The mid afternoon sun over Canterlot conveyed the love of its eldest resident princess to her subjects through the warmth it showered down onto her subjects, the ponies enjoying it also making use of the light it gave them as they milled about the streets and went about their daily chores and errands. Shopping, working, chatting, playing and so on, for most the daily grind was relatively similar to that of earlier weeks so far with little variation in event or excitement beyond that which city life regularly provided in the country's capitol. It was safe to assume that most would go home with no new stories to tell their significant others that night before crawling into bed and preparing for the same the next day.
But there was one street full of ponies that may have been different.
On a street where various stalls were set up for trade, ponies who planned to go there to haggle over chicken eggs and radishes were very likely to instead have found themselves diving for cover from a runaway cart barreling down the paved road. One stallion hoping to go home with an extra saddle bag's worth of carrots would instead find himself hoping up and over a stall's display and into the forelegs of the stalls owner with a high pitched yelp while a faint "Sorry!" in the distance, embarrassed looks soon being exchanged between the two before he was awkwardly dumped back to the ground. This was a tame example of the near misses down this street with a few being more dramatic - the stall owner being swapped out for piles of potatoes, blankets, trinkets etc - but each was always accompanied by some form of shouted apology or hasty warning rabidly fading in volume.
The owner of the voice trying to prevent collisions with bystanders was a small green pony named Haywire riding the cart that tore past the ponies. He was struggling with a jury rigged steering wheel installed onto the cart, but his attention was divided between trying not to crash and staring up at the sky above him, goggled blue eyes searching for something as he sped by with enough speed to blow back a mane or two.
"Wait there! No... There...! Uh... No..." Hay repeated to himself, eyes tearing away from the great blue above to the understandably surprised face of a mare in his path in time to pull a sharp swerve to the left, the mare being left staring where the cart had been as those around her assumed she was stuck watching her life pass before her eyes.
"Sorry about that!" He shouted over his shoulder once again, ears pinned against his head as he looked back to the street ahead and then back up to the sky.
This wasn't going to work, at least not very well if he was stuck trying to steer and watch all at once...
"Bubo!" Haywire called as an idea sparked in his mind, a bird that looked to be made of metal popping up from behind his head and giving a few clicks and whistles in response, "Take the wheel! I'll watch while you drive!"
Bubo's attempts to wildly shake his head to express how he believed this to be a bad idea went unnoticed as the stallion abandoned control of the cart so as to make a move for the passenger side of the seat, his attention now solely fixated above him as Bubo, in an understandable panic, hopped from his back and onto the steering wheel. His metal talons locked onto the wheel, but that meant little when it came to his control over what the cart did. Almost immediately the wheel began to twist left and right, pulling Bubo and his flapping metal wings with it, causing the cart to make even crazier swerves.
"Wait!" Hay shouted after the cart spent several seconds on two wheels for a narrow dodge of a piano that just had to be out on the side of the street that day, how he managed to stay on the cart nopony could ever figure out, "I think... Yeah! Yeah! I see it! Bubo, keep her steady while I get on the back!"
Now, Bubo could understand but not speak Equestrian - or any language really - but he and his creator had come to learn their own unique way of communicating between each other ever since he'd been built based on his clicks, whirs and whistles. It was never exact, as such sounds were difficult to have entirely replace the usefulness of an entire vocabulary of words, but the pony could more often than not hazard an accurate guess as to what the metal bird was trying to say, and right now he could tell from the cacophony of noise Bubo was making that the bird found this idea to not be the brightest.
Or, well, he would have been able to tell if he'd been paying any attention to it. The opinion went ignored, much like the panic over steering, as the stallion was too busy keeping his eyes locked onto something above them.
"A little faster and to the left!" he instructed uselessly, Bubo now spinning with the most likely broken steering wheel with no control whatsoever at this point, a bump in the road doing what the pony needed either way just before the street's slope grew deeper, "A little more... perfect! Keep it there!"
It was a speck of some kind. A... blue speck? Falling from the sky and not looking to grow much larger the closer it got. It looked long though... or maybe stretched? Nopony else noticed it as it descended, the only ones to even seem to be aware of it being Hay and Bubo, both of whom were most likely doomed to end their trip in a spectacular crash somewhere.
"I got it!" the stretchy falling thing began to line up with the speeding wagon, Haywire adjusting his stance to better balance himself in preparation of catching the object, "I got it! I got it! I got it!"
Perhaps, but what he didn't get was how Bubo was now loudly whistling to try and warn him of how they were about to crash spectacularly into a... coffee shop? It may have been a coffee shop. One that currently had a large stall outside positively [i]loaded[/i] with piles of pastries and other sweets for ponies to enjoy with their freshly brewed hot drinks. It was rather impressive really, but the bird had no need for such food and the pony was too distracted to pay any mind.
The whistles went unnoticed as Bubo just covered his head with his wings in preparation of the crash that was coming their way, the stall owner gasping then shouting a warning to those lined up to sample her food, ponies then bolting for cover in some way, one stallion who looked ready to work at a construction site dropping his metal lunch box onto the street before abandoning it for his own safety.
"I got it! I got it! I got it!" the green pony continued to shout, entirely oblivious to the panic the cart was causing and the lunch box that it soon ran over. The bump knocked the wheel off course, somehow having been enough to twist the cart and send it into a sharp turn, it being a close shave but just enough to divert the cart down another street before it could reach the shop.
It was way closer than any of the ponies it almost hit would have preferred, but thankfully nopony was hurt as it veered away.
However, it wasn't so simple for the pony riding the cart.
The turn saved the others, yes, but the sudden and harsh shift in direction was finally too much for the pony to handle. He was launched into the air at the twist, him being thrown towards the shop front and causing a second gasp to be heard as ponies again tried to get cover, one or two trying to think quick enough to prevent injury to the pony but finding themselves hesitating too long to help.
Despite the danger, though, Hay himself only grinned as he flew through the air. The entire time he hadn't lost his target and it was when he was tossed off the cart that he was able to make a grab for it. Swinging his hooves out wide, the little stallion neared the thing, at this distance it looking to be some kind of coiled material that was stretching out as it fell, and once close enough snatched its lowest end out of the air.
"Gotcha!" was his small cheer at the successful catch just before he fell into the collection of pastries waiting for him on the ground.
Many a soft and tasty treats were smushed to cushion his fall, Hay being immediately buried beneath a mountain of donuts, apple fritters, bear claws and so on, but he didn't stay buried for long. Almost immediately after the collapse of the mountain of baked and fried dough with their various fillings, the coiled thing Haywire had caught sprung back out, it being held back and having it's escape be foiled only by the small green hooves locked around its end like gauntlets that had no intention of letting it go.
Snapping back from the resistance to let it leave, the object sprung this way and that a few more times before it began to lose strength and settle down, it finally just giving up after a few more seconds and allowing itself to be pulled back together by the still grinning and now very messy green stallion.
Happy with his success in catching the item, the stallion was absolutely beaming and held the now efficiently packed doodad he'd just nearly crashed into a building to collect up with a victorious cheer.
Noticing how all the ponies around him were staring at him, he gave a friendly but sheepish smile.
"Hi!" he started with a small blush, the small crowd surrounding him ranging the gamut of reactions to the spectacle and near death experience he'd just given them, some being concerned while others only raised a brow as they waited for an explanation, "Sorry... I, uh... had to get my slinky back." He held up the toy he'd made and then modified back in his workshop, it bearing a number of small but noticeable changes to the usual product one could find in the store, the most evident being a few tiny blinky lights of changing colors stuck onto it here and there for the sole purpose of adding a more science-ish touch to the bouncy play thing.
Most found this to do little in answering their questions, while the baker who'd had their mound of delicious treats crushed and toppled continued to cast a seemingly permanent and unblinking stare of shock and horror over the entire scene of ruined pastries.
Meanwhile, further down the other road, Bubo was still stuck in the cart, his wild chirps being a clear indication of how he had absolutely no clue on how to bring that crazy thing to a halt while also serving as warnings to whatever other ponies he happened to be endangering at the moment. The city decided on how his afternoon cruise was to end for him though as, after another glance to sweep the incoming trouble to try and avoid hurting anypony, the metal bird saw exactly where the cart was going to end up.
Having no way of altering any of the following events by himself, the bird abandoned ship, taking flight and escaping the cart then watching as it then proceeded to continue on into a small park and splash into a moderately sized pond at its center, the ponies relaxing nearby being splashed and shouting in surprise but otherwise ending up fine if a little drenched.
Well... that was one way to stop it... Bubo gave a few shifty glances to his left and right, then decided to make himself scarce by flying up above the buildings and using the roofs for cover as he headed back to check on the pony that had been tossed off of the cart earlier.