Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Two standard days later, the trio had a plan.
It had taken them that long to figure out a path to the Oricho system, and consequently to the asteroid that housed Doa's Bar, after including several twists and turns to muddle their trail and evade anyone who might be trying to find them. With their long and winding path decided, Zaat took over flight duties, while Aerostorm was essentially confined to bed rest despite her claiming she was fine. Scratched, meanwhile, had thrown herself into her work, alternating between time in the repair bay and being prepared to go into Doa's, focusing heavily on both of these.
A little over a standard week after they had set off, Scratched was thoroughly engrossed in one of her projects when the doors to her workshop opened, and Aerostorm called her name.
“Aero,” Scratched called back, spinning around and covering her workbench with her body and wings. “What are you doing here?”
“I was curious to what you were working on, love,” Aero said, tilting her head and flexing her back. Zaat had had to do emergency surgery to save her life which resulted in him cutting to the base, leaving barely a stub of her wing joint. “You normally don’t hide whatever thing you’re tinkering on. Normally, I can’t get you to stop talking about it without drowning you in kisses.”
“I...” Scratched looked to the side before letting out a sigh and stepping to the side. “I was hoping I would be further along before you saw this.” With a gasp Aerostorm walked to the bench and took in all the wires splayed out.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked in awe.
“If you think it is the basics of a biographic prosthetic for your wing, then it is,” Scratched said, looking off to the side. “It’s not much but it is a start.” Scratched shook her head. “It’s hard to do with what little we have and I have been pouring over all the medical books I can so I could make it as effective as possible but I’m so far away from being even remotely confident about attaching it to your nervous system, let alone having the framework finished…”
“Scratched,” Aerostorm cooed, wrapping her arms around her. “I don’t even know what to say.” She wrapped her wing around Scratched, placing a kiss on her cheek, though a little uncomfortable over how incomplete this felt with her other wing being gone. “Thank you, but I hope you are not doing this because you feel guilty or anything-”
“Aero, please, I need to do something, anything to make things right,” she said softly and sadly. “I feel that so far I’ve been the one dragging us down every time and I need to do something to fix that. So please, let me work on this in private for now, okay?”
Aerostorm rubbed her back before letting out a sigh. “All right, but don’t run yourself into the ground in the process, please?”
“I promise,” Scratched said, leaning up to kiss her check.
“Thank you,” Aerostorm said while giving her a peck of affection. “Now for that bar visit.”
Scratched let out a groan, pushing herself away from her desk. “Really?” she asked with a raised amused smirk on her face. “Now that I am trying to work?”
“What other time-” Aerostorm began only for Zaat to come into the room with a grim look on his beak.
“Come, there is some news about the library you need to hear,” he said, walking back to the cockpit.
“What is it?” Aerostorm asked with a frown on her face.
“Wait a moment, you’ll hear it; I have it saved on a loop in any case,” Zaat said waving her off with a hand. As they entered through the door, Zaat went to his terminal and began to tap in some keys before a recording began to play.
And the galaxy is still reeling at the tragic loss of the Intergalactic Archives of Jukern VI. There is still no explanation to how the massive explosion started but the loss of the collective knowledge and life is a tremendous blow to the project’s efforts. Shining Tomorrow’s CEO, Clear Vision, has promised to fully support the restoration and rebuilding of the-
Zaat cut it off at that point, and gave Scratched a worried look. “That maniac did that,” Zaat said, fingers tented. “I don’t know how he got there but we know that whatever we got here is something he would kill countless people for. That whatever you found is that dangerous.” He then looked at her. “Please, for the love of all the gods and stars above, be careful.” He then scratched his wrists and opened his mouth only for Scratched to cut him of.
“I know what you’re going to say and no, I am still going to go do this,” Scratched said sharply with a frown on her face.
“I know I can’t stop you,” Zaat responded. “I was going to say, if he shows up there? Run for it. Don’t stop for any reason, just get back to us and, if you can, get him into place behind our ship.”
“Behind?” Aerostorm asked, confused.
Zaat nodded. “Behind. As in, behind the thrusters right before I turn them on.”
Aerostorm’s eyes widened, and then she smiled. “I gotcha.”
Scratched looked a little sick at the thought, but she nodded. “Right. I will.”
“Good. Now, I’ve got to get back to the cockpit.” Zaat headed off, leaving the two alone. After a moment, Aerostorm saw Scratched turn back to her work, and she could tell that although her girlfriend was doing her best to focus, there was another distinct shudder, most likely from the thought of what she’d just agreed to. Placing a kiss behind her left ear that got Scratched shuddering with delight, Aerostorm saw her girlfriend turn around to stare at her before the idea clicked into her head and the two of them went off to their room.
Some days later, the Excelsior had landed, and Scratched had made her way from the hanger to her destination, looking at the bar. It was a two story building all by itself at the end of the street. From everything she’d heard Scratched thought it would been more… impressive but it wasn't. A bland paint job covered the building and a simple holographic sign above the door was all that it did to advertise that it was Doa’s Bar. Trotting up to the door, Scratched pushed it open to see a simple desk with a massive dragon sitting behind it with a hallway off to the right leading off to another door.
The dragon was tall with green scales and curved horns, muscles clear under the sleeveless shirt he was wearing and all around pretty intimidating. He was also flipping through a magazine before she entered the bar and gave her a raised eyebrow or the equivalent for someone that didn’t have them.
“Okay honey,” he said, sitting upright and grabbing a holoslate. “Before we even start, how old are you?”
“I’m two,” Scratched said proudly enough with him raising his other eyebrow.
“In galactic standard,” he said a bit firmly with Scratched blushing at this mistake.
“Um,” she said as she did the math in her head. “About twenty one?” she offered with dragon frowning at her.
“Look honey, you may be old enough to go in these places, but this isn’t a normal bar,” he said with his eyes flicking to the door before he looked at her and let out a sigh. “Are you being put up on some sort of dare or something? Are your friends outside now, waiting to see if you can get or not? Because look, I may be able to help but I need to know.”
“Sir, I am fully aware of this place is and no I am not here because of some stupid kid dare,” Scratched said. “Me and my friends need some help getting to Hesturland; we found something that their government would really appreciate being brought to their attention but we cannot get there alone.” Scratched swallowed. “We might not have a lot of credits on us but... my girlfriend has already been injured by this nutjob hunting us. We need any kind of help we can get.”
The dragon stared at her before letting out a sigh. “I’ll let you in and tell the boss about you; she’s a softie for honest sob stories and she might be able to help you if she believes you.” He then frowned and held out his hand. “But first, I will need your gun. Ground rule is that no one carries any weapons inside and all will be stored until such a time that it is felt you are sober enough to properly operate said weapon.”
Scratched blinked at that and hesitated in handing over her gun. “Do you really expect me to give up my sole means to defend myself?”
“That’s the rule and if you don’t like it, you can turn around,” he said with his eyes narrowed. “Besides, everyone in there are long time customers who know the rules and knows that if we catch them with so much as a peashooter, then they’ll be banned for a good long time.” He then tapped at some unseen buttons on his desk and the wall behind slid down to reveal a massive rack of stored weapons of all shapes and variants, a lot of them immediately by the sheer size alone. “As you can see, everyone in there values our services and will not be going after you.”
Scratched nodded her head and slid her gun across the table with the dragon taking it in his own hands. He checked that the safety was off before taking a small paper tag and attaching it to her gun and gave her one as well. “For later, in case my twin brother is working the desk,” he said before flashing her a smile. “The name’s Thorn.”
“Scratched Wrench,” she replied, returning her own smile.
“One more thing, miss Wrench,” he said, holding up a claw. “A DNA test; just to be sure you’re not someone who is more wanted.”
“Okay, will a feather do?” she asked, holding out a wing.
“Yes, that will work just fine,” Thorn said while holding out his hand. He gave her a flat look before Scratched got what he was indicating and plucked out one of her old feathers, dropping it in his hand. “Thank you, and I will be telling her to watch out for you; she’ll be at the counter.” He was already pulling up the intercom and running her feather through the computer.
“Okay, thank you,” Scratched said as she walked down the hall and into the bar as Thorn got off the intercom and looked at the results of his test before his eyes went wide.
“That’s…” he stared at the flashing results, almost not believing his eyes. He had to be sure before he told her. If that mare was not some sort of biological creation, then everything was going to change. If she was, then all hell would break loose as she would be beyond furious.
Scratched found Doa’s bar to be almost exactly like the one back home. It had a bunch of people sitting around tables, talking to themselves while drinking as waiters brought food back and forth. On one wall, there was a collections of photos of different mares at various stages of life, written under each was the word owner and a name attached to it.
“Must be the family spiral or something,” Scratched muttered to herself as she walked up to the counter.
“Most say family tree but I guess that’s what you get when you’re from a desert world,” the mare across the counter said as she walked up to Scratched. She was older looking; a light blue pegasus with powdery snow-white mane.
“Is it that obvious?” Scratched asked as she sat down on a stool.
“Besides your words which are typical of desert dwellers, your coat is usually that of a desert pony, you have a thinner layer of fur and feathers, giving you less insulation and making you better suited for a desert environment, and you have a faint layer of dust on you,” she pointed out as she slid a drink in front of her, which Scratched looked at in surprise - that was not anything she’d ever seen before. Hesitantly, she looked at the other mare, who rolled her eyes and hoofed over an open menu, pointing to one item on it. Seeing the name, she smiled and took a sip. “Mmm!”
“Thorn told me about you; said you needed help and you didn’t look like a strong drinker,” the bartender said, absentmindedly washing a glass with her wings before she continued on. “So I figured a strawberry-banana smoothie would be more your thing.”
“It is,” Scratched said. “Thank you.”
The other mare gave her a faint smile of her own before turning back to her work. “Glad you liked. Anyway, I have a few people here who will be what you kids are looking for; they’ve got a real soft spot for dumb kids like you.”
While Scratched didn’t like being called a dumb kid, she wasn’t about to look a gift worm in the mouth and stammered her thanks before trailing off as she didn’t know her name.
“The name is Downpour,” the mare said without even bothering to look up. “I will be right back, so stay put.”
“Yes ma’am,” Scratched nodded her head and watched the older mare leave with a sense of relief that everything was going okay for once. She looked around the bar and saw that despite all the warnings Zaat had given her, these people weren’t so bad-
Her heart froze as she saw a very familiar unicorn give her a wink and a nod of his head before standing up and reaching into his vest. Not wasting any time, Scratched jumped out of her seat and walked over to the staircase. In a split-second decision that was based on instinct, Scratched went down the steps with her parent’s killer right behind her. In the short hallway, there were several doors and thankfully, the first one she tried was unlocked. Sliding into the storeroom and mentally cursing to herself for not getting a room with a back exit, Scratched dove behind some crates in time to see him smash open the door.
“Stupid filly, that was really dumb of you to go down. Though luckily for me,” he grunted with a sneer on his face as he held up a new blaster in his hooves. “Now I will tell you this just one time; give me what I want or I -”
“What do you think you are doing here?” Downpour snapped, walking into the room behind him.
“This doesn’t concern you, you old hag,” he snapped, turning around and pointing the gun at her with Scratched’s blood going cold. “Shut up and leave before I shoot you.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Downpour said, walking closer to the stallion with Scratched struggling to force herself to save this mare. “Just put the gun dow-”
“I said, shut u-” his words fell apart as he pulled the trigger and the blue pegasus vanished in a puff of dust and a taller, green coated alicorn with a yellow mane and beaker cutie mark was standing in her place. She stared at the stallion that had just shot her before snarling out in anger and, using her turquoise magic, grabbed the gun from him to smash him across the face with the hilt, knocking him around and onto his belly. She then lowered the gun between his hind legs and fired another round with him squealing in pain before she smashed the gun through his skull.
Then, as Scratched froze, her eyes wide with terror, the other mare pulled the gun out of the stallion’s brain and aimed it in Scratched’s general direction.
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If only there was a highly skilled doctor at the bar you're going to...
Oh now this is interesting
Hello Doa, we missed you
Also: I am getting really curious about what was helping that guy to such a ridiculous degree
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You have wonderful eyes in this story.
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I try
9478801
I see that you are trying.
I kinda figured she was there from the name of the bar, but, glad to see her back regardless.
9478908
I'm glad you're glad.
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I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad.
9478992
I'm not glad, I'm sick.
9479013
Hi sick, I'm Dad.
Well well this chapter was interesting. I wonder what will happen now that their follower is gone
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Big OOooF right there
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never big oof only oof
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F
9480436
Your not heroic your not invincible, your not even invisible. Your your own weakness SUPER FAIL bua buaw bwwaaaa.
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9480436
What are you two doing?
9480763
what people do