Steel Heart

by ChAoS pOnY

Family, a Gift, and an Accident

As they walked into the lobby they saw a dark blue automaton horse the size of a Friesian Horse wearing a custome made old fashion green army helmet and bullet proof vest talking with a wooly mammoth about the size of a horse and a group of people in suits and ties. "Again, we here at Equine Automaton Inc. apologies for the inconvenience due to the lock down procedures and thank the Smithsonian for their continued support. We hope Fuzzy here will find his new job as a tour guide in the natural history museum very enjoyable."
"Thank you Brave Steel and we understand that problems do occur. I do wish you would reconsider our offer and join us due to your historical importants of being the first fully functioning Automaton." One of the men in suits said.
"And it might be an honor one day, but for now I am dedicated to the doctor and being there to rescue her from her latest invention that may go wrong." Brave Steel said as he offered a hoof and proceded to shake hands with all of them.
"Until next time then Brave Steel." the man said as they led Fuzzy out.
"Until next time Dr. Jones." Brave Steel said as they left before turning to Steel Heart and Jenny and bracing for what he knew was coming as Steel Heart and Jenny both tackled hugged him. "Oof."
"Uncle Steel!" They both squealed as they knocked the Automaton horse over as it faked being overpowered by a 9 year old girl and her adopted Automaton sister. In reality he could kick a hole through a 4 inch steel plate with ease, but his nieces were to cute to do something like that, though he did huff a bit when his helmet came off revealing his bright pink, buzz cut mane he went out of his way to hide. His mother, Dr. Sarisan had let her daughter, Sally, pick his mane and tail color and it was made to resist all dyes and paints. The tail didn't bother him since it had been set on fire so many time that it was now black from various accidents in the Labs, but he had no desire to set his head on fire to change his mane color.
After a minute or so they let up and Jenny put his helmet back onto his head. "Why are you wearing this thing today Uncle Steel?" Jenny asked as she readjusted it.
"Your Granny is planning to test the Multi-Jump Tele-Gate she based off of Galiant's teleportation ability and you remember how we had a ton of snow pour through the first tele-gate she built. Well I seem to have found the only rock to come through from the mountain it came from with my head and really don't want to get hit by whatever comes through from Olympus Mons on Mars when we try to connect to the tele-gate in Olympus City." He told them as they started walking towards Equine Automaton advanced technologies labs or the Labs as everyone called them. "You would think she would be more cautious when dealing with everything we don't understand about Galiant's abilities, but she is like a kid in a candy store when it comes to studying everything she can about the accident that created him and reproducing everything he can do. Even after creating the Grey Men when her and Dr. Hong attempted to reproduce the accident in a nanite tank hasn't slowed her down. She is sure that the key to making us less dependant on humanity is in recreating him and adding in a way for us to mimic biological reproduction or as she puts it 'Stop being machines with souls and live as a truely new life form.' and I can't fault her there. We need humanity too much to ever be truely free, despite what the law says. No offense Jenny."
"Don't worry, Mom, Aunt June, and Granny talk about it all the time. Sometimes really loud over the colonies ships using engines we don't even understand and whether we are going too fast with things that boarder on Magic and we may never understand. Like how you said Gailiant can slip through cracks that aren't there and into places outside of everything in the Universe." Jenny said as they passed a human and an automaton dog drill instructors barking orders at a group of partnered pairs in Equine Automaton Security Trainee uniforms as they worked to pick up pieces of broken bricks and metal ducts inside an area taped off with security tape.
"I can't even figure out how he does it." A voice said from a door ahead. "And I have studied him more than any one but Mom."
"Aunt June!" both girls squealed as the raced forward to hug the tall, slim albino woman standing in front of an office door that had a sign that read 'Dr. Juniper Sarisan's Office, Enter At The Risk of Being Hugged. Doctor of Advanced Applied Physics, Automaton Psychology, Automaton Design, and Cuteness.' with the last word made to look like it was writen in crayon and with a cartoon Automaton Pony hloding a sign that read 'Free Hugs' in it's mouth.
When told there was no doctorate for cuteness Juniper Sarisan invented it by combining her knowledge of psychology and design to explain how certain things are considered cute and expanding the scientific understanding of pedomorphism and how humans are predispossed to be protective of things they consider cute like babies and small furry animals and by adding those traits into automatons made them easier for humans to except them and reduced any act of agression towards them. This then lead to many equine style automatons being produced with more pony-like features as a test run. The levels of hostility towards them dropped drastically and excelerated their inclusion into society. After that all non military and non law enforcement lines of automatons were produced to take advantage of this. A simple reduction of the snout size and a more rounding of the head and snout, combinded with enlarging the eye (which also allowed more room for expanding the range of vision into microwave, infrared and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.) and slight enlargement of the head (which also freed up room for more for expanding the receptors for ultrasonic sound and communications and infrasound.). Compacting the body length and reducing the height to 3 1/2 feet to 4 feet tall both added to this effect and made it easier to deal with living in a human proportioned house. By the time she had proven her theoris and earned the first doctorate in Cuteness, Hasbro had dusted off an old toy line and ordered a series of automatons for their first theme park 'Ponyville, U.S.A.', which helped her pay her student loans off in 3 months and excelerated Equine Automaton Inc. rise as the foremost name in Artificial Intellegence, Robotics, Animatronics, and of course Automatons. This was excelerated further after banning Disney from access to all Equine Automaton Inc. products and winning a lawsuite for the theft of Equine Automatons proprietary technology and signing deals with every one of their competitors inclueding Hasbro and Warner Brothers.
"Hi girls," she asked as she hugged both of them. "Are you here to see the new aquatic automaton based off of Opisthoteuthis adorabilis and it's natural counter parts interact. It really is adorable and we are learning alot about Opisthoteuthis adorabilis by having it 'pal around' with her in as close to a natural enviroment as we could recreate for them."
"No, but can we stop by to see them after I get my upgrades?" Steel Heart asked.
"Of course you can and I'll even give you your birthday present a few days early, just in case I can't get free for you party." Juniper told her before going into her ofice and coming back out with a white and pink saddle bag with Steel Heart's Marking Plate design on it. "It is Hasbro's the first saddle bag from their Carousel Boutique ltd. production line for automatons, custom made with ,as they put it, your cutie mark. These won't be in store for another month, but I called in a few favors for it."
Hugging her aunt, Steel Heart yelled, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
"Umm... is Aunt June suppose to be turning blue." Jenny asked as Steel Heart let go and Juniper began gasping for breath.
"Note...(gasp) to self... (gasp) I now know what... (gasp) it would feel like to hug....(a very deep breath) a hydralic press." Juniper said between gasps.
"Sorry, but it's the best gift ever." Steel Heart said.
"No problem, she didn't need those ribs anyways." Brave Steel said before getting punched in the shoulder and then laughing as Juniper tried to shake some feeling back into he hand. "Titanium steel alloy laced with carbon nano fibers, remember."
"Jerk."
"And with that we need to go before mom gets bored and fires up the tele-gate early." Brave Steel said as they walked away. A few minutes later they came to a door that had a sign taped over the name that read, 'Yes, The Mad Scientist is in!' and they could hear a very high pitched whine and heavy metal music coming from inside of the room. As he opened the door he was blasted with the sound of Man-O-War singing 'Gods of War'. The girls followed him in as they watched the 4 feet 5 inch tall Dr. Sarisan skip across the room to a desk with her computer and a strawberry cake that had a Chell from Portal 8 on it with her granddaughters Heather and Kelly facing off against Mecha-Glados on top of it. She tapped a few icons on the screen before reaching over and pulling out a hair tie and pulling her long grey hair back into a pony tail. Then she started doing stretches, as if she thought she might have to run in a moment. Seeing this Brave Steel looked at the screen and saw it was a 15 on the count-down and turned to the girls pointing his hoof at a small wall of sandbags and yelled, "Get to the sandbags now!"
They were halfway towards the sandbags when a rainbow colored hole opened up above Jenny and Steel Heart and sucked them through. The last thing Brave Steel heard was Jenny screaming for him and Steel Heart going into Emergency Sub Routine Omega, which meant in the worst possible outcome an automaton would grab the nearest human, do whatever it took to save them, and would sacrifice themselves to do it. A second later Jenny flew out of the hole with smoldering hair and smoldering hoof prints on the seat of her pants as the hole closed down to the size of a pea and hung there, flickering in that strange rainbow color he had never seen a tele-gate make. Ignoring it he looked around for his mom, who was slumped against a wall, but Jenny began screaming and he could tell by just looking something was wrong with her hips. They shouldn't look like that.

As Steel Heart tumbled through the rainbow colored tunnel she heard various things like singing, a voice screaming "THIS IS SPARTA!", another voice said "Neither bird, nor plane, nor even frog, just little old me, Underdog." At one point a white rabit with a pocket watch flew past saying something about being late and soon followed by a girl in a blue dress. Then she heard more voices like a badly synthesized voice say, "If the world won't love me, I will teach it to fear me instead!" and another voice seemingly amplified "Come on, look at me. No plan, no backup, no weapons worth a damn, oh, and something else I don't have: anything to lose! So, if you are sitting up there in your silly little spaceships with all your silly little guns, and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way! Remember every black day I ever stopped you, and then, and then do the smart thing! Let somebody else try first." Then she heard two more voice as she saw a bright light up ahead getting close, "I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too." and "Did you miss me Celestia? I missed you." Then the tunnel split into two and she tumbled down the left hand side towards the light as a funny blue box flew past her with a strange whirring noise and through the light. She looked back just in time to see a house going down the right hand side and then she was through the light and falling from the sky. Then she heard something like wings and saw a grey automaton with wings coming towards her.
"I got you." the grey automaton said as it grabbed her, slowing her down, and then dropped her. She saw the automaton's golden crossed eyes as she yelled out, "My Bad!"
Below her was a town and she looked around desperately before seeing a cart being pulled by an orange automaton wearing an old cowboy hat just before she hit the cart face first and shut down in self diagnostic and reboot.