The Mechanic

by NightInk

The Barmaid

“Hand me the half inch.”

“The which one?”

The stranger sighed. “The little shiny wrench. No, the next one over. Give it to me.” The smith did so, and the stranger tightened the last bolt. Wiping a hidden bead of sweat from his brow with his right hoof, he snorted to try and get something caught in his nose out. He didn’t really think the smith washed up very well. “Ok, that’s the last piece. The connections are all laid out, the cuff is back in place, the blood is mostly wiped up… we’re ready to make the connections again and lock it in place.”

“I still don’t understand why you took the left leg from the shop and turned it into a right.”

“Because it was the one that was worthy of her. Well, most worthy. I fixed it for her leg. It wasn’t quite right. Once it gets attached, I’ll do some final tinkering.”

“Um, can I please be unconscious for the connecting of the nerves?” The waitress craned her head to try and look at her stump, but her head was pushed back down by the stranger.

“No. the connection of the nerves is the part you most need to be awake for. The nerves are more active when you are awake, and for the best connection to be made you need the nerves active. Now, I’m going to do it on the count of five.”

“Why five? Why not three?”

“Five gives you two more seconds to prepare. Now, when I say one, I want you to take a deep breath in. On two, a deep breath out. Keep going like that. OK?” She nodded. “All right. One.” She took a breath in. “Two.” As she breathed out, the stranger gave the leg a crank, locking it into place. A spark of electricity lit the room as the waitress screamed in agony.

“AAAAAHHHHH!!!” The stranger didn’t even flinch as her screams echoed in the small room.

“Yes, yes, I know it hurts. I know exactly what it’s like.”

“How do you know what this is like?!” she screamed, crying more now than she had when her leg had been broken just earlier.

“I’ve performed this… operation before. Many times.”

“That doesn’t mean you know what it feels like!!”

“Yes I do. I know more pain than you could ever know. Just keep breathing. In, and out. In, and out.” He kept guiding her breathing until the hershness of the pain began to subside and she stopped screaming, instead lying still and panting. He turned to the smith and nodded towards the door, indicating they should go. “She needs to rest here. Let’s give her a few minutes.”

The big pony nodded and followed him quietly, but as soon as they were outside the room he turned and confronted the strange, cloaked pony in front of him. “Why did you leave her awake? She shouldn’t have to go through that.”

“If she really wants high quality ambi-tech, then she does. This machinery does not connect to just the body, but to the mind, heart, and soul. It needs to become a part of its owner so that it isn’t just a piece of machinery, but a true part of the pony. I don’t expect you to understand that. I don’t fully know what it means either.”

The smith frowned. “If you don’t know, then how do you… know?”

Through the veil of the cowl, the smith saw a faint smile. “Huh,” he chuckled. “My daughter, she… Well, you wouldn’t understand.”

The smiths frown deepened, but softened at the same time. “I have a daughter too, you know. Prettiest little thing I could ever hope to see.”

The strange pony smiled a little more, his strangeness only growing. “Well, you never met my little Gasket…”

The frown disappeared from the smiths face, turning into a compassionate half-smile. “Well, I’m sure she’s a wonderful pony.”

The stranger turned away, bowing is head. “Yes. She was.” As he put his left front hoof down, he cried out in pain and grabbed his shoulder. He nearly doubled over onto the floor, but was caught by the strong hooves of the smith.

“Woah, now. Easy. What’s the matter with your shoulder, anyways? You had to stop to work a few kinks out of it while we were in there.”

“I- Arg! Goddesses damn it all!” he groaned again, falling out of Smithy’s hooves. “It’s a wire and a couple of bolts, nothing serious.”

Undoing and removing the stained blue shirt, Smithy took a look at the stranger’s leg. He gasped as he saw the real extent of the ambi-tech the pony had kept hidden. “ W-well, where is the problem here? Half your chest is made of tech!”

Indeed, much of the strange pony’s chest was made of metal. The plating extended over the left half of the pony’s ribcage, extending no further than the bottom rib. It moved up and encased, or rather made up his body all the way up to his spine. It was the most advanced ambi-tech the smith had ever seen. He doubted he would ever see anything quite like it again. As he looked over it, he couldn’t see anything missing or out of place. Other than the fact that the tech covered so much flesh, the oddest thing was that most of the bolts and screws had been covered over by the plating. The plating covered everything so well that it was difficult to tell how it had been attached. It was artfully decorated with little carvings and engravings, done with a careful hoof. Smithy ran his hoof over the carvings, admiring them. One depicted a little house, with two ponies standing in front of it. A third was up in the sky, standing on a cloud. It struck the smith as strange because the pony on the cloud had no wings, and last he knew only pegasus ponies were able to stand on clouds.

“My, my,” Smithy whispered. “What are these carvings?” The stranger pushed a few different places on the plating and it came off. The smith guessed that it could only have been a special kind of pressure sensitive locks. He slid it down his leg, removing it in one piece. There were a few small hinges and joints for flexibility, but it was a nearly solid piece of metal. Marveling at the technological wonder, Smithy gingerly took the piece from the stranger, but soon noticed that several of the ribs of this pony were made of metal too. “Great Celestia,” he whispered. “How deep does your tech go?”

The quarter mechanical pony smiled and laughed, not loud but louder than he had laughed all night. “Ha! No farther than that. Those few rib replacements are as deep as any ambi-tech has ever gone. And the carvings are from my daughter. I never thought they were necessary, but she said that every little detail, every little piece of a pony is unique and special and important. If we’re trying to recreate a pony’s parts, why shouldn’t the parts we make be unique and special and important too?”

Smithy smiled sadly, looking at the workings in the pony’s chest. It didn’t seem possible that he had that much tech in his body, but there it was. A leg, a pec, a third of his ribs, and all of that covered by mechanical workings, wires, gears, and a few things that the simple forge worker couldn’t identify. He had been under the impression that ambi-tech had been a fairly new invention, only around for a few years, but this was something he barely believed was possible.

“So… what do you need me to do?” he asked, not sure that he could even offer anything.

“I want you to take me back inside where it is clean, help her off of the table. Then help me on the table. The spasms have been coming more frequently as of late. And more painful. I need three bolts, half inch, and four other bolts, three eights. A roll of the smallest wire you have, and, despite what I said earlier, I need you to make me a piece in the forge.”

…

Five minutes later he was lying on his right side, looking at the fully unconscious waitress. Ten minutes later he was working on his leg and chest while avoiding questions being asked by the fully conscious waitress and listening to the hammer blows coming from the forge next door.

“So, why didn’t you let me have at least some sort of painkiller?”

“It would have resulted in an inferior connection between your nerves and your wiring. Let me work.”

“How did you get so much high quality ambi-tech? Especially if you’re so poor.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Well, why are you so poor at least?”

“Because I’m out of money.”

“Why?”

“Because talkative waitresses keep preying on my kindness and spending all my money on repairs.”

“Fine, if you want me to stop talking, just ask nicely.”

“Please stop talking and let me work.”

“You can talk and work at the same time. What’s that wire?”

He sighed. “It’s for sensory perception. I mean it. This is more delicate work than your leg was. I need quiet to focus.” He tried to focus on the sounds of the hammer instead of her voice, but she was always talking. It was difficult. He was, however, able to marvel at the fact that the room didn’t heat up, despite the sweltering heat next door.

“So, I thought that ambi-tech wasn’t advanced enough to connect to feelers? That the pony who invented it didn’t decide to give feeling back to the limbs.”

“He gave plenty! And he didn’t know how to make the metal feel!” he snapped. He sighed, trying to calm down. He really needed some peace and quiet.

The waitress looked at him curiously. “You sure are temperamental about your ambi-tech, aren’t you? Can’t you just get it fixed up anytime?”

He glared at her through his hood, which he still had on. “Ambi-tech needs to be taken care of, maintained. It isn’t just a machine strapped onto a pony, it is a part of you.”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed at him. “No, it is just a machine. It’s a bunch of wires hooked to nerves and a bunch of metal hooked to muscles and bone. Nothing more. I don’t know who filled your head with the idea that this stuff about ambi-tech being a living thing, but whoever it was pulling you along to make you buy the highest quality. If it even is high quality. There’s so much junk in there that I can’t tell what’s what. Though admittedly I don’t know everything that’s in this stuff.”

She could have sworn she heard the strange pony growl as she inadvertently insulted his tech. “I don’t know who you are, and I really couldn’t care. You are a stranger to me, and I’ve helped you out of compassion. But do not insult my ambi-tech or my mechanic. I had the best damn mechanic there ever was and ever will be. I am not done working on that leg, and if you say anything more about my mechanic that is unsavory, you will find that it breaks down very quickly.” He turned back to his tinkering, moving hair away from one of the bolts holding the limb to his body.

She shivered at his threat, and didn’t doubt for a second that he would follow through on it. She thought it strange that he was so attached to his mechanic or his mechanical limb. Usually ponies would love nothing better than to have their original limbs back, but this pony took better care of his ambi-tech than his real body. She looked over his body, trying to understand him. She fancied herself quite a good reader of ponies, especially after working at a bar for years. The hair immediately around his plating was gone, about an inch all the way around. The hair that was there was damaged somehow, like he had suffered some terrible injuries. His tech ran deep, as the smith had seen, but she also noticed that it was difficult in some places to tell how far it went. She had to admit, his tech was the most advanced thing she had ever seen. Long sections of metallic, artificial muscle ran through his chest, connecting to the real muscle where it did when it was still flesh. Exposed nerves could be seen running through everything, and she actually believed that whoever had worked on this pony had tried to complete his nervous system in its entirety. She squinted, trying to look past his metal muscles, but they flexed and shifted every time he moved, and though they weren’t as complete as the nerves they covered most everything underneath them up. It didn’t matter anyways, though. She could see that several of his ribs were tech as well, though they were a made of much tougher stuff.

“Do they move?” she asked, a little worried that she would upset him again. “Your metal ribs, I mean.”

He looked up, though she couldn’t see his eyes. The hood didn’t move, just his muzzle. It moved upwards in its place, just a little. He must have been keeping one eye on his work. “No,” he stated bluntly. “My ribs don’t move.”

“Why not?”

He groaned. “Because the ribs protect the heart, lungs, esophageal passageway, and other things. Please, keep your questions, if you must ask them, intelligent.”

She pouted, hurt. “Hey! Just because I don’t know all about pony anatomy doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent!”

He muttered something unpleasant. She could almost feel the air grow heavier with the weight of his curses. “I meant about ambi-tech. if you need to ask about my leg, make them real questions.”

“How does the metal feel? Is that a better question?”

“Do I have to answer it?”

“Yes.” She moved to cross her hooves, but winced as she moved her tech limb. “Ow! Damn.”

He hopped off the table, keeping his injured leg of the ground. He made his way over to her, biting his lip the whole time to keep from making any noise as the exposed nerves and muscles moved in their places, loosened by his unfinished work. “Let me see it,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle suddenly. “Don’t move it too much. Like I said, I’m not done tinkering with it.”

She cringed again as the stranger touched her false hoof, moving it only slightly. “Ah! Hey, that hurts! Didn’t you do a good job?”

He chuckled, just once. “Huh. I did a wonderful job. This is the best ambi-tech in this entire city. Canterlot has never seen tech like this. Save for mine. It’s going to take some getting used to, I made… Well, quite a few changes.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Changes? Like what?”

“Nothing you’ll even notice, ultimately. Performance upgrades. Hold still.”

She held still, but seriously considered jiggling the leg just to get his goat. But as the thought passed through her head, a large electrical spark, similar to the one she had seen when the leg had been connected, flashed and tried to light up the stranger’s cowl. Failing to make even the slightest dent in the darkness, it fell back down and landed on the stranger’s hoof. Not flinching, he let the spark hit him and kept working. A little scorch mark appeared on his hoof, marring the dry surface.

“Didn’t you feel that?” she asked, looking worriedly at the mark. “I mean, I know that didn’t just affect your hoof. I may be stupid, but I’m not…”

“Stupid?” the stranger finished her sentence, smirking. “Yes, I felt it, but I’ve been burned far, far worse.”

She licked her hoof and rubbed at the mark, trying to wash away the burned surface. “Come on, now. Don’t act tough. A little pain can be good for the body, but you need to take care of it.”

He didn’t know what happened, but the next thing he knew he was lying on the floor, shivering.