cracking his neck, he turned around and took full view of the room he was in. "I need to see what else is hidden in here."
Looking at a desk, Gauge carefully peered through what was left on it. A handled object hidden in a corner demanded investigation, prompting Gauge to pick it up and look at it. A scan revealed that it was filled with Argon gas.
"A bit odd to put Argon in a container like this," Gauge remarked. Cautiously placing the Argon container in his already growing storage compartment, Gauge continued to shuffle around the desk until he found a keycard belonging to Time Turner himself.
"Scatterbrain, no doubt," Eris commented. "No real organization except for putting it all in a single place. I respect that level of chaos, gives a nice middle ground to it and order, don't you think?"
A bump to the table let a Nitrogen container roll out, prompting Gauge to grab it before it fell off and hit the floor. "That could have been bad. I'll stuff this in my inventory as well, at least until I can put it somewhere where it won't potentially blow and release intense cold to a hapless victim."
Having exhausted his options, Gauge felt ready to leave the room. Stepping out, the building was well designed, multiple rooms to which Gauge could only guess would serve as 'personal offices' jumped out at him through the many hallways that he looked down. Even a peek at a map let him know of which rooms belonged to what individual, but he only wanted to look for one name.
"Alright, Turner," Gauge mumbled, having found the door that would lead him into Time Turner's office. "Let's see what you hide behind closed doors."
Bringing out Time Turner's keycard, Gauge moved through the door and stepped into the cramped office. It had your typical fare, darts that were thrown at a pony's face, a snake box with a heat lamp, multiple items hung for display, but good luck moving around in there.
Shuffling through, Gauge noticed a blinking console telling Time Turner he had two messages sent to him. Feeling ashamed about having to peek through Time Turner's life, he asked forgiveness of himself before playing them. The first message talked about Time Turner's lack of information being sent about a subject that he and somepony else were working on. The second message talked about Time Turner's apparent anxiety attacks and his prescribed medication.
"And this is why I'm in the business of chaos," Eris sighed. "No stress needed to think illogically, it just happens."
Gauge pulled away from the messages and looked to what Time Turner had put on his walls, namely the M-Ag 1C rifle, a weapon that revolutionized and devolved many ponies in the Great War. The way it worked was that it took the very horns of unicorns and made them into a weapon with no need to stop and reload. All military personnel kept this weapon near and dear to their own hearts, until it shot them down. Gauge had barely realized that he had grabbed the weapon and was feeling its weight in his hooves.
"I don't like rules," Eris spoke up, snapping Gauge's attention. "But, I need to let you know that as a TSA agent, you can't shoot that thing. Also, you really shouldn't be carrying that thing around sooo... put it back."
Gauge gave a nod and placed the gun back in its proper place.
"But, oh baby, did I enjoy what happened with any other creature that gripped that sucker," Eris continued, making Gauge cringe. "I especially liked it when it overcharged and did some neat little things, like... well, nevermind. Business at hoof, I suppose."
Gauge continued to familiarize himself with Time Turner's information, even learning about what Time Turner had discovered on his own while he was here. One thing that made Gauge raise an eyebrow was a topic about 'Smart Alloys'. Listening to Turner, Gauge pinned down that these metals responded in different ways to certain elements or contacts. He also pinned down that Argon appeared to disrupt these alloys from altering their shapes and essentially destroyed them.
"That robot must be made out of this alloy," Gauge thought aloud. "Its the only way to explain that shift from huge metal beast into pony."
Before leaving the office, Gauge read through Time Turner's notes on his discovery of Time Bending and nodded as he went through it. By taking the concept of the smart alloys and applying it in a biological stance, Time Turner applied those same concepts into the time distortion theory. It pained Gauge to see Time Turner so happy in his personal vlog in comparison to the disheveled mess he had saw before.
Gauge picked himself up and prepared to walk out when a scientist appeared right in front of him.
"Oh! Time Turner! Aren't you supposed to be speaking at the conference... right now?" The scientist asked, his large glasses barely hanging onto his nose.
Gauge was stunned silent, if he was caught like this, the effect on the time line would be worse than before! He had nearly reached his Pegasus recall function when the scientist in front of him smacked himself in the head.
"Wait a minute. If you were speaking at the conference, you wouldn't be there. Here." He continued, laughing to himself before coughing and slowly shuffling in a direction. "Sometimes I just think too much. Goodbye, Time Turner. Don't eat anything toxic."
Gauge watched the white maned scientist trot away, his head turned down as he stared deeply into his notepad.
"Close call," Eris said. "We about had a disaster on our hands, smart thinking about the silent treatment, there."
Gauge kept quiet as he left Turner's office and moved more cautiously in the direction of the conference hall. Finding his way, he got to the door that would lead him to the conference, but noted that it looked tampered with.
"Seems like our robotic friend didn't want us to follow, Gauge," Eris noted. "Got something that will force this door open on ya?"
Gauge thought for a moment before reaching into his inventory and bringing out the power crowbar. "Just needs a good tug," Gauge said with a grin as he plunked the crowbar into place and began pulling.
With the sound of cracking, the doors were swung open, leaving Gauge with a view of the running walkway. Stepping in, Gauge felt a shiver of uncertainty. The bot clearly knew that he was coming, it had to be planning a trap of some kind to at least hold him off in order for the killing shot to be made.
That shiver was met with a sinking heart as Gauge noticed the same pony that was the robot stood at the other end of the running walkway, its gun pointed in his direction. While many shots were fired, only one managed to strike Gauge fully, sending him careening to the ground as it continued to move under him.
"Gauge!" Eris yelled, noticing that the energy that kept Gauge's connection with the Pegasus was dramatically cut.
Gauge pulled himself up and eyed his energy meter, giving a sigh as he leaned against a wall to give himself a few seconds to breathe. "Less than 50%," he coughed. "Great. I'll need to pick up the pace then."
Gauge pressed on, watching from nearby that an announcement for a break in the conference to be made as Doctor Castiwho would prepare to make the stage in a short while. Thinking critically, Gauge recalled the video information from the altered timeline that the shot that hit Castiwho came from above him, making him rationalize that the only place the shooter would be is on the lighting rig itself. Playing cautiously, Gauge made his way up to the walkway and prepared himself to make a final stand against this smart alloy robot that had tried so desperately to stop him. Entering, Gauge noticed the robot readying his weapon.
Remembering to Time Turner's information about smart alloys, Gauge brought out the Argon container and hid it behind him. Giving a small whistle to the bot, he managed to catch its attention.
"Hey, metal mouth," Gauge began. "Bet you can't use that gun of yours to end me before I can end you."
The pony growled its unearthly tone before shifting itself back into its colossal form from before. It aimed the gun at Gauge as Gauge responded with a heavy spray of Argon gas in its direction.
The robot didn't know how to react, its form smouldering and crumpling before Gauge as it let out a groan. Finally the machine fell, leaving Gauge to pick apart at its Biochips. Coming out of the experience, Gauge took out its Optical Memory biochip and gained a Retinal biochip as well.
"Two down, one more to go," Eris whooped as the robot disintegrated before them. "Let's see what was in this monster's head and wrap up the last pieces of evidence in this colossal caper of time altering creation!"