A large armored wagon crawls along the road on six light gray wooden wheels, with a large stallion lazily towing it. Tungsten yawns, the boring journey to Ponyville imposed on him due to the contents of his wagon exceeding the weight limit for the Canterlot train, unless he were to pay for an extra car just for his luggage.

Letting his hooves move him while his mind wanders he nearly misses a mare ahead of him, moving her broken cart out of the road. He freezes, he didn't have a schedule to keep but he knows he should be timely. His introverted nature and lack of communication skills have him lost for words but his kind heart wouldn't let his hooves move forward without at least offering to help.

"Hey, uh..." His mind reels, he's almost never started a conversation with a stranger he had no business with. His face doesn't betray these feelings, instead, he just seems oddly frozen for a moment. "Need any help?"

Merrilee drops the back of the wagon when addressed, it impacting the ground with a heavy thunk. The wood is solid, though, and holds through the impact, just being loud. After wincing from the sound, she turns toward the newcomer. The first thing she's struck by is how large and armored he is. The armor is a bit intimidating, like a big ol'...armored...bear? Or something, but once she gets past that, being large means strong, and better able to help! The second thing is the wagon. Not the armored part, but the fact that it has six wheels. Now that would be a sound idea! Maybe she could have a third set of wheels added to hers, then one going out wouldn't be such a big deal.

But where are her manners? He's just offered to help, and she's just standing there looking at him and his wagon. She fumbles for her slate, which is of course in her wagon. Right. She hops over to the front of her wagon where the door in is and jumps up to pull the door open. Then again because she missed the first time. It would be easier, but the front end is suspended in the air. After a couple tries, she gets it open and then jumps in, grabbing the slate and a piece of chalk from where they'd fallen to the floor.

Her communicative implements in hoof, she hops back out and rushes out to the newcomer, where she waves and stops a few feet in front of him to scribble out a message.
[Hi Im' Merriele, and my wgano wehels, broek and teh alex!]
She squints at the lines after finishing, hoping they're all in the proper order, then holds the chalkboard up for the stallion to see, smiling in a friendly way.

Until a loud chirping took her attention away, leaving her looking around perplexed for the source of it. She flinches, dropping the chalk and board, at the sound of the wood breaking. The impact lets loose the latches holding her shelves and "Merry Ornaments" sign in, and they unfold, like she's open with no merchandise as they're bare. She dashes to the other side of the wagon, her chub jiggling with the motion, to peer at the peculiar thing sticking out of her wagon. She ignores the second whistle and looks at the strange metal...bird half? Who makes half a bird? Or wait, the rest is probably sticking through.

She almost reaches out to touch it before another stallion comes out of the woodwork, looking like he could probably use a shower and/or a laundromat before a spark sets him on fire. She backs away from the bird to watch what he does and process it all. What he's saying makes no sense to her, and she doesn't have the wherewithal to ask him. She glances between him and the other pony when the green one falls to the ground after failing to get the bird-statue-thing out, and she finally has the presence of mind to dash back to grab her slate and chalk.

Being met with no resistance to his prying the bird from the cart with his bar, Haywire wedged the tool into the wood and fixed his grip. His first attempt wasn’t very impressive, his smaller size to that of the average stallion leading to a failure to make progress and only cause him to grow a little red in the face from the exertion. He gave it a second honest try before needing to take a break and wipe a bead of sweat from his brow.

“Ugh, you really got yourself laid in this time around, pally. Course it’d be this turn over rather than last what with how we were drilling the nights before. Dive bomb the rock then like now and we’d be a stretch ahead in stocking iliums.”

He scratched his chin and looked back at the other ponies with a sheepish kick of a hoof.

“Sorry, he landed a touch fiercer than I thought and got pretty jammed in there,” he shrugged and gave the larger of the two a once over and smiled, “you could probably do it, though! Stallion big like yourself could probably fling em with that bar no sweat! Or, if you aint feelin inclined, I can try another feature.”

Digging back into his saddlebag, Haywire produced an odd-looking horseshoe, one with a strangely shaped cup in the center of the hoof. Loose wires dangled freely from the back until wrangled by Hay and deposited into one of his jackets back pockets where they presumably were plugged or attached to some small device hidden within. It gave a small whirring sound and a light at the front blinked a slow red.

“I don’t really have much juice left for it, but I can blasty blast him out of th-“ Hay was interrupted upon setting his hoof back down where the device activated and produced a focus blast of energy that left a two inch deep crater beneath the same hoof. Hay was pushed off balanced from this and teetered before staggering to keep himself stable. He checked the light on the shoe to see if the light was still blinking then returned his attention to the pair.

“I think I should have one more ready. I can blasty blast him out of there if you’d all prefer. Might make the hole bigger, but I’mma wrench it anyway, right?” with an excited grin he dropped his goggles down over his eyes, “Just say the word!”

Tungsten simply listened as Haywire proposed he dislodge the bird, but as he attempted to agree, the green stallion continued into suggesting another idea. Tungsten shields himself with a foreleg from the resulting explosion of the suggested device. When another is brought out Tungsten puts himself between Haywire and the wagon. "Woah'kay!" He knows for sure that thing would destroy the wagon and now that it's clear the object lodged inside isn't fragile at all he trots over to take it out himself.

Noticing Merrilee head inside he speaks up, "Alright, Merrielle, you push and I'll pull." As Tungsten grabs onto the bird and begins pulling it's obvious he wouldn't need any help as the wood around the statuette splinters and cracks before he pulls a little too hard and ends up flinging the bird a few feet behind himself.

Steady on his hooves, Tungsten turns to face Haywire and keep an eye out for any other crazy tools the stallion might have.

Merrielle? Oh, she must have misspelled her name again! She'd have to correct that at some point. But first there's a bird-thing to get out of her wagon. She considers how to push for a moment. If she's not careful, she could hurt her hoof on the beak if it slipped. Maybe she could get an extra plank of wood, press that against it, and-

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of breaking wood, followed by the absence of the bird over her bed. She brushes another set of splinters from the bed and looks out the hole. She grins and waves in victory to the ponies outside, then hops down, out the door, and stumbles and falls over because she forgot the extra drop. A few shakes of her head and brushes of dirt off her to recover, and she bounces back to retrieve her slate from the side of the wagon.

As the green pony spouts what to her might as well be gibberish, she looks to the hole, and then back to the former site of the wheels. The hole she'd be able to fix herself, and the wheels wouldn't be too much trouble if it wasn't for the axle...She pulls her slate and starts writing on it when the other pony finishes speaking.
[I can ifx the wlal' and, wheesl ymself, but teh aexl is]
No, this is getting too long. It's not going to all fit on her board. She scrubs it off with her hoof, the chalk blending seamlessly with her white coloring, and starts again, deciding on smaller messages delivered at a time.
[I, anc fix eth wall]
She flips it over for a bit to let the other two read it, then flips and erases again, taking the chalk to it once more.
[Adn het lewhes]
Her writing starts getting slower and more jumbled, and she squints at the lines on her board, trying to force them into some semblance of sense. Is this right? She can't tell...well, she turns it over for them briefly anyway, in case they can understand it, then tries for the last part with the slate cleaned.
[utb the alex sis ingingo tot bebebe]

Her vision swimming, she shakes her head and leans against the wagon, defeated by the writing fatigue. She's quite sure she didn't make sense with that last line, and wipes it away without showing it to the others. Well, maybe they got the message anyway? How much had she shown them again?

Having his offer to fix the damage to the side of the wagon shot down, Hay felt a little bad as having been partly responsible for it he felt it only fitting that he do the work and make it right. He wouldn’t press though if this was what she wanted, only make himself available to assist should she change her mind and ask. Reading the messages on the board Hay was happy to hear that Merrilee believed herself capable of fixing the wheels as well, but, honestly, the axle was the real problem here as wheels would be no good without repairing that. He’d noticed it was kind of fudged and had just tried to let her know a second ago, but he guessed she hadn’t caught that part? Maybe he wasn’t being clear. Nah, that wasn’t it, she must have just not heard him.

Tungsten’s offer was at first one Hay was put off by simply because the idea of having someone else come by and take over the job meant he wouldn’t get to work on it himself. Why pass it off when he could totally fix it on the spot, shiny it up then fly it to Canterlot? Or at least part way there, then they could rebuild it and fly the rest of the way if any of it survived the first go.

Hmm… He required counsel.

“I say we could jimmy it up and leave trails in just a couple. With permission of course. What do you think?” Hay asked, stowing his prybar and turning his head to the bird on his shoulder. Silence followed for a few seconds, but eventually the bird fell free from his shoulder with haywire catching it so casually with a hoof that he must have known it would happen. The bird, now laying on its side in his hoof with its claws facing haywire, opened and closed them in what appeared to be a pattern or code, haywire watching intently then sighing in defeat before returning it to his shoulder and pushing his goggles back up off of his eyes.

“I guess. Having an actual table would make the soldering easier at least, and it was getting to be work picking out flecks and pebbles. Alrighty, we can head back.

“Would you like a hoof with luggin’ anything?” he returned his attention to Merrilee, calmer now that he had been talked out of “upgrading” her wagon, “the offer stands on the dent, too. If you want any help It’d be cake. My names Haywire by the way, and he’s Bubo.” Introducing himself proper, Hay offered a hoof at the first name and jerked his head back at the bird with the second. Eventually it stiffly and jerkily raised a wing only to have it get stuck in that position soon after.

“He’s having a rough one right now, give him a bit.”

After a bit of thinking whilst organizing his wagon Tungsten realizes that in a sense, helping ponies is the goal of Gizmo Industries, he could treat this encounter like a job, that would take the edge off of talking to them. He stands tall, picks up a metal chest and walks out to Merrilee's wagon.

He sets the chest on the ground and opens it to reveal a soft padded inside, "Put anything fragile in here, and take everything you can, my contact can get careless so it's best to leave her one solid item to pick up." He steps up to Merrilee's wagon and looks in, noticing the bed. "If you need anything, like a place to stay, my employer is fond of having ponies owe her a favor." He smirks to himself, "She never does ask for much in return though."

Tungsten momentarily gets lost in a memory of Brash interrupting a meeting between himself and Copper Gizmo, having come up with a better design for his greaves, trading the blueprint for a favor, which is what he's doing now.

He sees that Haywire had been waved towards a box and waits for Merrilee to hand him something to carry as well.