Twilight stood there alone in the empty bedroom contemplating where Pinkie could of possibly gone. Only one idea could come to mind, she went to the Merchant. Twilight's suspicion of him was growing each and every day however even after the multiple warnings that she had given Pinkie, she would still visit him. Not only did Pinkie fall victim to these wonderful inventions but the rest of her friends too. It was strange because besides Rarity, the rest of her friends did not have interest in these gadgets and now all of a sudden they're practically machines. Something was twisted and Twilight sought to find out the true purpose behind the Merchant's inventions and to stop him once and for all.
She left the room and proceeded to exit the bakery. Upon her walk back home to gather supplies, something was wrong with all of the ponies. Their eyes were glowing red and the metallic ponies started to walk around town as if they were in hypnosis. They then proceeded to break into stores and houses grabbing all of the valuables they could find. Ponyville was now in pure havoc as these cybernetic monsters ravaged the town. What could of possibly driven all of them to do this? While unsure of the cause, Twilight knew she was running out of time. She galloped home as fast as she could.
Entering her tree house, Twilight then boarded up the doors and windows with anything she could find. She pulled out a satchel from one of her chest and began to fill it with essentials she would need when confronting the mysterious inventor. After gathering a flashlight, and a spell book she was prepared. As soon as she was about to leave, her house was surrounded. The ponies were banging on the front door and some were even trying to break the windows. Spike began to quiver in fear. "Will be alright?" asked Spike nervously. Due to the house being surrounded, Twilight was stuck for now. "We'll be fine Spike. We just have to wait for the right time to leave" said Twilight sternly. They then sat down and waited till nightfall.
Later that day, a storm began to roll in with a downpour of rain and loud booms of thunder. It was getting late, and Twilight stared out of the little space that wasn't covered on the window. It was hard to believe, all around them the town was starting to become engulfed in fire. Luckily though they were safe enough of a distance away and as she looked down, for some reason the ponies began to retract away from the house as if they grew bored. This was her perfect opportunity to go to the factory but just as she was about to get ready to leave, Spike was starting to become tired. Spike being a little dragon needed his sleep, so Twilight tucked Spike into bed and said to him "Don't worry about me, I'll be back before you wake up." After Spike fell asleep, Twilight began to pry the wooden planks off of the window. She jumped out the window and began her walk over to the factory.
The wind was strong and cold rain poured on her as she sneaked through town to the outskirts avoiding the other mechanical ponies. Even during the night, they were still pillaging everything in sight. Twilight was determined to undo this tragedy that was brought upon them. Walking along the trail, she found Pinkie Pie's scarf that she gave to her snagged on a branch sitting on the dirt. "Oh Pinkie what happened to you" said Twilight sadly. She stowed the scarf in her satchel and pressed on. After a few minutes she stood in front of the factory, creepy and mysterious as ever but there was no turning back. The large steel door opened and she went inside. As opposed to the last time she had ventured in here, the factory was dead silent besides the soft sound of rain and thunder outside. The lights were incredibly dim, so Twilight pulled out her flashlight. Walking through the front hallway she saw a soft glow of light coming from the upstairs.
As she walked up the stairs she found out the light was coming from the merchant's office. Inside the office were some file cabinets, a desk and a huge window overlooking the factory floor below. As Twilight began to search the office for evidence that the merchant is up to no good, a small breeze blew through the door opposite of where she came in. Upon entering she found that the breeze was coming from a cracked circular window on the far side of the room. The only light source in the room came from the moon's glow through the window. As she shined her flashlight around the room, she found a table in the center with metal chains hanging off of it. "This must be his workshop" said Twilight quietly. Through further inspection of room, she shined her flashlight over a cloth in the dark corner of the room. It was a familiar silhouette that stood out under the cloth and upon pulling it off, Twilight was speechless. It was Pinkie, fully clad in iron from her hooves to her head but she stood still like a statue.
Twilight began to break into tears and yelled "Pinkie, talk to me!" It was no use, she didn't respond. Twilight fell to her knees before her metallic alicorn friend. From out of the shadows, the Merchant stood behind her. "Its a real shame what happened to her. All she ever wanted was to be special and look where that got her" said the Merchant sternly. Sadness turned to rage as Twilight grabbed a wrench off of the workshop floor and swung it at his head. The impact knocked the colt back into the workshop table ripping off the merchant's hood. As the stallion stood up after being knocked down, Twilight was disturbed and shocked at his appearance as he rose. His lower jaw was completely ripped off and replaced with which seemed like an metal one. His right eye was the other ponies, robotic and glowing red and he a horn similar to Pinkie's however it was much more low-tech and it was snapped in half. "Not everyone is perfect you know, don't stare at me like you're better" exclaimed the stallion. "But maybe we had a bad introduction in the past" he said as he adjusted his mouth back into place. "My name is Iron Jaw." He then took the pipe that had fallen down before and swung it against Twilight's head, knocking her out cold on the workshop floor as he maniacally laughed.
When Twilight Sparkle finally came to, she felt woozy as she slowly opened her eyes. She tried to move however she was unable to. Trying to figure out why she can't move, she soon figured out that she was strapped into a machine on the wall with a bunch of wires sticking through her skin and a device wrapped around her horn. Twilight grew frantic and began to shake the machine violently. "Now now, I wouldn't want our little princess getting hurt" said Ironjaw snarkingly. Twilight's anger soon went back to sadness after many attempts of trying to shake loose. "Why, why are you doing this?" she said out of desperation. Ironjaw then proceeded to ponder around and start monologuing. "You see, as a child I was full of happiness and ambition just like you and your friend here" said Ironjaw as he nodded his head over towards Pinkie. "I used to love inventing and I had a dream that my inventions could one day better the world of ponykind. Atleast I thought so until a certain day in my life" said Ironjaw calmly. "Back then my teacher inspired me to pursue my dreams, so I decided I would make her proud. That lead me to make this horn on my head as you can see. However when I showed her the result..." he said while appearing to look as if he were holding back tears. "When I did a test of my new horn to the class, something went terribly wrong as I began to lift one of the desks. My horn went out of control and I ended up impaling her against the wall with the desk." he said with a pause. "I was responsible for doing that to her and while I was breaking down, the other ponies couldn't help but call me a screw-up and neglect me for doing something I did by accident." he said sobbingly. "Ever since that day I took the words of my teacher into mind and I continued doing what I love, inventing so nopony can be an imperfection. However I gave up that long ago, and now I'm purely doing this to get back at those who see me as one. I'll prove to everypony even if you're perfect, everyone has flaws." he pauses. "As you can see from all of these ponies out there. They're all greedy every last one of them, trying to make themselves better than everypony. Also don't you see them pillaging your town? They will never be happy with what they have, so this is why I did this" he stops.
Starting to see him in sort of a different light, Twilight asks him "but why do you have me strapped here?" Giving her the benefit of hearing the reason he says "well you're a battery now. Essentially those hearts I made for all of you ponies along with those mechanical brains have sort of a receiver function in them. Whatever I tell them to do, they listen and as an added bonus they have a kill switch. If they don't listen to me or you become unplugged from this machine, the switch will become activated and all of your little friends will be no more. So to be clear, I lied about the whole heart making you eternal thing and now you're the sole thing that's keeping them alive with your magic powering their hearts." This opened Twilight's eyes wide as she figured out his sinister plan. "But hey think of it this way, if you didn't come here right now than your friends would of been gone already." said Ironjaw smirkingly. In a last chance at redemption, Twilight pulled the spellbook out of her bag with her levitation and read out a spell. With the little power she had left, she shot out a small fireball spell that lit Ironjaw's cloak partially on fire. In an effort to get to the water cooling station downstairs, he starts to run out of the workshop. As he is about to leave the room, he trips over one of the tables chains and falls right into a vat of molten iron. The sight of the stallion descending into the metal, made Twilight feel redeemed knowing that he is no more. Although she vanquished the evil that was Ironjaw, she was to be bound to that machine unless she payed the ultimate price.
Later that morning back at the tree house, Spike woke up and Twilight was nowhere to be seen. "Oh Twilight, please don't tell me that something bad happened to you" he said as he left the house. Running to the factory, he looks around and finds that all of the ponies are walking around like normal as if whatever type of hynopsis that was on them weared off. Also after a long storm, the rain has stopped and now a big and beautiful rainbow stretched across the sky like the one before Pinkie Pie got her wings. Spike arrived to the factory and went in the front hallway. "Twilight! Where are you?" yelled Spike. There was no response, however he smelled something weird coming from upstairs. He walked up the stairs and the smell got stronger until he entered the workshop through the office. The scent that he had smelled was of the decomposure coming from the molten iron vat. Looking around the room after he found the source of the smell, he found Twilight strapped to the machine. "Twilight, what happened?" says Spike in concern as he runs up to her. After being hooked up to the machine for so long, Twilight's body began to look like a dried grape. Her body was looked as if it was wearing down and her purple tinted skin now looked sickly and pale, she was all out of energy that even talking was becoming hard for her to do. "Spike....help.....me....." said Twilight lightly. "How do I help you?" asked Spike. With the little amount of energy that she had, she nodded her head over to the workshop table where a saw was. "Cut these.....wires....." said Twilight quietly again.
"Are you sure Twilight?" questioned Spike seeming hesitant. "It hurts...." said Twilight starting to nod off. Spike then got the saw off the table and proceeded to saw the wires keeping Twilight bound to the machine. After cutting the wires, he pressed the safety release button on the side of the controls, releasing Twilight from her prison and she fell to the ground hard. Her body was barely moving and felt weaker by the second but she managed to say a few last words "you're safe now...." After redeeming herself, she passed out and Twilight Sparkle was no more. Spike began to break into tears at the lose of his friend and shortly after the machine was cut, an alarm started going off. "Oh no" said Spike still tearing up as he went to the window overlooking ponyville. He watched as all of the ponies in ponyville had a purple light glow on their metallic chests and one by one he saw them drop dead. "How could this happen?" said Spike crying more than ever. After all of the purple lights stopped in town, the alarm turned off and after turning around, Spike saw a pink light glow on Pinkie's metallic chest in the corner of the room. The statue-like Pinkie fell to the ground limp like all of the others. "Not you too!" yelled Spike.
After running towards Pinkie to check her pulse, he saw a ripped note from Ironjaw's journal on the stand that Pinkie stood. It read:
"After making all of my inventions for the ponies of Ponyville, nobody really felt dear to me except Pinkie Pie. I don't know why, but I could see myself in her. She is cheerful in even the worst of times, something that I wasn't when I was a colt. When it came time to make the mechanical heart for Pinkie, I couldn't put her through the same treatment I gave everyone else, she is pure. After thinking it through, I have decided not to add a kill switch into Pinkie's heart. Instead I shall give her the one thing that all of these ponies sought after all this time. I shall give her eternal life."
After the pink light shut off on Pinkie's chest, she slowly stood up and smiled at Spike as if she didn't know what had happened. Spike wishing to inform his friend about what happened, showed her around the room and the rest of Ponyville. Now saddened after finding out the news through Spike, Pinkie kneeled down besides Twilight's corpse and said "What have I done." All she ever wanted to be was special like her friends, thinking that if she got wings and a horn that she would be able to do all of the wonderous things that her friends could do but in the end it was more of a curse than a gift. She was special all along.
The End