Returning Survivor

by Itchy


Too Many Heads

Mecha sighed as he sat down, having finished his punishment for disturbing the town with his drunken antics... again. Thankfully, all he had to do was help clean up the library once this time, as he and his friends didn't really do much this time. He ignored whatever Twilight was saying, as he looked out the window to see a speck getting closer and closer... was that Rainbow Dash?

BOOM!

Based on the fact that she was now sitting on his chest, he'd say yes. Taking a glance around, Mecha said, “Okay, I'm not cleaning this up! I've got an appointment in ten minutes, you're on your own for this one!” before pushing Rainbow Dash off of him, and walked out the door.

After walking in a random direction for a minute or so to cool off, Mecha pulled out the sheet with his jobs for the day, and looked at the slot that matched the current time. “Let's see... I need to fix an AC unit at... the school,” he said out loud, before looking up to see that his wandering had taken him to the front of the school. “Huh. That's convenient,” he muttered, before walking in, seeing as it was lunch time for the colts and fillies.

“Mecha the mechanic, reporting in!” he hollered into the building, looking around for Cheerilee. He spotted her at her desk, grading some homework.

Looking up, she smiled and said, “Ah Mecha, right on time!” as she put down the work she was grading. Getting up, she walked over to a window, motioning for him to come over. “As you know, the school's air conditioning is out, and with the heat wave the pegasi need to speed up the evaporation of the excess rain from the last storm coming up, I wanted to make sure that it was fixed before things got to uncomfortable in here.”

Nodding his head, Mecha took a look over the unit, saying, “It seems to be a simple mechanical error, I can have it fixed before lunch is over.”

Getting an even larger smile on her face, Cheerilee said, “That'd be great! If you need anything, let me know, otherwise I'm going to get back to work.”

Giving her a nod to let her know that he heard her, Mecha took off the cover of the unit before having his mechanical leg shift until he had a screwdriver instead of a hoof, and quickly got to work.

After twenty minutes of work, Mecha put the cover back on, before turning the unit on to test it. When it started to run, he smiled, before turning to Cheerilee and saying, “Works all done.”

Getting up, Cheerilee grinned and said, “That's great!” as she walked over to see it working for herself. However, the moment she got to the AC unit, it started to splutter, and shut down. “Uh,” she started, “I don't think you completely fixed it.”

Frowning, Mecha looked at the unit sternly, before giving it a whack. At that point, the machine started working again, causing him to smile. “Nope,” he said, “just needed to give it a minute to boot up. That'll be twenty bits,” he said, walking with her towards her desk.

Opening a drawer, Cheerilee handed him a bag with the bits in it, and asked, “Are we still up for dinner at the cafe to talk about the gala?”

Giving the bag a quick weigh in to make sure she didn't overpay him, Mecha nodded his head, saying, “Unless something puts me in the hospital again, we should be fine.” Turning to leave, the bell rang to signal the end of lunch, causing all the foals to run in, including Snips and Snails.

Upon seeing their boss, the two ran up to him, with Snips asking, “What are you doing here boss?”

Chuckling upon seeing their enthusiastic faces, Mecha replied, “Just fixing up the AC here and chatting up you teacher.”

Snails blinked, before saying, “Really? That's cool. Will you be teaching us how to do that kinda stuff later?”

Thinking for a moment, Mecha responded with, “Fixing machines and utilities? Yeah, I'll be teaching that to you two in the next month or so. Chatting up mares? That you'll have to ask you dads about.” Seeing their flustered faces, Mecha merely laughed, before walking out the door. Right as he was about to exit, he turned his head and said, “The armor and sword you two made have just been shipped, along with mine. I should get a letter in a day or two, and I'll let you know if you pass the test then.”

LINEBREAKER

Mecha was walking towards his home, having taken the day off for house calls, or in the case of the last one, school calls, and had finished for the day. His plan was to head back to the forge, and start working on some personal projects instead of the usual store items. After all, he'd need to make room for Snips and Snails works, as he knew that they'd pass the test he'd given them. After all, they'd manage to make a near perfect replica of the armor he'd made and sold in Canterlot.

Smiling at the thought of what those two might make, Mecha started to hum to himself, when her heard a loud, echoing crash. Stopping in the middle of his tracks, Mecha turned towards the sound, and said, “Wrath's dagger. A hydra. A wrath forsaken hydra. And some idiot managed to keep cutting its heads until it had several hundred. Just what I needed.”

Rushing into his house, he quickly grabbed his gear before rushing out towards the library. Thankfully, the hydra was still a couple of minutes away from Ponyville, moving slowly due to the amount of heads it had. Breaking through the door, Mecha spotted Spike, who was rushing towards the door. Spotting Mecha, he asked, “What's going on out there?”

Grabbing a quill and piece of paper that were laying around, Mecha wrote out a quick note whilst saying, “There's a hydra with waaaaaaay to many heads on its way here. I need you to send this to Canterlot NOW so that Solaris can get here, since he's the only unicorn I know that's good with fire magic. After that, I'm going to need you to come with me so you can heat my blades to the point where I can chop heads without spawning more. Got that?”

Wide eyed, Spike lightly nodded his head, before taking the note from Mecha and sending it to princess Celestia via dragon fire. Having done that, he ran out the door, on Mecha's heels.

Running towards the hydra, Mecha pulled out the two swords on his back, while standing up and turning to face Spike, saying, “Heat these up as much as you can, they need to be at least white hot!”

Acting quickly, Spike took a deep breath before releasing the hottest flames he could, straight onto the swords. Nodding his head, Mecha took off the moment Spike stopped, not wanting to waste a second while the blades began to cool. Rushing up to the creature, Mecha quickly started to twist and turn when seven heads started to charge him. Jumping up onto one of the heads, Mecha used it as a spring board, getting even higher before chopping off one of the heads. Seeing that the neck wound was cauterized, and thus wouldn't spawn two more heads, he acted quickly, cutting off another head.

Howling in rage, most of the heads charged at Mecha's location, spiraling around each other, trying to hit him. Twisting himself in circles, he did his best to fend off the heads whilst cutting off more. Landing, he noticed that the last three heads he cut off didn't completely cauterize, causing six heads to form. Leaping back, he yelled, “Spike, flame me! And where in Sloth's hammock is Solaris?!?”

As if to answer his question, a flash of light appeared right next to him, Solaris forming next to him. “You called?” he asked, pulling his sword out while shifting to an upright stance.

“Yeah,” Mecha said, “think you can maintain heat on both our weapons?”

“Yep,” Solaris responded, as a blackish red glow surrounded his horn and his sword, which quickly turned into a scythe, before surrounding it and Mecha's swords, leading to them becoming so hot that heat was visibly pouring off them. “Where's Big Macintosh? Figured he'd be here to help,” he asked as he ran up to the hydra, spinning the scythe above him, chopping off several heads in one go.

Rushing to aid Solaris, Mecha ran up one of the many necks, saying, “Helping with the evacuations. He knew, as well as I did, that his fighting style was useless against this thing. Too slow.” all the while chopping off any head that approached him, before cutting the neck he was running on, twisting to avoid a collision with another head.

“Makes sense,” Solaris replied, hopping from head to head, cutting them down as a farmer would cut wheat. “After all, he is a big powerhouse.”

Snorting, Mecha blocked a head's attempt to swallow him, before slicing it off, saying, “He also happens to be one of the ponies that people look to for guidance when Twilight isn't here. Better that he use this to help- gah!” interrupted by one of the heads managing to sneak into his guard and bite his left side, Mecha quickly retaliated by chopping it off while leaping down. Solaris joined him by leaping off the highest head, twisting and turning to slice off as many heads during his descent as possible, before leaping to stand next to Mecha.

“You okay?” Solaris asked, the two combatants panting slightly.

Glancing at the wound, Mecha pressed the side of one of his blades to the wound, causing it to hiss as the heat burned to wound shut, causing Mecha to clench his teeth in pain. “I'll be fine, we still have at least fifty heads to deal with. I really wish I could find the idiot that caused this mess, and shove all these heads up where the sun don't shine.”

Wincing slightly at the thought, Solaris merely charged back into the fray, followed closely by Mecha, both swinging like maniacs due to the increased speed of the heads caused by the lack of interference from the now removed heads.

Spinning in a circle to chop off three more heads, Mecha asked, “Why a scythe? I mean, I get versatility of it, but isn't it suppose to be ridiculously hard to master?”

Grunting as he cut through two heads in one slash, Solaris replied, “Showed promise with it early on, so my family made me train with it often. To this day, I don't regret the effort,” before cutting off one last head, leading to both he and Mecha landing, quickly hopping back.

With only seven heads left, the hydra looked extremely worried, and had began to back away from the two. Nodding to Solaris, Mecha turned to it and said, “If you leave now and never return, we'll let you live. However, if I even hear rumors you coming back, I'll hunt you down with this guy, and put you down so hard that they'll feel it all the way in reindeer lands, got it?”

Nodding its seven heads, the hydra quickly turned around and ran as fast as it could into the forest. Taking a glance around at the mess they'd made, Solaris turned to Mecha, sheathing his once again sword, and asked, “Sooooo... whatcha' plan on doing with all these heads?”

Getting back on all fours, Mecha walked up to one of them, before kicking it. Hearing a dull thud, he shrugged and said, “Probably use the scales and teeth for decorations and such. Maybe start a whole line of creature based decorations, as I still have the fangs and claws from the manticore way back when. Who knows, Zecora might have picked up some random creature talons and horns in the forest.”

Nodding his head, Solaris took one last glance at the field, before saying, “I'm going to go ahead and report back to Canterlot then. Did you get the sister's last letter yet?”

Thinking back to the letter he'd received while cleaning up Twilight's library, Mecha said, “Yeah. Talked it over with Big M, and we both agreed to do it. You and Shining Armor up for it?”

Grinning, Solaris said, “Oh yeah, we're up for it. Well, I'll see you next poker night, although you might want to get that wound checked out.” And with a flash of light, he was off.

Glancing at the wound, Mecha winced before trotting off to the hospital. He'd come back with Snips and Snails latter. Heck, he could make it a lesson on material retrieval!

LINEBREAKER

Mecha winced as he sat down at the cafe. Having been to the hospital, he'd been given some burn cream, and a bottle of antibiotics to deal with any bacteria that might've been on the hydra's teeth. Looking around, Mecha waved to Cheerilee when he saw her, waving her over.

“Are you okay? I heard what happened with the hydra,” she asked, looking worried while she sat down across from him.

“Bah, tis but a flesh wound!” he replied, plastering a grin on his face. “Besides, this has given plenty of material to use in the shop.”

Chuckling at his enthusiasm, Cheerilee said, “I assume that's where Snips and Snails ran off to so eagerly when we got back from the evacuation?” while thinking about how the grinning best friends had ran off the moment they got back.

“Eeyup,” Mecha replied. “But enough about that, we're here to talk about the gala, not some dead hydra heads!”

Nodding her head, Cheerilee took a sip from the water the waiter had brought to their table. Thinking for a moment, she asked, “Do you know how we're even going to get there?”

Nodding his head, Mecha quickly gave the waiter their order before replying, “Yeah. Princess Luna owes me a favor for not mentioning something embarrassing to her sister, so she agreed to send a chariot for us. Do you have a dress picked out already?”

Shaking her head, Cheerilee said, “I don't own anything that would be fitting for something like the gala.”

Nodding his head, Mecha replied, “That actually works in our favor. I'll talk to Rarity when she get's back, and she can make you a dress that is both formal, and manages to work with mine making me look like a living weapon.”

Taking a bite from the recently delivered salad, she asked, “What about once we arrive at the gala? After all, you have several friends going along as well, are we doing anything with them?”

Shaking his head, Mecha swallowed his bite of dandelion sandwich before responding with, “Only thing set in stone is a live demonstration of combat that I've agreed to do with Solaris, Shining Armor, and Big Macintosh. After that, Doctor Whooves and Ditzy Do plan on spending the night with each other, Solaris will have to go back on duty, Big Macintosh plans on helping Fluttershy with her thing in the gardens, and I have no clue what Shining Armor will be up to. Although, princess Luna will probably stop to chat with us for a while, I don't think there's anypony else I know that's going to be at the gala... oh wait. Would you like to meet the Wonderbolts?”

Thinking it over the last of her salad, Cheerilee finally replied with, “It sounds interesting, but why would they be willing to meet us?”

Smirking, Mecha said, “Besides the fact that my brother is one of their talent scouts, and arguably the best one at that? No reason.”

Shaking her head, Cheerilee told him, “You're going to have to tell me more about your family later, they sound interesting.”

Chuckling, Mecha paid the bill as they walked out, before suddenly stopping in the middle of the street, paling. Quickly running over, Cheerilee put a hoof to his forehead to see if he had a fever or something while asking, “What's wrong?”

Holding stock still, Mecha replied, “I just realized something. Fluttershy is going to kill me when she hears what I did to the hydra.”