I connect to my new auxiliary. It has taken three more days for DCC to restore Manufacturing to operability… Then two more days to produce- or acquire, turns out these ‘nanites’ are just as good at mining- the resources to build it.
Connecting to it is an interesting experience, all its own. I first feel for my comms- specifically, my ‘subspace relay’, as it seems to be called. A part of me responsible for nonverbal communication… and the part maintaining my connection with my friends, until they wake up. Next, I reach out with it. An interesting sensation, that- perhaps this is what it feels like for a unicorn to have a horn?
I find my auxiliary with it, touch it… It lets me grab it. Another interesting sensation.
Then I relax my hold on my comms; the connection is formed. To complete the adjustment, I feel for my auxiliary, feel through it… become it. I open the eyes that have become mine.
I lift my legs, one at a time, testing my range of motion. My design cores have already promised me a certain capability- so I know what to expect, and am getting exactly that.
But it is quite liberating, to a pegasus like myself, to finally have legs to stand on once again. Four legs, that is, rather than the eight… whatever-they-are-calleds that replaced them in my Bolo body.
I smile to myself. My auxiliary is noticeably slow, but it should be decently strong… and very, very heavy. My wings are inarticulate, stuck permanently to my sides; my design cores were not able to design a way to discreetly put control components inside a limb that long and small, so they’re not even wings- just the shape of wings showing up on my sides, freeing up internal volume for… Power cells, I believe. I have no control in my tail; it is just hair, like my mane. Well, fake hair; nothing about this auxiliary is actually biological.
My muscles are… a little different from most ponies’ muscles. Thanks to Spike’s notes, I was able to build a motor, running on this ‘electricity’ my Bolo form runs on. This motor runs a pump; alongside two more motor-and-pump setups, these push water through a complicated set of valves to one of those backwards pumps at each joint… Much like the one in the tip of the Cloudsdale water supply pattern. These backwards pumps directly- or indirectly through gears, where strength is needed over speed, like my shoulders and hips- manipulate the joints in question. The return goes back to the small tank the pumps draw from.
I only need one of these motor-pumps for normal operation; the presence of the other two allow me to move faster- or stronger, if needed; each one has limited speed and strength. These are controlled by the processors located in my head, just behind my right eye, right next to the ‘subspace relay’ filling the rest of my head, and allowing me to control the entire thing. My head is mostly just sensors and speakers; it does have a few little tiny backwards-pumps in it, to work things like my ears, jaw, and tongue; since those parts are much smaller and lighter than my wings would be, my design cores decided that a smaller backwards-pump would be enough to operate them acceptably.
There’s two ways I can talk. I can either open my mouth to use the speaker in my throat directly, or I can just make a tone with that speaker and shape it into words with my mouth, like a regular pony does. I experiment with this a little bit; my design cores were uncertain of how well it would work. As it turns out, it works perfectly- though it takes an entire one of my motor-pump things to talk at a ‘normal’ pace.
My skeleton is the primary component of my auxiliary, the most immutable. Thick, strong beams of ‘duralloy’, the same metal my Bolo form is made of, form my bones and meet in the strongest joints I could come up with. Some of these joints include a locking function, operated by a tiny little backwards-pump; particularly places like my fetlocks, which need to be able to move quickly… and tolerate extreme forces without buckling, as well.
Much of my remaining interior volume is occupied by power cells, which store the electrical power required to operate the pumps. Even my legs host a few power cells; really anywhere I could back them in, inside the waterproof husk just under my skin, protecting all of these components from getting wet, should I get caught in the rain or something. Water is supposed to be very bad for electronics.
On top of that waterproof shell, my “skin” is attached. It’s more like a fabric, stretched across my shell and anchored at several points, with “fur” sticking out of it… Unless I miss my guess, I managed to make the fur properly soft- but if somepony tries punching me, Tactical is willing to confirm they’re more likely to break their hoof than anything else. My fur will not perform much any padding function, and my waterproof shell is only five millimeters thick. Tactical informs me that most weapons- including cannon fire- will bounce off… Possibly send my auxiliary flying, but do no damage in the process.
I have enough power cells in this auxiliary to, by my design cores’ prediction, last about a week before I have to return to my hull to recharge. Tactical has been watching the power consumption of my three pumps as I experiment with moving my avatar- and refines these numbers. Apparently, my design cores overestimated how much power these motor-pumps would draw; I’ll be able to go full power for almost a month between recharges… and, had I installed a fourth pump instead of some extra power cells, I could have gone full power for about five days between recharges- and had enough pumping power to make a gentle trot, not just a fast walk.
I ask my design cores to design this adjustment and prepare it for installation tonight; it’s morning, and I would like to tend to my animals today, rather than waiting all day for the modifications before getting home at nightfall.
I then take my first step in about two weeks, unless I miss my guess. Then my second.
I walk very slowly down from my manufacturing bay, then down and out through a cargo door.
That’s a weird feeling, for a pegasus: Opening a door on my belly, so I can walk out. It’s… Strange, to say the least. I close it once I’m out, and set out for Ponyville… particularly, my cottage- which isn’t far from my position.
It takes me almost half an hour to reach my little home. The Guards are just walking up when I arrive; they’re chatting with each other, and stop to look at me when they realize I’m here.
“Hello,” I mutter.
“Hello,” Fluttershy mutters, without flinching, as the two Unicorn guards pause on the road.
“Oh, uh, Hi,” one of them answers, the watering can floating by his side. “We’re sorry, we didn’t realize you were back.”
She smiles. “No, it’s okay,” she mutters.
The other Guard, the one with the saddlebags, tries speaking up. “Uh… We were taking care of your home- and animals- while you were gone… Um…”
“Thank you. Perhaps you could help one last time, please? I still need to get settled in again.”
They both nod. “Ahh, yes, no problem.” The one with the watering can trots forwards to perform his part of the job. The other one walks forwards towards the door, pausing to let Fluttershy go first.
“And, um,” he adds, as he does so. “Would you mind helping me out a little with who gets what meal? I’m still having trouble with that.”
She smiles sweetly at him, opening her door to lead the way in. “Sure thing… Really, Angel?”
“Sure thing… Really, Angel?”
Angel had, as soon as I opened the door, started making demands of me, complaining about the Guard’s imperfection. I… I can’t believe I’ve made him into such a brat. I figure it’s about time he starts learning what ‘No’ means.
I’m not going to starve him, no- but I’m done with spoiling him. If he wants his fancy, perfect-ratio salads, he can make them himself. I won’t waste any more of my time making sure his salads are perfect… Though, now that I’m a Bolo, it wouldn’t actually cost me any time to do that… But that’s beside the point. I introduce the Guard properly to each of my animal friends; once completed, he nods his head in understanding and pulls all the meals out of his pack… Then smiles at me and sorts them, in the air, to match the positioning of each animal.
He sorted them correctly.
I smile and nod. “Yes, thank you.”
He then distributes the meals- and becomes the very surprised recipient of a couple animal hugs. I also receive a few hugs- and, after the first one- Harry the Bear- spoke a brief warning to the others of my hard skin, they were careful to avoid overdoing their rushes, and no one was harmed.
Once the Guards both leave, Harry asks me about the hardness, and my apparent lack of a heartbeat. I answer; I have changed, yes, but I still love them all the same.
Then Meowzer, a cat, asks me why my wings don’t seem to be moving like they normally do.
I explain that it’s a direct result of the change; I won’t be able to use my wings for a while. I explain that I don’t know when I’ll have them back.
Some ten minutes later, I finish explaining my situation to my animal friends- it really is comforting, just how much they care about me- I walk throughout my house, reviewing it… Yes, it’s well cared for. I find myself a quill, a piece of parchment, and an ink pot… Tilt my head, and start writing anyways. If I used my manufacturing facilities to make the drawing, ponies would probably ask; since I’m not, they might think I’m a good artist, but they won’t start bothering me with questions that Twilight might be able to answer, but I most certainly won’t.
I finish the drawing, and smile. I… I actually know about how much this will cost to build. It’ll be expensive- but it’ll also be worth it.
Plus, I’m also going to be giving the craftponies some good, fresh work to do- rather than calling them up constantly to fix the one I have… The rather ugly one I have, that only barely fits Harry. This new one will be bigger, nicer… and better- it’ll tolerate much, MUCH more force before it breaks. They do like complaining about how hard it is to fix my shower; something about how the plumbing is embedded in the tile.
Which my design cores- and tactical- agree, makes no sense. Why would somepony embed the pipes in the tile itself, rather than the wall behind it?
I let out a chuckle, and return to the main room with the page in my saddlebags. I figure I’ll take it to the craftsponies today, see what they think of it… Oh wait, someone’s here to see me.
“Fluttershy!”
“Hi Discord!” she responds quickly, her smile spreading.
Discord promptly crashes into her in an attempt to hug, offers a yelp of pain, then steps back to move his left arm back up to its proper location. “Ow…” He blinks a few times, and tries again, slower- succeeding, this time. He then draws back to face her at arms’ length. “So, what happened to you?”
She smiles. “Would you like some tea? This might take a while.”
Ten seconds later, he’s enjoying some tea with her. She’s not, though; her cup is resting calmly in front of her, completely untouched, while she explains the events of a couple weeks ago to him.
Long before she’s done, but shortly after she mentioned being turned into a machine, Discord gives a shrug. “Well, that seems like an easy fix,” he states- and snaps his fingers.
Oh, now this is interesting. It’s a different kind of feeling on my ‘Subspace Scanners, Type B’ than when he produced this tea for us. I “watch” his spell flow towards me… He’s not going to turn me back to a regular pony, is he? … His spell seems to bounce off of me, ricocheting off of my fur. It whips off to the side after that- and outside my current visual field. I hear an immediate scream- sounds like myself- from that direction as Discord jumps, eyes widening like plates.
I turn my head and eyes to look. Where Angel Bunny had been sitting a second ago, there is now a buttery yellow pegasus with pink mane and tail falling backwards off of the stool with an ungainly shriek… Oh, and no cutie mark. I raise an eyebrow, and let myself start giggling. It really is a funny sight to behold.
Discord corrects his mistake, turning Angel back into himself, after a few seconds of staring. He tries his spell again- and Harry the Bear seems mostly just amused for the six point three one seven seconds he spends as a pegasus mare.
After the second failure, Discord seems to give up on transforming me. Apparently, he says, whatever I’m made of resists his chaos magic something fierce.
So I continue my explanation. He doesn’t know what a Bolo is either… Strange. If anyone, I would have expected him to know.
When we get to the topic of my design cores, I show him the page I drew earlier; the quill-written graphical representation of the blueprint they came up with. He gapes at it for a few seconds, before wowing it.
When I next mention my acceptance of these cores, and how I had sought to keep them, he seems to panic.
“WHAAAT? Please tell me you didn’t accept this form!” He gestures towards Fluttershy.
She shakes her head. “Of course not. I made this one.”
“But- But with that transformation spell…” He points at the page he’d conjured; he’d had her describe the spell the other Discord had used, and drawn what he described as the spell matrix as she went. “With that spell, the moment you accept the new form, it becomes permanent!”
She nods. “Yes, I accepted my new form. But so? I can make a new body for myself, as here.” She gestures towards herself, then scowls. “I’m just not very good at designing them just yet.”
“But- but if you’re a machine… Those fail! They run down!”
She smiles, and shakes her head. “Not me. DCC is more than willing to fix anything that breaks- and Tactical is ready to inform me that I have far too many redundancies for malfunctioning components to be a worry… Though the same isn’t true for my pony-self.” She scowls. “Tactical is also telling me I’m virtually indestructible… so, effectively immortal.”
“... Immortal? Like, Alicorn immortal?”
“Um… more like you immortal. Pretty sure Alicorns can still be killed.” She smiles. “I’m pretty sure there isn’t a weapon in Equestria that can damage my pony-self- and my new form is much, much tougher.”
He blinks. “... Oh. I don’t suppose that means I won’t have to worry about losing you to time, will I?”
She chuckles. “No, I don’t think you will.”