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// Chapter 8: surprises and planning 
// Story: Rise of the fallen 
// by Iron Sides 
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Richard stood before his good friend, the president. Something was on the young engineer's mind, but Tyler could not quite place it. When Rich wanted to hide his feels or intended purpose he could put forth an awesome poker face.

A minuted went by before the impatient official finally asked, "What are you doing here Richard?"

"Well, seems we have run into some 'difficulties' in construction." answered Rich

Tyler was growing frustrated, "And what might that be?" he asked, rapping his fingers on the desk top

"The diamond dogs." he replied, "They ripped up a small portion of the tracks 30 miles from Fort Dodge. Gone and wrapped the rails around the damn trees!"

Tyler was now extremely interested. The fate of his new country rested in the hands of his crazy friend and his railroad. Without the steel and iron the country would surely die. "What do you propose we do about it?" he asked

"Explosives are always the answer young Tyler. I wanted to ask your permission before I blew them sky high!" said Richard excitedly. He has always liked TNT and everything of the sort.

"Did you try diplomacy first?" responded the president

Rich shrugged, "They attacked us first Ty. Nothing I can do about it."

"We should ask the Princesses about this 'plan' of yours before its acted upon. They might not like it." commented Tyler

With a straight face Richard responded, "You do what you think is best Sir."

"You bet I will. I will send a courier pony tomorrow with a message. For now you can go relieve Jack Mallard. He is currently head of our refitting effort." said Tyler, waving his friend out
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Richard slowly walked through the steadily growing city with hast. His first stop was a recently built garage on the north side of town. Every once and a while some random pony of human alike would wave in his direction. He really wasnt used to the recognition but nervously waved back. A few minuted passed before Richard finally made it to the garage. It looked HUGE from the outside. He guessed it was taking over for the underground storage house. The building was built like the normal pole barn using rough cut 4x4 pieces of timber and hand hued log siding. Measuring out to be about 100x100 feet, it massive for a pole barn which was normally longer then it was wide. The large sliding doors were currently open, exposing the hustle and bustle of humans and ponies who feverously worked away at the human equipment. The bright flash of arc welders nearly blinding anyone walking through the building. He noticed 2 beings, a pony and a human, standing next to one of the helicopters undergoing refitting for what was to come.

As far as Richard could tell, these two were the leaders of the effort and soon decided that talking to them was the best idea at the present time. With a slight air of authority he walked over to Jack.

"Well, it seems that the job has been going smoothly?" said Richard, sneaking up on the unsuspecting pair.

They both jumped around, charged for an assault that wouldn't be coming anytime soon. They glared at the laughing cowboy wannabe for a few moments before collecting themselves and standing straight and throwing piercing stares at the still laughing human. The looked like twins, meaning as alike as things from two different species could get.

"And just who might you me?" asked Jack, raising an eyebrow

"I have to ask the same thing." commented the blue unicorn stallion

"I am pleasantly surprised to find 2 'beings' that don't know who I am." Rich extended a hand, "I am Richard Mattson, chief engineer here in Lazarus."

Jack immediately got a huge grin on his face. Almost like he was meeting royalty. He enthusiastically grabbed the offered hand a shook it. "It is a PLEASURE to meet such an iconic man in our, less then good, situation!"

"It is nice to meet you Mr. Mattson. Though I am sorry, but I still haven't the slightest idea as to what you do here." said the Unicorn

Jack facepalmed, "How can you be here and NOT know about him?" he exclaimed, "He is just the guy, you know, that guy that is SAVING ALL OUR ASSES!"

"Now I wouldn't go that far but that's the gist of it, yeah." said Richard, with stupid grin

The offending unicorn turned up his nose, like he was trying to look DOWN on the 6 foot tall human in front of him, and walked away. Jack grew angry and ran after Spark.

"Well that was stupid." muttered Richard, dragging a hand down his face in frustration. Today was going about as smoothly as the rock mountains. He now had to wait for a letter from the princesses before he could 'deal' with the offenders to the north. As he stood around the building he got whispers of some great beast to the north. Everyone/everypony said they called it the 'sun eater' what ever that meant. But the moment that said something about gold Richard was all over it. He ran up to a group of 3 ponies and a human and asked various questions about what was going on to the north. They all just said something was eating ponies and that was it.

If you haven't been able to tell by now, Richard is a frontier man. There are 3 things that utterly fascinate the young man. one is mechanics in general, two is mining and the 3rd is the well know trains disease. All of those can go hand in hand with each other any way you think of it. After thinking about the next big thing he could bring about, he decided a walk was necessary to clear his mind. He walked out of the large building and into the waning sunlight and stared at the growing city. It had expanded a lot since he was last down here. There was now a saloon, filled with drunk ponies and men alike. Richards inner party-er took over and drove him to the beer hall. The iconic butterfly doors were hinged to the sides of the doorway, much to the marryment of the wannabe cowboy. With a massive smile plastered to his face he walked bow legged through the doors and mock spit into the spittoon to the right of the door. After he let his laughter die down he noticed no one in the building had noticed his natural stupidity.

He threw his hands out in front of him in disbelief, "Come on! That was funny!" Everything stayed eerily quiet for a saloon.
Grumbling, the engineer sat down on a stool bolted to the floor in front of a bar and asked for a shot of whiskey. The bar keeper brought over the bottle and a small shot glass. The man filled the cup and was about to take the bottle back when Richard told him to leave it. The bar keep shrugged his shoulders and moved on to the next drunk down the bar. It wasnt long before Richard was stumbling around the building hitting on every female around. Yes that did include some ponies.
Everyone he tried his 'magic' on laughed at his drunken manner before telling him to go home, to bed. After a few more tries he decided it was a good idea and trudged towards his house. Before he made it further then the couch he was out cold on the floor. Leaving the door open.
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The next morning, birds were chirping, and a small breeze blew through the dusty town, taking up dirt and sand from the streets. Near the entrance to the large, concrete government building sat a gold carriage, with gold clad guards hitched to the front. Back at the log house, Richard woke up with a pounding headache. The moment he opened his eyes he was staring into purple orbs of Princess Celestia. He jumped back a few inches.

"WHAT THE HELL!?!?!" he yelled

The face of a white pony, clad in gold, barged in and glared at him, "HOW DARE YOU YELL AT THE PRINCESS!"

"Seeing as this is MY house! I am in charge! And I would like your regal monarch to speak for herself before you try and spit out something." Richard spat back, rubbing the sleep from his tired eyes. He walked to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and some left over fried chicken from the ice box before returning to the living room. With a mouth full of food he looked at the ponies in front of him. They were all staring at him in shock.

"What?" asked a confused Richard

The appalled princess pointed a hoof at the offending meal, "Your eating meat!"

"Ya? so what?" he replied, spitting chunks of flesh and meat out of his mouth as he spoke, "I don't judge you because you eat hay."

The princess thought about it for a moment, "I suppose your right. But next time, please don't eat it in front of us." She sat down on the dusty couch next to Richard.

Rich shrugged his shoulders, "I guess I can handle that. Now on to the elephant in the room, why are you here?"

"Your president notified me that you wanted to 'blow the diamond dogs sky high'," She glared at him, "Didn't my sister tell you to try diplomacy first?"

The human waved a hand in the air, "Yes she did. But they attacked us first. Well, not really ATTACK us but destroyed our hard work which I had to fix."

"You should still try diplomacy." replied the white Alicorn, "The Diamond dogs were hard to deal with all those years ago and they are even more so now. I have no idea how they govern themselves but you should still try to figure it out."

"Celestia, you forget I am an engineer! Not some political bush beater." declared Richard, crossing his arms in front of him

"Then should I have your dear friend Tyler deal with it?" asked Celestia with a wink

A wide grin spread across Rich's face, "I think that is a WONDERFUL idea!"

"Then I will be taking my leave. I hope to see you soon Mr. Mattson." With that, the regal pony strode out of the diminutive house, followed by her guards that glared at him with ill intent.

"I got guns ya know!" Richard called out with a smirk before slamming the door. Walking over to the table that sat in front of his tacky couch, he snatched up the meal and devoured it hastily. A few gulps and gasps of air later the water went streaming down into his gullet. After cleaning up his dishes and putting them away he walked to his bed room to take a LONG nap, which would hopefully dispel his hang over from the night before.
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A week had passed by while Tyler was sent off to the north my pegasus chariot to deal with the offending dogs. The moment he returned he threw up his hands, and much to joy of his young friend, shouted "I DON'T GIVE A DAMN!!! BLOW THEM UP!" and walked into his office and slammed the door.

The smile on Richards face would put every pony out there to shame. It couldn't be measured in mere inches. With a case of C4 and good old fashion dynamite, he boarded the next train and made his way to the end of the line. By the time he reached the end he was extremely tired, almost to the point of collapsing. His giddy jumping around in the baggage car had worn him out and the mail ponies had laughed their asses off at the childish human and the unicorn levitated him out and into the sleeping car. Since the train would stay in camp til tomorrow they decided to lite the pot bellied wood stove and leave the tired engineer for the night.

The next morning was a hectic one to say the least. Richard was busy preparing for his excursion to the Diamond Dog tunnels. He made sure to have the gangs supplies well stocked and his will written before he made the journey. To help with the burden of hauling the massive amounts explosives needed to infiltrate and expel the dogs a pony by the name of Rig was contracted to help. He was a heavy built Earth Pony, about the size of Big Macintosh, who knew how to rig anything to explode. Hence his name. He was dark grey in color with a black mane and tail. A fuse, or a white squiggly line, depending on your mindset, stood for his mark.

With a grunt, Richard lowered the heavy saddle bags onto Rig's back. They were filled with C4 and detonators. When they had infiltrated the lair of the dogs, they would locate the major load baring supports and strap c4 to them. Along with the tremendous power of the plastic explosives, they would add to it with about 5 sticks of dynamite. Richards motto was, "If its worth doing, its worth OVER doing!"

Once they were rigged for the biggest bang for their buck (hehe, explosive puns) they would quickly extract themselves from their location and get miles away before setting the bombs off with a remote detonator. After a few hours the crew of 2 were packed for the trek, 3 days, to where Tyler had said the main chamber was.

They started their journey at 10 AM. With a could grunts they strode out of camp, loaded down with explosives. They walked through thick brush and wide expansion of open fields. While the pony slept, Richard would go on a hunt for a rabbit or something small to feed his nearly bottomless gut. This sequence repeated itself 3 times before they arrived at their destination. The majority of the place was barren rock, the foliage long since burned or taken away by the greedy dogs. This was northern Minnesota at its finest. If you were to look on a map, the lair would reside in one of the numerous open pit mines that dotted the hills surrounding the shores of lake Superior.

"So whats the plan boss?" asked the pony with a questioning look

Richard took the opportunity to explain his incredibly detailed and well thought out plan to the demo expert to his right, "Well, we are going to blow it up!"

"Sounds like a plan to me!" exclaimed Rig, thumping a hoof to his chest