Fallout: Equestria - Just Like Clockwork

by Starlight_Tinker

Chapter 14 - A Slave to Time (Part 5)

Chapter 14 – A Slave to Time (Part 5)
Nopony showed me that there might be some better way...

---

A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...

Redheart looked at me with disbelief, her jaw hanging slightly as she beheld the magical shield around her.

"I've never..." she whispered in awe. "Never seen anything like it! Not even the shield over Canterlot was like this one!"

"It's a Gallopfreyan arcano-plasmic barrier," I smirked, sure of myself as the rest of the ponies around me did the same as Redheart. "One of the few useful gifts my time-wimey exploits have managed to yield. It's only really meant for short bursts, but you see I was able to reverse the polarity of the—"

"Corporal!" a military stallion suddenly shouted, cutting me off. "Look!"

All eyes turned towards the laboratory's entrance. There, sprinting into the room was a group of no more than a dozen ponies, most of whom were clad in lab coats and technician's barding.

"Damn it!" snarled Corporal Serious, her brow furrowing as she set eyes on them. "Stragglers!"

She shouted for them to come closer, barrelling towards the edge of the field as fast as she could. Once there, she skidded to a halt, awaiting the arrival of the group.

"Hey! Time-buck!" she shouted over to me. "Get ready to let them into the field!"

"I can't!" I replied, panicking slightly as the first crack began to propagate through my hastily concocted plan. "That's not how the spell works!"

"Then drop it and re-cast it!" she said angrily. "We can't just leave them out there!"

By now, the group had arrived at the field's periphery, and had lined up along the outside ready and waiting to be allowed inside. As they arrived one by one, the Corporal's gaze had seemed to linger on a single brown-hided pegasus wearing a lab coat, with what looked like a white, mechanical leg as a cutie mark, but she had regained her composure within seconds and turned to address me again.

"Look," I said pre-emptively, as I moved carefully towards her for fear of collapsing the field, "I can't restart the spell! I'm sorry, but we don't have any time left, and it would take too much power to try again! Why do you think I held off until I thought everypony was down here with us!?"

"What about polaric inversion?" the brown pegasus in the lab coat asked, his voice sparking another unsettling wave of deja vu within me. "You could generate a disturbance in the field that would weaken it enough for us step through!"

"I've already got one running!" I answered, exasperated. "This spell is meant for short bursts, so I'm juggling between it using all of its energy in a matter of minutes and it collapsing altogether for lack of input!"

"There has to be some way of getting them inside!" the corporal shouted, her voice taking on a tone of desperation as she eyed the brown pegasus again. "What if—?"

"Wait!" the pegasus suddenly blurted. "What about project Cyberpony!? We could use the prosthesis manufacture machines to make armoured radiation suits!"

"Cyber—!? NO!" I shouted, the field flickering as my mind flipped over on itself. "For Goddess' sake, do not use those machines! They'll kill all of you!"

"What are you talking about!?" the brown pegasus replied, clearly offended by my outburst.

"Look, this'll sound nuts, but I'm from the future!" I informed him. "And I know for a fact that those machines are lethal! They'll recognise that your bodies won't be able to survive even with the most robust protection, so they'll just discard them and scoop out your brains!"

"Are you insane!?" the corporal said, her face contorting in angry confusion. "Those machines aren't designed to do a anything like that! You should listen to Doctor Tower!"

"D-Doctor WHO!?" I whimpered loudly, my head snapping to face the military mare so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. My jaw started quivering and a dull, thudding pain began to develop near my temples as I silently prayed to the Goddesses that I'd misheard.

"Doctor Stone Tower," the brown pegasus clarified. "I work in the prosthetics R&D department, but that's not important right now! Can you open this field of yours or not!?"

I couldn't answer. My mind swam with images of what he would one day become, my consciousness overcome with guilt for the life that I knew he would have to lead. His cutie mark was exactly as he would describe it to me two hundred years in the future, and I was finally able to figure out why his voice had sounded so familiar at first. The knowledge of his destiny sickened me instantly, and I found myself resorting to the simple tactic of squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head in the hope that the bad things would go away.

"Oh, we don't have time for this nonsense!" Corporal Serious said sharply, as she turned away from me in frustration. "Stone, get those machines running now!"

"Right!" he replied with a nod. "See you on the other side, Gem!"

Reality stopped for a split second as the vibrations in the air were converted to meaningful language by my brain. Had Stone Tower just said... 'Gem'!?

'Oh Goddess, no...' I thought to myself, as my head instantly stopped its oscillation and turned to once again regard the military mare to my left. 'Please don't let... her be here as well!'

"C-Corporal...?" I said quietly, as I stared into her eyes. Her sharp, lilac eyes. "What... what's your name...?"

"What!?" she asked incredulously, no doubt exasperated by what must have seemed like the most superfluous question of all time.

"Your name..." I whispered, as my blood began to run cold. I was already losing the feeling in my extremities, my head swimming as existential horror approached the shores of my consciousness. "What is it?"

"It's Gem," she said. "Gem Shine."

A cold spike ran down my spine as she confirmed my worst possible fears. A deep, throbbing pain had suddenly developed in the back of my head, and was working its way forward as the wave of sickening, horrible realisation washed over me. Blood vessels in my eyes began to rupture, reddening my vision as the field convulsed and flickered around me.

"Gem—! Stone—!" I stammered, my chest heaving as I began to violently hyperventilate.

"Compass, what is it!? What's wrong!?" Redheart asked, as she grasped my face in concern.

"This... shouldn't... be...!" I shuddered, my body convulsing as hot, angry spines of causality pressed deep into my soul. Far off in the depths of my thoughts, I could hear the cloister bell of the TARDIS ringing out in distress. I had done something terrible here - I could feel it! Stone Tower was about to become a full blown Cyberpony, and his young love, the incorruptible Gem Shine, was about to live through the first strike.

That wasn't the way it happened; that wasn't the way it was meant to happen.

Gem Shine was meant to live on for two centuries as an inequine cyborg monster. And Tower was meant to build a despotic robot servant who would bring slavery to the Wasteland. That was my crime: I hadn't just altered history, nor had I saved an insignificant few hundred lives out of millions. I had tried to change my own history!

Without Gem Shine, I would never have battled the Cyberpony Controller to my first death, I would have never 'received' my sonic horn or Prometheus, and without her mercy killing to temper my wrath and build my conscience, I would have become a vengeful, angry monster. Similarly, without my encounter with Stone Tower, I would never have been able to regain the TARDIS, or find the traitor in my company.

In short: it couldn't happen any other way. Because of me.

"H-hey, future-buck!" Gem Shine shouted as she finally took note of the fluctuations in the force field. "What's wrong with the field!? Are you alright!?"

"It...! Can't...! Happen...!" I gasped, beads of sweat rolling down to my nose as the paradox began to take form inside me. "T-time won't... argh! Time won't let me...!"

By now the rest of the group under the protective umbrella of the field had noticed both my distress and the growing instability in the barrier wall. Panicked cries began to replace the creaking and crashing of the collapsing building, as it became clear that something was very, very wrong with me.

"COMPASS!" Redheart screamed into my face, as the first sizeable pieces of rubble from the ceiling began to impact upon the shield, denting it ominously. "You can't let this shield collapse! It's our only hope!"

I slumped to the floor as she finished speaking, my legs buckling under the weight of my realisation. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the Master's counterfeit TARDIS console, and the best worst idea of my entire existence blossomed into being in my head. Grabbing Redheart by the mane, I routed my remaining stamina into a sprint, pushing bodily past the ponies in my way until I reached the controls, panting and panicked. As I approached them, I threw Redheart onto the platform surrounding the console, causing a nasty collision between her unsuspecting head and the floor plating. Her body went limp as her consciousness left her, but I could see in a spare moment that her chest continued to move, meaning that she was still breathing. Continuing unabated, I grasped the TARDIS controls, and with a flick of four switches and a lever, had isolated us from the surrounding continuum. At the same time, I felt a great release of pressure around my horn as the spell I had cast only moments earlier was cut off by an impermeable barrier of time magic.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Gem Shine screamed, as the shield flickered and fizzled into oblivion around her and the assembled ponies. "YOU SAID YOU COULD SAVE US!"

"I'm sorry!" I shouted back, as my hoof found the throttle. "I... I was wrong!"

And with that, I pulled downwards, sending the time rotor into its transit. In deference to my ordinary cowardice, I forced myself to maintain eye contact with Gem Shine as the TARDIS slipped into the vortex. It was a final attempt at having some sort of honour - facing her, a symbol of the souls I was about to abandon. She stared back at me as those around her panicked and galloped towards their deaths at the claws of the Cyberpony conversion machines, her eyes fixed irrevocably upon mine. Her silent, piercing gaze spoke of nothing except betrayal, her expression destroying my every hope of retribution. In that moment, I became the worst creature in the universe. In every universe.

As she and the doomed world around her faded away, I was finally able to comprehend her last words. Words that she wouldn't utter for another two hundred years.

Her name was Gem Shine. And she remembered.

She remembered me. Running.

<<<<< O >>>>>

Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...

Things were exploding.

Rubble showered my body as the walls and ceiling around me burst apart into fragments. Pulses of blue light flashed past me, burning my eyes and irradiating my hide as clouds of dust coated my face in grit.

Both Sage and I were sprinting for our lives down the long corridor connecting Tower's lab to the stairwell, weaving desperately so as to not remain in his new 'body's' maniacal sites for too long. Sage had yanked me violently away from the horrific cybernetic creature that Tower had become as soon as he had exited the fabricator, assuming correctly that I had been literally paralysed with fear by its appearance. It turned out, on the whole, to be quite a good move on Sage's part - Tower had started trying to kill us less than four seconds later.

We ducked and weaved in a panicked ballet as the energy blasts from one of Tower's new appendages demolished the corridor around us. After a few seconds of flurried, acrobatic motion, we arrived at the base of the stairwell, and quickly flung ourselves around the sides of the doorframe, temporarily obscuring us from Tower's view. Sage tackled the door's controls with his usual ease, and dropped the pressure door smoothly into its slot in the floor. He then proceeded to overload its spark actuator, forever jamming its various enchantments in a closed position. For all intents and purposes, the door was now a wall.

I leant back against the concrete and let myself pant. I could feel my hearts pounding inside my chest, their individual beats rocking my innards back and forth as they thrummed into a panicked vibrato. With my sudden stillness came a moment of self assessment, during which I was able to contemplate just how scared of Tower I had suddenly become.

The sound he produced sounded like a tortured cry composed entirely of scratching and tearing; a constant scream of the purest, most white hot rage imaginable. And that was just his voice - the merest thought of the shape of his fabricated body made me want to vomit, and that eye... Oh Goddess, that eye! It was like staring death straight in the face. Even though it was nothing more than a sensor node on a stem, it still scared the blood from my veins, a thousand million billion times more so than any spider-bot could.

"I... I can't believe it...!" Sage panted, his own chest heaving as sweat beaded upon his aged brow. "I thought Mo had finally driven you loopy for a minute there, Compass. I can't believe it's all... real!"

"You... know... what that...thing is...!?" I said, in between breaths.

"Everypony in Trottingham would be able to recognise that thing, Compass," Sage nodded solemnly. "The shape, the disposition, even the sound, are all perfect matches for a Darlok."

My teeth clenched and my spine convulsed involuntarily as he spoke.

"I t-take it... th-that that's a... 'D-doctor' thing, then," I stammered, shivering as Sage's utterance gave me the urge to clench my eyes shut and hide behind a sofa. "I've n-never heard that word before... but it's still m-managing to scare the shit out of me."

"They were the quintessential baddie in the Doctor Whooves episodes," Sage said, nodding. "Ruthless, evil, insanely destructive. Everything one could want in an antagonist."

'And everything you don't want chasing you!' Two barked, the fear in his virtual vocalisation still plainly evident.

'I see you're sticking around for a while this time,' Three said, using a level of sarcasm that was entirely inappropriate for the situation.

'You have a metric fuckton of explaining to do, Doctor!' I hissed inwardly. 'What the hell is that thing, and what do I do with it!?'

'It's a Darlok!' Two replied. 'That's all you need to know! It kills things! All the things!'

'Marvellous,' scoffed Three. 'You'll be putting encyclopaedias out of business left, right and centre if you keep churning out that level of detail...'

'Okay, it's bad, I get that,' I replied, trying to hide my own fear from the alien voice in my head. 'But I need more than that. I need to know if it poses a threat to my friends and, if it does, how I can stop it from hurting them!'

There was a moment of silence in my mind, equivalent to only a few fractions of a second in real time, but a significant pause for the voices in my head.

'Alright,' Two said stoically, the mental echoes of his voice now far from the panic that had seemingly consumed him only moments earlier. 'Darloks are the physical incarnation of hatred. They were designed by a xenophobic, philosophising madbuck to conquer the universe and rid it of all non-Darlok life. Before I came to Equestria, there was a... a war. On one side, the Darloks, and on the other, the Time Lords...'

'And...!?' One blurted, as it became clear that Two had tailed off.

'And,' Two continued, 'we lost.'

'Okay, that's... actually that's worse than I was expecting it to be,' I said.

'But...' Three began, his sarcasm having given way to terror. 'If you lost... Then how come we haven't all been vaporised by now? If the Darloks could stand hoof-to-hoof with the Time Lords, then surely they'd be able to reach our little corner of the universe in no time.'

'That's what the Master meant, isn't it?' I said quietly. 'In the memory of your meeting in Edinbuck, he shouted at you. Talked about sealing the war away or some such thing.'

There was another momentary silence, punctuated only by the mental equivalent of a silent, morose nod. My voices fell silent for a moment, sharing a long overdue instant of mourning for a proud race, that saved the universe with their collective sacrifice (non-consensual though it was).

'So...' I began gently, a few mind seconds later. 'What do we do with this one?'

'Well,' Two said, audibly thankful for the change in subject, 'if your knowledge of pre-war Equestrian engineering is anything to go by, Compass, you should have a few days to evacuate that place and level it. The cannon that Darloks are fitted with is designed to inflict maximum damage to lifeforms and equipment, so it mostly focusses on delivering focussed blasts of hard radiation. Its concussive abilities are only really good for demolition when they're fired in clusters, and since we're only dealing with one, it should take it close to a week to break through a bunker like this one.'

'Now, see, that's the sort of stuff I can use!' I replied, grinning internally. 'Alright, so when we evacuate everypony from the Emporium, how do you suggest we level it?'

'Well... uh, we could overload the reactor...' began One.

'... and use the heat from the meltdown to flash vaporise the fluid in the spark turbines...' continued Three.

'... resulting in a megaspell-scale release of superheated, compressed gas...' I added.

'... which'll collapse the superstructure and melt every door and support beam into a solid mass of molten metal...' Two concluded.

'Perfect!' we all said in unison.

'So all we need to do now is find where they've stashed the Stable's spark reactor, and we're all good!' I continued.

'Yeah, that'll do it!' One exclaimed happily.

'I know I'm basically congratulating myself by saying this,' Three added, 'but well done you guys!'

'I'm amazed that went so smoothly,' I said, as my breathing began to return to a reasonable rate. 'I was honestly expecting an argument followed by a bright flash and a Compass shaped bonfire!'

'You never know...' Two said quietly, a sudden and distinct tone of trepidation entering his voice, as if something vitally important and potentially lethal had just dawned on him. 'We could all still go up in flames...'

'What's that supposed to mean...?' I asked cautiously, hoping upon hope that he was just trying to discourage cockiness.

'Does it seem like it's getting warm in here?' Two whispered, his voice quiet and shaking.

Warping back to real time, I yanked my head around to lay eyes upon the pressure door, only to be met by a huge glowing patch of molten metal. Tower was breaking through! Sage and I had noticed the heat bloom at approximately the same time, and as our lines of sight met in front of the now half melted door, we made a silent, split-second tactical decision.

We would run like fuck.

In unison, we sprang to our hooves and began to sprint toward the stairs, our circulatory systems once again shifting into a life preserving overdrive as a sharp, sizzling burst of sound signalled the emergence of the Darlok's beam from the metal behind us. A solid column of blue light blasted through the molten remains of the pressure door before we had even cleared the first flight of stairs, slicing the steel frame of steps cleanly in two. Sage suddenly dropped out of view as his side of the staircase collapsed like an abused flan. Mine was affixed to the wall with large, sturdy bolts and was, as such, far better equipped to handle the sudden loss of support that the beam had brought about. I stopped to turn around and help, just in time to dodge the lethal lance of light that was now steadily arcing around the room, thermally gouging the door out of its frame. It sliced straight through the staircase below me, which thankfully stayed mostly intact from the cut upwards.

That didn't mean that it was still usable as a staircase though - a white hot band of metal now stood between Sage and me, stranding him on the lower floor and me halfway up the first flight in the stairwell.

As the Darlok beam began to focus on turning the other side of the door into an amorphous blob, I concentrated as hard as I could in flipping the mode ring of my horn around into its levitation mode. With the hot, lethal lance only moments away from moving back to incinerate me, I clenched every muscle in my body, and began to cast a spell.

The beam was snaking its way around the door in a wide arc, and was only seconds away from slicing the gantry above my head in two when I finally felt the mental click that I had been waiting for. Just like, well... just like magic, a pale blue aura surrounded Sage and lifted him roughly upwards, allowing him to gallop in mid air onto the non-molten step behind me. As soon as he was in range of my barding, he grabbed a mouthful of collar fabric and used his momentum to pull me up the stairs onto the landing, and then onto the next flight of stairs.

A crash from behind us signalled the collapse of the landing as the cutting beam broke it down into glowing scrap. We stopped for a moment to catch our breath, and to take in the spectacle that was emerging below us. The pressure door was now unrecognisable, reduced to a bright, hot mess that was fast on its way to becoming a bright, hot puddle.

"How is this possible!?" Sage panted over the angry hissing of the melting metal. "Those things have over a hundred strengthening enchantments on them!"

"One hundred and nine, to be exact," I replied, a similar expression of disbelief taking up my face. "That door was rated to withstand two thirds of a balefire blast... and it's... it's barely even slowing it down...!"

As we watched the once strong slab of reinforced magisteel dribble into nothingness, I took the opportunity of impress my dissatisfaction upon the players in my internal dialogue.

'A WEEK!' I screamed inwardly. 'YOU SAID IT WOULD TAKE IT A CELESTIA-DAMNED WEEK TO GET THROUGH THAT DOOR!'

'There's no way a single Darlok should be able to do that!' Two replied loudly. 'It must be feeding off of an external power supply in the lab! Either that, or Tower's modified the Darlok beam weapon to produce a piercing beam as opposed to radiation!'

'You don't think that it has the spark turbines down there do you!?' Three said.

'No chance,' One replied. 'Tower couldn't have any major infrastructure down in his lab, otherwise he would've been discovered the first time somepony went looking for the fusebox!'

'At least we have that going for us,' I said. 'But he's still got a shiny, new, bunker-busting gun then. Which means we need a new plan.'

'No, collapsing the stable should still work,' Two said confidently. 'It wouldn't have anywhere near enough power to get out of tens of thousands of tonnes of melting magisteel - it'll have a hard enough time stopping itself from melting!'

'Are you sure about that?' Three asked worriedly. 'Couldn't something that advanced channel thermal energy into its beam weapon or something? You know, use our attack against us?'

'Not quickly enough,' replied Two. 'If we melt a large enough chunk of metal around it, it'll only have two choices: survive intact but be encased to the point of inoperabilty, or fire blindly for a few minutes before melting to death... and then being encased forever.'

With that reassuring determination in mind, I turned to Sage, as the door below us continued to crackle and spit.

"Okay," I said hurriedly, "I have a plan. We need to evacuate this place then bring it down around that thing's ears! I think we should trigger a meltdown in the reactor and channel the excess heat to the spark turbines, thereby triggering an instantaneous phase change in the power transfer medium and a resulting explosive release of superheated conduit fluid which would collapse the Stable superstructure and reduce the facility to a confining shell of molten rubble!"

Sage stared at me wordlessly for a moment as I caught my breath.

"What do you think?" I gasped.

"I love it," he replied instantly, as we both began to ascend the staircase at speed. "How do we get to the reactor?"

"That's actually the only part I'm not sure about," I said meekly, coming alongside Sage, "I mean, we could ask Tower's robot."

"I doubt he'll be very cooperative," he replied.

"Agreed," I said. "Oh, wait a minute! I bet the slaves will know! We could ask Buckshot and Mo when we get them out of the slave quarters."

Sage suddenly stopped in his tracks, nearly resulting in my giving myself a case of whiplash as I turned my head to follow him.

"What's wrong!?" I shouted as I too came to a halt. "Come on Sage, we don't have time for—!"

"Did you just say that Buckshot and Mo are in with the slaves...!?" Sage asked, his face contorting into an uncharacteristically horrific scowl.

"Uh... well..." I stammered nervously. Sage closed the distance between us, bringing his snout to within an inch of my own, without once breaking eye contact or blinking.

"Did you," he rumbled malevolently, "or did you not, just tell me that one of my most trusted friends and my daughter have been captured by the most powerful slave traders in Trottingham...!?"

"I... uh..." I continued to stammer, trotting slowly backwards as a fresh sheen of sweat began to wet my brow. "I-it was the, uh... the only way... to get in! We had to pose as slave traders, so we needed to have some slaves!"

Sage's fury was totally silent, and even more terrifying than the Darlok below us. I found myself becoming acutely scared of him, not because I feared that he would harm me (which is not to say that he couldn't, I'm sure he could - gravely too), but because I feared that I had harmed him.

"Compass..." he hissed from behind gritted teeth, "That is, without a doubt, the most selfish, irresponsible act I've ever borne witness to!"

"B-but," I stuttered, moved halfway to tears by Sage's evident sense of betrayal, "it was to save you! They wanted to come get you! We're all risking our lives for you!"

"WELL YOU SHOULDN'T BE!" Sage suddenly screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as I felt myself begin to blubber. "WHAT DOES A FOAL FROM A TEST TUBE KNOW ABOUT THE VALUE OF AN EQUINE LIFE ANYWAY!? YOU COULDN'T EVEN FIND A MURDERER IN A STABLE FULL OF VEGETABLES! YOU HAD TO RUN AWAY AND COME CRYING FOR HELP FROM REAL PONIES!"

My jaw dropped and my eyes began to leak freely as Sage's nostrils flared from his outburst. My stomach felt as if it had just dropped through the floor. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard, and judging from the look on Sage's face, neither could he. As soon as the words had left his mouth, his expression had softened and immediately begun to communicate how sorry he was for what he'd said. But unfortunately, the fact was that he had said it, and that wasn't about to change.

"Is...?" I whispered, my body limp with shock. "Is that what you really think of me...?"

"N-no," he said, taking a step forward as if to comfort me, "I would never— I mean I didn't mean to... I..."

Sage hung his head, his own tear ducts beginning to moisten. He sighed, as another large globule of metal dropped to the floor on the level below us.

"I'm... sorry, Compass," he said gently. "That was... out of order. I promise you that I don't really think that way about you."

"Then why did you say it...?" I replied, still hopelessly distraught over such harsh words.

"I was angry..." Sage replied quietly, before taking a deep breath. "From my point of view, you endangered that which I love and care for the most. And despite the fact that I care for you too, I still couldn't contain myself. I... I'm so sorry..."

I swallowed as I attempted to bring my breathing back under control and stem the source of my tears. I regarded the aged buck before me evenly, suddenly entirely unsure of what to make of him. I had been insulted before, sure, but nopony had ever cut me like Sage just had. With little more than three sentences, he had reduced me to a disillusioned, quivering mess, bereft of both ego and will. So deep was the wound, and so fundamental his criticism, that my outrageous anger hadn't even begun to manifest. He had, simply put, destroyed me.

But somewhere, deep in the recesses of my soul, there was a different feeling. Not one of sorrow or rage, but a bright and simple bubbliness. A giggle, if you will, that worked its way up from deep within me to froth suddenly out of my mouth.

"You stupid old bastard..." I whispered, chuckling mirthlessly, as I took a step towards Sage.

"Compass...?" Sage said, his head twisting in confusion.

"Of course we would come to get you!" I shouted suddenly, right in his face. "Of course we would fight for you! Of course we would risk our freedom and even our lives for you! We love you!"

"I just don't want anypony else to get hurt for my—" Sage began.

"Shut up, I'm not finished," I said curtly, eliciting a wide eyed expression of surprise as I interrupted the older buck. "Did you honestly expect us to just leave you here!? Are you fucking nuts!? We would never do that to you! I mean, would you do that to us!? Would you leave me with the slavers if I were captured!? Or Buckshot!? Or Mo!?"

Sage's mouth opened for a moment, then closed again, as he looked angrily into my eyes. Wordlessly, he shook his head, drawing his shoulders back to the their confident default position.

"No," he said simply. "No I wouldn't."

"Well then," I said loudly, with a determined frown that matched his confidence, "aren't you glad that you and I are so alike?"

Sage took a single step forward, placing his hoof heavily upon my shoulder as he continued to stare into me.

"I am," he said, as a smile made its way onto his face.

A loud, viscous crash suddenly resounded from underneath us. Without another word, we both shot over to the hoofrail and anxiously began to stare at the scene below us.

The Darlok stared back.

"Fancy a jog!?" I said to Sage hurriedly, as the metal creature began to rotate its beam weapon toward us.

"Oh, absolutely!" Sage shouted, narrowly avoiding a blast from the cannon.

We sprinted at full tilt up the stairs, the scent of burning hair blasting into our nostrils as our tails were singed by the Darlok's beam.

"We can't... run up... this whole... stairwell... like this!" I panted, as we continued to ascend. "We should be... safe in a... c-couple of... flights...! It didn't... look like... its gun could... swivel up... that far...!"

"I'd say three flights!" Sage replied, notably without pausing for breath. "Just to be safe!"

I conserved my air by electing not to reply, instead allowing my silence to act as consent. We continued to sprint up the stairs as fast as our legs would allow and, after another agonising three flights worth of being chased by the Darlok beam, cautiously skidded to a halt on the next landing up.

The lance of energy swept up behind us, and I had just enough time to gasp in fright as it arced up, intending to meet us at head height, only to suddenly level out, cleaving the set of stairs behind us cleanly in two.

A ragged, raging scream emanated from below us as the remnants of Stone Tower realised that we had indeed moved out of range of the bearing to which his beam weapon was attached. Sage and I looked at one another, the ugly, harsh words that we had exchanged only moments earlier turning quickly to a distant memory. I found myself suddenly hugging him, and him hugging back, as we pirouetted happily around the landing (much to the distress of our Darlok assailant).

"Ah ha ha!" I rejoiced. "Brilliant! Superb!"

"It's just like in the radio series!" Sage replied, similarly overjoyed to be alive. "They could never climb stairs!"

"Ha! What a stupid design!" I teased merrily. "I could have vomited something better!"

"You're right!" bellowed Sage heartily. "It is stupid!"

As we continued to dance gleefully around the landing, gloating over the apparent inadequacy of our attacker, a thought seemed to dawn on us both simultaneously. At the same time, we began to slow down, our rotation and excited leaping reduced to a minuscule magnitude as frowns began to form in unison upon our faces.

"That... is stupid..." I said quietly, as concern crept across my brow.

"Yes," said Sage, his brow furrowed with trepidation. "It is..."

Almost as if it had been waiting for us to realise, a different sickening artificial sound suddenly began to echo through the stairwell. Sage and I leaned over the hoofrail, only to be met by the glowing blue orb of the Darloks eye staring directly at us from the ground level. The sound continued, eliciting images of burning and chaos in my mind's eye. It was laughing, I realised; giggling like it was Hearths' Warming Day.

"Compass..." Sage said cautiously. "I feel that we should keep moving. With haste."

'Two, what's going on?' I asked myself in the split second after Sage had spoken. 'Why is it doing that!?'

'Why do you think it's doing it, you idiot!?' Two shouted. 'It's probably just figured out how to use its—!'

At that instant, I felt my face drop and all four of my limbs begin to shake, as the horrible, rage-infused voice of the Darlok began to echo up the stairwell, cutting Two's contribution short.

"EL-E-VATE!" it screeched triumphantly, syllable by syllable, as a glow of pale blue magic - a levitation field - began to emanate from its undercarriage, carrying it slowly up through the central void of the stairwell.

I barely had enough time to swear before Sage had grabbed my barding, and once again started yanking me bodily out of harm's way. My chest heaved as the strain of our constant sprint began to take its toll on my body, and I cold hear Sage's breathing becoming more and more ragged. A brief glance down the stairwell gave me reason to carry on though, as the Darlok accelerated upwards, rising at a now alarming speed towards us, its piercing blue eye tracking our every exhausted movement.

As I reached the next landing, and with naught but a moment's notice, a blast of light blew the staircase in front of Sage clear out of the wall, leaving only a crater in its place. Reacting far more rapidly than I thought I was capable of, I skidded to a halt and wrapped Sage in a last-second levitation field, pulling him up onto the steel floor as his legs flailed in panic.

I grabbed Sage's outstretched hooves as soon as he was close enough, ending the spell as I dragged him up onto the landing. Tower was drawing closer with each passing second, the growing hum of his levitation causing me to shudder with fear as both Sage and I glanced around, searching desperately for a way out of the stairwell. Could we make the next set of stairs if we jumped? Could I levitate us over? What if took a run at—

My train of thought was interrupted by another blast of light, this one aimed at the set of stairs directly behind us. The wall was blown to dust in a blinding instant, leaving the half-melted fragments of staircase to fall to the level below. Tower had us in his sights, and clearly we were within range of his weapon, but yet Sage and I were both still alive. He was toying with us, I realised; waiting until he was level with the landing we had been forced to take refuge on before he fired. He would be able to face us as we died; to see the fear in our eyes, to witness the agony of our being incinerated alive!

My chest still heaving, I turned to Sage.

"Any... bright ideas...?" I panted.

"Afraid not..." he gasped back, once again looking desperately around for a solution. "Wait! Compass, look!"

Sage's hoof shot upward, pointing towards a scant orange glow only a few levels above us. It was the safety light above the upper door! The one that led back into robot Tower's office! We were almost there!

"Can you levitate us up there!?" Sage asked hurriedly.

"I can barely lift you!" I replied, my throat still hoarse from my recent exertions. "No way I can lift both of us!"

"Then we should... We can..." Sage said, as he resumed his desperate glancing.

Tower meanwhile drew closer, his apparent determination to toy with us and enjoy his eventual kill forcing him into an eerie silence. As the hum of his levitation spell drew even closer, I felt a resigned calmness spread across my face and throughout my chest. My breathing slowed, and my mind emptied as I realised what had to be done.

'We have to, don't we...?' asked Three.

'It's the only way...' whispered One.

'What's the only—? Oh no... No, don't you dare!' began Two.

"Sage..." I said solemnly, looking at the older buck. He turned to face me, recognising almost immediately the expression I was wearing. His features fell to confusion, then to concern, then to panic, all in the space of a couple of seconds. "Brace yourself..." I said, flipping my horn open and popping a good few blood vessels with concentration.

"Compass don't—!" he began to say, as my most powerful (and painful) levitation spell of the day threw him into air. Sage screamed my name as he ascended like a bullet toward the ceiling of the stairwell, staring desperately back down at me. I ignored his cries, instead clenching my teeth and charging my horn again, as I took a single, faithless step off of the platform. I would collide head first with the Darlok, I decided, blasting it with every single Faust of magical energy I could force to the tip of my horn! I could feel the air rushing past my cheeks as I fell, my mind hoping desperately that Sage would make it through the Emporium, that Buckshot and Mo would be freed along with the rest of the slaves, and that everything, in the end, would be okay.

As faith in my friends replaced my every thought, I caught a small part of myself lamenting just how close I had come to surviving the day. I mean, I could see our destination! A few more flights and we would have been out of the stairwell, with a massive, complicated building to weave through and lose our pursuer. It wasn't fair, that little part of me declared. I was so close! I could practically feel the steel grate underneath my hooves!

And then, all at once, my sensations changed.

A momentary fizzling throughout my body was followed by the sudden impact of solid ground beneath me, and tepid, stagnant air floating languidly into my nostrils. I had clearly been vaporised, I concluded. Now I was in some manner of afterlife, hopefully soon to meet up again with Valve and Zeanna. Maybe I would be able to go back to the world of the living one day the same way my zebra friend had.

My thoughts were suddenly truncated by a sharp, strong tug at the collar of my barding. I was lifted to my hooves, no doubt by some ethereal, holy figure (I still hadn't opened my eyes), and was drawn sharply forward, my legs struggling to keep me aloft. Was it Celestia, I mused, or maybe Luna? Perhaps it was both of them at once, carrying me into the next—

"I wish you had told me you were going to do that!" the entity shouted in Sage's voice. "I mean, teleporting I can deal with, but I would prefer some warning the next time you launch me into the bloody air!"

My eyes shot open, my head swivelling quickly toward the voice. It was Sage! And he was dragging me up the short corridor at the top of the stairwell!

"Wh-where—!? H-how the hell did I—!?" I stammered, confused and dazed.

'You can thank me later,' Two said flippantly. 'For now, stop talking to yourself and keep moving!'

"Compass," Sage said hurriedly as we approached the door to Tower's office, "I hope you've got a 'blowing-up' spell somewhere in that thing, because I sincerely doubt we have time for any lock picking!"

"I, uh..." I droned, still dazed slightly from my sudden transit. "A blowing what...?"

My attention was quickly grabbed by another blood-curdling scream that echoed up from the floors below us. Judging from the sudden shift in the frequency of its cries, the Darlok, now seemingly enraged by our unlikely escape, had begun to rocket up the stairwell even faster than before. The noise was more than enough to snap me back to the present, and I found myself scrambling to regain my hoofing beside Sage.

"Yes! Right!" I said, forcing my equilibrium to reassert itself. "The door! Blowing up the door! The door that's in the way! Of course, yes!"

"Yes, blowing up the door!" Sage said, the panic in his voice sending me to the edge of desperation. "Get on with it!"

"W-well I don't know if I can!" I replied. "I've never blown anything up b—"

'Oh for Heaven's sake! Do I have to do everything for you!?' Two shouted into my mind, as an involuntary blast of magic - which wasn't entirely unlike a violent hiccup - pulsed out of my horn toward the door. My blue light enveloped it instantly, and I could hear a cacophony of crunching and rumbling as the metal collapsed like a soda can underhoof. In a matter of seconds the door was little more than misshapen crumple, hot to the touch and entirely ineffective as a barrier.

"Excellent, Compass!" Sage said, as we galloped haphazardly into the expansive office space beyond.

We passed robot Tower's desk on both sides; Sage on the right and me on the left, ignoring the device's cries as we sprinted toward the opposite end of the old spark turbine room. Is calls echoed about the lofty hall, telling of last chances and dead friends, commanding that we stop right where we were lest dire things occur.

"NotimetochatDarlokchasingus!" I managed to blurt in passing, noting the utterly confused expression the complex automation wore as I did so.

Unfortunately for Tower's robot, the only dire fate at that moment was the one about to befall it - there was just enough time for it to shriek as an explosion of magically heated plasma blew it into several thousand charred pieces.

Another volley of blue-hot projectiles zipped past Sage and me as we reached the half-way point of the turbine hall, blowing chunks out of the concrete wall and searing the paint from the pressure door. In a moment of remarkable clear-headedness given the circumstances, I grabbed one of the pieces of debris in my magic, arresting its fall and sending it flying towards the door's control panel. A heavy clunk resulted, and the pressure door began to slide open just as we approached, allowing us to scramble quickly underneath it.

Sage busied himself with jamming the actuator again so as to buy us some more time before we both continued our exhausting sprint toward the—

"Oh Goddess, the lift!" I shouted, sliding to a halt as the carriage doors opened to greet us. "I forgot about the sodding lift!"

"What about it!? What's wrong!?" Sage asked breathlessly, as his mane now matted with sweat.

"It takes bloody ages!" I replied, clutching my head in panic. "The Darlok'll overtake us in minutes, and blow the carriage to smithereens!"

"Well is there any other way off this level!?" Sage said, resolutely ignoring the now red hot patch in the door behind us.

"I don't have a clue!" I shouted back. "I don't think so! I mean I could try teleporting up the shaft, but I think I need line of sight, or at least a clear idea of distance and bearing! Besides, I doubt I could throw you hard enough to—"

I stopped. The solution had presented itself, as was often the case, in the form of an analogy.

'Why try and throw yourself up a lift shaft...?' I thought. 'When you can just get the lift to do it for you!?'

'We've been through this you utter tit!' Three shouted desperately into my mind's ear. 'The lift's too slow!'

'I suspect he's not exactly going to be using it as the manual suggests,' Two said, as Sage began to speak.

"Compass, I hate to rush you, but we're really running out of time!" he said, as a familiar metallic bubbling began to sound behind us.

"I know, I know!" I replied, as I grabbed him by his neck and pulled him into the waiting lift. "Now stand still and give me a hoof up!"

Slightly dazed by my sudden call to action, Sage complied, allowing me to unceremoniously climb onto his back and grab the ceiling panels above us. Popping the inspection hatch, I clambered up onto the top of the carriage, and looked around for our salvation.

To my infinite relief I found what I was looking for in the distance: a huge concrete counterweight mounted in a recessed groove on the far wall. Judging from its size, it looked to be about one and a half times the weight of the carriage, which meant that at that moment, the lift was only relying on its brakes to keep it from flying toward the top of the shaft like a rocket. Hurriedly, I turned my attention to the braking mechanism that was holding the cables in place and focussed my consciousness on it, as well as the various backups positioned around the carriage. Within seconds the twin Goddesses of necessity and panic had come to my aid, and the heavy duty gears in the various assemblies were shaking themselves free of their bearings.

The carriage suddenly shot upwards an inch, causing my chest to collide painfully with the edge of the inspection hatch - the cable was slipping! I dropped back down into the carriage just in time for the brake to fail completely, and send the lift screeching up toward the heavens. Sage collapsed underneath me, my weight now several times its normal value, and we both gritted our teeth as the counterweight plummeted, pulling us at astounding speed away from the Stable's lower levels. My limbs felt as if they'd been replaced by lead facsimiles, and my neck simply refused to support my head. A duet of grunting screams filled the carriage as Sage and I were pulled painfully to the floor.

I braced myself for what was sure to be a jarring halt as our speed steadily increased, and was painfully aware of the contents of my stomach as my muscles strained to move my limbs under the massive downwards force being generated by our ascent. All too suddenly, I was weightless, the giddy, queasy euphoria of no longer being an equine pancake quickly giving way to a sharp, all-encompassing pain as I collided with the carriage ceiling, followed immediately by Sage.

We dropped back down into the floor a half-second later, dazed and agonised, but secure in the knowledge that we had at least bought ourselves a few minutes more to escape the Darlok. With blood in our mouths, and bruises forming quickly all over our bodies, Sage and I clambered back up onto all fours, and started to work our way out of the now ruined lift carriage. Tumbling out onto the floor, I realised that it had neatly embedded itself in the ceiling of its shaft, and was now irrevocably wedged in place, never to descend again; another obstacle that the Darlok would have to overcome on its rampage.

"A-are you... alright...?" I asked Sage shakily, as we started toward Tower's still (and most likely permanently) inanimate secretary.

"Nothing Caring won't be able to fix," he responded, grimacing only slightly as he moved, and paying the motionless mare in front of us only a brief moment's attention. "Lead on. We have ponies to save."

Ever the commander, Sage raised himself to his hooves and stood tall, exuding as much supreme competence as the sun does light. I swallowed a mouthful of blood and straightened my back, determined to live up to his example, and mask the torn ligaments, bruised flesh and over extended joints that were fogging my mind with agony.

"Right," I said, moving to the mahogany doors as my eyes moistened with pain. "Through these doors is a social area where the slave owners gather, but it's also serviced by a sizeable number of slaves. If everything's gone to plan, we should be able to start a full blown revolt right here."

"And then I take it we continue up into the slave pens once the muscle down here has been overwhelmed," Sage said, easily deducing the nature my plan. "Then we get everypony out of here as fast as we can and trigger the rector explosion, and collapse the stable inwards onto the Darlok, right?"

"Exactly," I concluded.

"Excellent," Sage said briskly. "Let's get to it before that thing makes it up the shaft!"

I nodded back in acknowledgement and turned, pressing my hooves against the door. As one would expect, it swung open, although with my blood pumping so quickly I neglecting to limit the amount of force I applied to it. The heavy wood slammed loudly into the adjacent walls, the resultant sound reverberating throughout the entire bar.

The despotic murmur that normally engulfed the place had ceased, no doubt dying a death the moment the lift had embedded itself in the ceiling behind us. What few eyes were open at this hour were suddenly directed toward the pair of battered, bloody, dust covered bucks in the doorway, the destroyed lift and slumped over secretary behind them clear evidence of some dire misdeed.

I glanced desperately back and forth, smiling like a fool as a nervous giggle escaped my mouth.

"Uh... Evening, hehe..." I said sheepishly, as One and Three cringed, and Two mentally facehoofed.

It was clear at that point that nopony had any idea of what to do with us. The slave owners, fat and complacent, were visibly shocked by the very concept of trouble occurring within a couple of miles of them, while the guards, their weapons held tight in hoof, mouth, and magical grips, were all leaning forward tensely, as if they weren't sure whether to shoot us or treat our wounds.

Similarly, Bulkhead and Atom, who were seated at the bar, and Galinda and Saltira, who were both serving drinks, were all staring at Sage and me with open mouths, their eyes questing back and forth desperately trying to figure out what was about to happen.

I considered trying to lie for a moment; an attempt to pass off the wreckage behind us as a catastrophic mechanical fault that had almost claimed the lives of me and my 'new associate'. But there was no time for deception any more: the Darlok was moments away, and we had were quickly eroding the precious lead we had so painfully managed to gain.

I braced myself, took in a deep breath and shouted at the room.

"NOW!"

In the blink of an eye, the room erupted into motion as guns were drawn, spells cast, and limbs flung from all corners of the bar. Saltira and Galinda immediately set upon the guards closest to them, the nighttime skeleton crew proving no match for a pair of monstrously abused females hyped up for their imminent escape. The trays they were balancing on their hindquarters quickly found a pair of faces to collide with, and an enraged gallop ensued immediately after as their hooves and claws battered ferociously down upon their opponents. Across the room, Bulkhead had surprised the more confrontational of the slave owners, barrelling into them at full speed, while Atom had used her impressive magical strength (along with the element of surprise) to wrestle all of the guards guns from them at the same time.

Less than ten seconds later, not a single one of the dozen-or-so slave owners and armed guards in the room were left unassailed, and, just like that, my friends and I were in control.

"Wow..." I whispered to myself as the dust settled, awe at the efficiency of our sudden revolt no doubt pouring from my face. A nudge in my side brought me back to reality, and I turned to see Sage nodding in the direction of the my friends. Everypony was waiting for me to say something, it seemed... almost as if they expected me to have a plan.

"Uh... alright everypony!" I said loudly, stepping forward after a moment. "Here's how this is going to work! There's a... well, there's something very bad chasing us, and once it gets up here, it's not going to discriminate: if it sees you, you're dead! So we're getting out of here." I turned to the slave owners and guards, their angry scowls and terrified quivering disgusting me in equal measure. "All of us..."

"Compass, we can't just gallop out of here guns blazing!" Galinda said, unimpressed. "There're thousands of slaves up there, and hundreds of guards. We can't possibly take them all on! Not to mention most of us are still collared!"

"Uh, then we..." I stammered, looking back and forth. With the Darlok now standing between us and Robot Tower's terminal, there was no easy way of disabling the slave collars and seeing the Emporium's captors freed. The moment the guards realised that something was amiss, a thousand ponies and at least one griffon would be blown to smithereens. "We, uh... Ah! Saltira, is there an intercom or something near here? Something that can broadcast over the whole stable?"

"Aye," the red-maned mare said, nodding as she slung her new rifle onto her shoulders. "The closest wan's in the kitchen o'er there."

"Right," I said, trotting quickly over to the door she had pointed out. "Bulkhead, Galinda, you two make sure the guards we've caught don't get up to anything. Saltira, Atom, reinforce that door with all the magic you can muster - don't spare a single enchantment!"

"And what are you going to do?" Atom said, her horn already charging.

"I'm going to liberate the Emporium," I replied simply, as I trotted through the doors that Saltira had indicated. Just as she had described, there was a StableTec panel affixed to the wall with a microphone grille and a small array of controls. I flipped a couple of switches so that I would be heard stable-wide and depressed the call button.

"Would a maintenance technician please report to the reactor room. There is no need for alarm." I said in my sweetest, most servile tone.

"What the hell are you doing in there!?" Bulkhead shouted from the bar area. "You'll bring every guard in the stable right down on top of us!"

"Actually," I said absentmindedly, as I watched several seconds tick by on my PipBuck clock, "I'm doing the opposite. It's all in the delivery, you see."

I cleared my throat, and depressed the button once more.

"Repeat: would a maintenance technician please report to the reactor room. There is still no need for alarm."

Another few seconds ticked by, after which I spoke yet again.

"Would a maintenance team please report to the reactor room. Also, we will now be running a mandatory fire safety drill. Would all guards and owners please make their way to the surface in an orderly fashion. There is absolutely no need for alarm."

My quickly concocted plan now set in motion, I turned around, trotting out of the kitchen and back into the bar area.

"Are you done!?" Bulkhead shouted, his grip on the mouth trigger of his new rifle shaking as he spoke.

"Yep," I said, my eyes still glued to my PipBuck clock. There was a protracted silence as everypony (and griffon) looked at one another in confusion.

"And...!?" Galinda squawked, her patience wearing thin.

"Just give it a minute," I said. "You'll see..."

"We'll see wh—!?" Galinda began, only to be interrupted by the wail of an ancient klaxon. Revolving amber lights that hadn't seen use in almost two-hundred years whirred to life, casting deeply contrasting shadows all around the room.

"H-hey!" Bulkhead exclaimed, a note of panic evident in his voice. "That's the evacuation alarm! That only comes on if the life support system fails or the reactor's about to rupture!"

"What the fuck!?" Galinda shouted. "What did you do!?"

"I just made sure everypony knew that nothing was wrong," I said, smirking. "In practice, there's nothing more suspicious. Details get lost when you try and read between the lines, and somewhere not far down the line, somepony will always panic and jump to a conclusion."

"Huh... that's actually pretty clever," one of the captive guards said, nodding in approval. Every other creature in the room suddenly looked at him in either anger, disgust or surprise as he tried to shrink back into the group of captives.

"Well... thanks, I suppose," I replied uncertainly. "Anyway, appreciation aside, we have to get out of here now. My little diversion won't do a thing to stop the Darlok - it'll only clear the path ahead."

"Right!" Saltira said, gritting her teeth and readying her weapon. "Let's get the fuck oot o' here!"

My friends all nodded in agreement, and with an enchanted barricade of twisted metal behind us, and an empty fallout shelter full of slaves in front, we grabbed our weapons, pulled our captives to their hooves, and ran for our lives.

---

Footnote: LEVEL UP!

AGILITY: +1
ENDURANCE: +1
LUCK: -1

New sonic setting: Z99 - Gravity hiccup
Involuntary spasms have never been so destructive! This sonic attack delivers an enormous gravitational implosion to a target of your choice, dispatching enemies or removing obstacles. Be careful though, the side effects of this spell aren't always predictable!

Achievement unlocked: The long way round
You know, for a time traveller, you're pretty bad with scheduling. That took bloody ages!

Author's Note:

To everyone reading this, thank you so much for coming back after my absence. I'm fleshing out the story following an enormous bout of writer's block (coupled with a severe lack of time). I've decided to focus on slightly smaller chapters so that I can get everything out in easier to manage pieces, which should hopefully make it far easier for me to publish chapters (I tend to reread them religiously prior to committing them to the website).

Thanks again, and stay tuned for future (more frequent, non-annual) updates.

Comments

[Thunder Quill]

Heh. I've posted a chapter a year after the previous.

[Mix-up]

It's great to see you again, It was a great chapter and I like all the chaotic confusions that you put into the the battle, if this does qualify as a battle that is. I like the humor and the radical shifts of every situation with Compass. He may not be the Doctor but he does him justice. I am looking forward to the next insane chapter of this story.

[SilentMech]

Welp, your getting the same record as A Stranger in a Familiar Land which updates twice a year. Any way, Compass is a bit of a ditz, isn't he? Not getting every ones names before being stuck in a no win situation like that. Also, hooray for blind teleports! Because there is a reason why they were actually enemies in a war with self regenerators.

[Shardstar3]

welcome back lad
ouo

[Starlight_Tinker]

6514882
IKR!? You come home tired from work, make dinner, chill out, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. Then, all of a sudden, your fic has gone without an update for ~60 weeks and you're sitting there cursing yourself for what seems like lack of interest

6515581
Stable 52 holds many secrets, my friend.

6515492
Tbh, I'm just glad people are still reading I really took the piss with that last chapter, and I'm thankful for every view that I receive. And, yes, Compass is quite the boob when it comes to filling the Doctor's horse shoes. You have to cut him slack though - he's not even 8 years old yet!

6514928
Thanks so much - it's good to be back! I'm really glad to hear that you're enjoying it (despite the crappy scheduling on my part ). And there's more where that came from - Compass and co. aren't anywhere close to being out of the woods yet!

[Thunder Quill]

6516530 Um... More like School/Video games. But I totally get you on the lack of interest.

[Starlight_Tinker]

6516547
Ah fair enough. I'm still studying myself (postgrad in the UK). What level of school are you in?

I'm trying to build an big Duna mothership in Kerbal Space Program, but I keep screwing up my aerocapture manoeuvres. Top tip: large, unshielded solar panels, flimsy docking port joints and no ablative heat shields are not a good combination when flying through an atmosphere at ~3000 m/s. Also, I'm unspeakably hyped for Fallout 4

[Starlight_Tinker]

6516512
Cheers mate Good to be back

[Thunder Quill]

6516620 Senior in HS, but at the time I was a sophmore when I posted the second chapter, junior when I posted the third.

I freaking preordered that shite back in august man, plus, most of the games I was playing in that break was Elder scrolls and Fallout.

[Starlight_Tinker]

6527163
Why would you think that?

[Drakkanien]

Hello dear author!

I enjoyed your story so far, really. It's really good to see Fallout Equestria stroy withouth guts and blood everywhere and that's a big, rally, really big plus(As was in case of original. I couldn't stand that story, in fact I never finished reading it. Because I could not believe that Littlepip was a psychopath. She cared about everyone else, but riders. Why? The hell I know. Anyway! It's no place nor time for discussions like this.).

There are few issues in this story that focus on Doctor'ss nature. I just want to point out - nothing's wrong with story! It's just that I have a little different wroldview on few aspects than you. That's it!
I. It struck me in chapter when Compass learned that he's not pony anymore. Time Lords are op. That's it. They are and we can't argue with it. There's whole article about Gallifreyan Physiology. I always liked to think that Doctor always had an upper hand(hoof?) over everyone else.
II. Your Doctor is not the Doctor (Please do not confuse him with Compass). I mean he's sometimes cool and witty, but! He should be like that all the time :P Yes; it's silly.
III. Your OC's. I love them. (Yes, that's issue. Don't try to kill them!)
IV. Sex jokes. Really? They are silly and embarrassing to read.

That would be all. For now.

Find your own path,
Vuko Drakkanien

[Sky Klokwork]

dude i'd first like too say thank you and if you'd like i'll send you my progress and have you take a look at it and check what you think and second YOU"RE STARVING ME HERE! i needs more of the story its so good and i'd like to learn a little more so as to not get to close too yours but make a somewhat separate timeline (i'd say hopefully that about 80% of the time the story's won't cross)

your fan Sky

[AlmanacP]

Your book has been advertised on the new facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/foebooks/ :)

[Starlight_Tinker]

6624872
Ooh! Grand! Thank you!

6594229
No problem Have fun with your fic! Also, there's a new chapter up, so be starved no more!

6560123
I'm really glad you like it so much I agree that Time Lords are overpowered in the lore, but Compass has an enormous number of weaknesses and character flaws to make up for whatever advantages he's furnished with as a fresh young Time Lord. Also, my version of the Doctor is going through some pretty heavy stuff in the story, which is why he doesn't always behave as one might expect. I actually quite like the sex jokes - I think they're cheeky And don't worry - I have little of intention of killing anypony off just now