Loopy felt like she was staring into a surgical theatre while she watched the engineer started in on Steel Braver’s face with a screwdriver. There was something about watching long bolts come out of a pony’s head that made her feel a little sick like she was thinking too much about where they’d be if they were in her own skull.
The good thing was, the mask kept anypony from seeing her look grossed out by something that should have been no more upsetting than a toaster being repaired.
“I don’t understand,” Doctor Roll said, watching intently through the window. “Another synthetic pony?”
“Yeah,” Loopy said. “It was a lot bigger and stronger than Steel, too. And it had built-in weapons. No offense, but I think they’re ahead of you in the design department.”
“Bigger and stronger is easy,” Roll sighed. “There are plenty of bigger, stronger machines. Steel isn’t going to lift as much as a dedicated forklift or punch as hard as a jackhammer. He’s not designed for that.”
“And the weapons?” Loopy asked.
“We don’t really do weapon design,” Doctor Roll admitted. “Integrating a weapon system wasn’t even on our roadmap for design improvements. Steel is designed to use anything a pony can use, so we always assumed we could get something off the shelf if needed.”
Loopy nodded. The cracked glass of his face was removed, revealing a cylinder of wires and blinking lights that the dark black display had hidden. The engineer quickly went over a few things, testing contacts and getting results from a small yellow box with blinking green and red lights. The engineer fixed a few loose wires, then pulled a new faceplate out of a cabinet and put it into place, Steel Braver giving him a neon smile when the display clicked into the slot.
“I wish I could get fixed that easily,” Loopy muttered. Her backplate had a long crack in it from the hit she’d taken on the train. Surprisingly, she’d found something to help with it - some skin cream she’d been recommended actually sealed chitin cracks pretty well, and she’d ended up using it as a poultice. It was also good for buffing out minor scratches.
“That’s one reason we designed Steel,” Roll said. “Too many ponies get hurt trying to do the right thing. Millions of bits spent on the project, and we’ve only got him to show for it. I’m proud of Steel, of course. But it’s still a large expense.”
“...Yes, it is,” Loopy agreed. The engineer in the other room started putting the screws back into Steel’s head to secure everything together now that he’d finished. She turned away, thinking. “And that other synth must have cost a lot, too.”
“No doubt about that.” Doctor Roll leaned against the wall. “It took more than just one team, as well. It’s not a project a pony can put together in his garage as a hobby. Steel Braver has one of the most advanced mobile computing systems ever made running his program. We outsourced a lot of the hardware design to another company.”
“Which company?” Loopy asked.
“And you think Doctor Auspex might have something to do with the strange synth you fought?” Lyra asked. She waited with Loopy while Bon-Bon filled out more papers. The guards weren’t happy about having Mare Do Well there. They were less happy about Steel Braver. Neither of them had a photo ID, and the synth didn’t even have a badge.
As it turned out, they couldn’t just walk into a prison and demand to see somepony, especially when they were still awaiting trial. Steel Braver stood next to them silently, listening. He hadn’t said much since the train.
Loopy nodded. “The mobile computing equipment she designed is the only part of the project that wasn’t something like… hydraulics or bodywork. The basic mechanics are simple enough -- no offense, Steel--”
“None taken,” he said. “I am glad you worry I might take offense, though. Thank you.”
“--but actually controlling them is tough. It’s the difference between a thinking machine and a clockwork toy that just walks in circles. Somepony had to get the other synth up and running. If she did it once, she could do it twice.”
Bon-Bon sighed, walking back from where she’d been speaking to the guards. “Okay, we’ve got a problem.”
“She’s not willing to cooperate?” Loopy guessed. “We did sort of break up her scam.”
“She’ll talk to us, but the prison rules say only two visitors at a time, and Auspex wants to see Steel Braver herself as one condition for the friendly chat. So only one of us gets to go in with him and talk.”
“Lyra, you’re up,” Loopy said.
“Huh? Why me? You’re the one who can sense lies!”
“And I don’t know the right questions to ask. You know the technical stuff better than I do.”
“She’s right,” Bon-Bon agreed. “Besides, she met you once before. She’s never seen Loopy in this disguise.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” Lyra sighed. She looked up at Steel Braver. “Ready to meet your maker?”
“One of them, at any rate,” Steel said. He motioned for Lyra to lead the way. “Ladies first.”
“Programmed to be a hero and a gentlestallion,” Lyra joked. The guards led them past the prison’s checkpoints, humorless stallions and mares watching them with suspicion. For once, almost none of it was directed at Loopy. Having a brightly-colored machine trotting along with them meant something else was drawing the eye more than a costumed hero.
They stopped them outside of a steel door.
“Auspex is inside,” the guard said. “Remember, only two of you go in. It’s a prison rule. If she gets violent or asks for her lawyer or decides she’s done, it’s over right then. Understood?”
Lyra nodded.
“We’ll be right outside if something happens,” Bon-Bon promised.
“Do not worry. I will not allow harm to come to you,” Steel Braver said.
“Thanks, big guy,” Lyra said.
The guard opened the door, and Lyra walked in with Steel Braver.
Doctor Auspex was sitting behind a steel table, wearing the standard prison uniform and hoofcuffs. She started to stand up to greet them on reflex and stopped when she caught the guard’s eye, settling back down into her seat.
“I’m not sure why they’re so cautious around me,” the mare said. “I’m not a violent criminal.”
“You did cause multiple disasters and millions of bits of property damage,” Lyra reminded her. “The guards are probably worried you’ll find a way to cause a tornado to put a real capstone on your legacy.”
“Ugh, my legacy,” Auspex groaned. “I wish you weren’t right. I had the best of intentions, though.”
“Well you can prove that by helping me,” Lyra said.
“I don’t want to help you,” Auspex said. “You ruined me. But I will help him.” She pointed to Steel Braver.
Steel pointed to himself, his neon expression flashing to a cartoon of a confused face.
“It’s good seeing you up and running. I only ever wanted to help ponies, but I didn’t think when I was putting together mobile processors that they’d end up in a hero. It was just supposed to be a quick way to make a few bits, but… I personally designed and forged the crystal transistors inside you. You’re practically like the foal I never had.”
“You built them personally?” Braver asked.
Auspex nodded, her expression serious. “The designs were too complex for mass production, so they had to be hoof-made one at a time. Eventually, industrial processes will catch up, but it will never match the unique touches a pony can only make doing things themselves. No two chips came out quite the same, after all.”
“Thank you, then,” Braver said. “We are seeking information. There was another synthetic pony, and we are attempting to determine the designer of the processors in order to track it down and stop it from committing crimes.”
“I made enough chips for a few of you, but from what I’m told, all the spares were destroyed,” Auspex said.
“This is the case,” Braver agreed.
Auspex sat back and thought. “No one from my team could have made more. All our spare capacity was being used putting Horoscope together while we were seeking funding. There’s nothing they could have used off the shelf… was the other unit physically larger?”
“Yes. How did you guess?”
Auspex snorted. “Because I’m the best at miniaturization. They probably had to make it bigger to fit in lower-quality parts. If they had some scrapped factory-seconds or just worked from my design notes, they might have managed something, but it won’t be very smart.”
“No?” Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I never got around to writing down some of the minor breakthroughs I made. There’s no documentation of the final round of revisions.” Auspex smiled. “It might be bigger, but you’re more clever. Trust me, that’s going to get you far in life.”
“That was a total dead end,” Mare Do Well sighed, when they were outside in what little shelter they could find from the light rain. There weren’t a lot of businesses near the jail, possibly for obvious reasons, but somepony was trying to run a coffee shop even here, and the patrons inside pretended they were staring through the barred front windows at the strange ponies standing under the striped awning.
“Perhaps, but it was a lead that needed to be followed,” Steel Braver said.
Mare Do Well tilted her head. “You sound like you’re in a better mood.”
“I was concerned after the previous encounter that I was inferior to the other synth we encountered,” Steel explained. “But now I am sure I have an advantage he does not.”
“Mm.” Mare Do Well took a deep breath. “You know, I’ve been in a lot of fights where I didn’t have any advantages at all.”
“How did you succeed?”
“Luck. But that’s also part of being a hero. Sometimes I have to fight even when I’m sure I can’t win. I have to do it because I’m fighting for more than myself.”
“That’s so sappy it sounds like a friendship lesson,” Lyra giggled.
“Dead end or not, there are a lot of questions I want answers to,” Bon-Bon said. “I don’t like this many mysteries all piling up. Mysterious synthetic ponies. Sabotage. Etherite. Cover-ups in the police department. Even that crazy conspiracy theorist might know something. He thought Jasmine Jewel was a synth. We didn’t even think they existed, but…” she motioned to Steel Braver.”
“It has to all be connected,” Mare Do Well agreed.
“What we know is that somepony wants Etherite. It doesn’t even matter what they need it for, because we know the only place in the city where they can still get a lot of it at once.” Bon-Bon smiled. “He has to hit the Guard depot where we’ve got the rest in storage.”
“That place is a fortress,” Lyra said. “Like, a real fortress. It’s got stone walls and guard towers. They even put in a moat! Do you know how hard it is to get zoning for a moat in a major city?”
“How would you get inside?” Mare Do Well asked, looking at Steel.
The synth tilted his head, lights flashing across his faceplate as he considered the question. “I would ask nicely if I could go inside, but I suspect that will not work for our opponent. Without more information on the building itself, I cannot render a more useful opinion.”
“Bon-Bon?” Mare Do Well asked.
“I’ll let them know we’re coming.”
The cargo train slowly rolled through the wide steel doors that had been retrofitted into the depot. It wasn’t a long train -- the secure cargo was loaded and unloaded on its own, so the engine was only pulling three cars behind it, close to the limit of what the depot’s small yard could manage at once.
A dark shape dropped down from between two cars, heavy enough that when it left, the trains rocked slightly. It froze for a moment in the shadows, but no alarm was raised. A ribbon of red light flashed between the fedora and upturned collar of the coat it was wearing, and it started walking again. It didn’t sneak or hide, but walked confidently and directly towards its destination.
Without pausing, it stepped past an empty guard post, the logbook still open and the guard absent. It followed an internal map, head turning to watch the open areas while it entered a warehouse, snapping the lock on the door in the same motion it used to pull it open.
The secure cargo was within a steel cage, more than enough to stop curious ponies, or even determined ones that hadn’t brought a lockpick or angle grinder. The synth stomped over to examine it.
An alarm sounded the moment it was clear of the door it had broken open. Steel security shutters rolled down over the doors, and the overhead lights snapped on, overloading the infiltrator’s sensors for a brief moment.
“You were right. It still came right here even when we pulled all the guards back,” a voice said from above.
The synth stopped and looked up. Mare Do Well was perched in the rafters, almost invisible in the shadows thanks to the lights between them. Steel Braver was with her, ear antennae flashing as he scanned the larger machine.
“It was obviously a trap,” Mare Do Well said. “I mean, no guards at all, even at the permanent posts?”
“It was still the most efficient route,” Steel Braver explained. “Even if it is a trap.”
Below them, the synth tilted its head, calculating something.
“I don’t know what you were ordered to do, but you’re not getting the Etherite,” Mare Do Well said.
“Unlikely,” the synth growled.
Red-hot blades launched at Loopy and Steel Braver, chains rattling behind them as they fired into the hanging trusses, wrapping around them and snapping taut, the synth below pulling hard. Bolts set into the stone of the warehouse walls popped and broke, and everything shifted, tilting to one side.
“I think he doesn’t like us talking about him!” Loopy shouted. She jumped to the wall, scrambling to get away as the structure bent and failed, the lights flickering with the strain on the wires.
Steel Braver braced himself and hung on tight as it all came down, crashing into the synth standing below and the contents of the warehouse, broken crates exploding into sawdust and splinters.
“Are you okay?” Mare Do Well yelled, the debris still settling.
Steel Braver was standing on top of it all, having ridden the truss down like a mountain goat fighting to stay atop an avalanche. “I am undamaged. Thank you for asking.”
The other synth pulled itself out of the wreckage, sparks trailing down its frame from the broken lights and wiring. The trenchcoat was shredded, revealing it in its entirety. Instead of heroic armor and a stylized look, the synth was painted in flat, matte black and bare metal. It growled like an engine turning over, tossing steel beams aside.
“I do not believe it is damaged either,” Steel Braver noted.
“Stand aside,” it ordered.
“No,” Steel Braver replied.
“You are weaker than I am,” it said.
“Yes,” Steel Braver agreed. “But I will still defeat you.”
“Hah! I got you!” Mare Do Well yelled, dropping onto the big synth’s back. She had a rough lasso made of wire, tossing it around the steel pony’s snout and pulling it tight, trying to force them to move.
The big synth didn’t move even a little.
Mare Do Well tugged a few more times. “This isn’t working the way I thought it would.”
The black synth’s shoulders popped open and spikes emerged, glowing red-hot before launching, nearly hitting the mare clinging to the synth’s back.
“Be careful!” Braver shouted. He charged at the black synth and was knocked back.
“It’s okay, I think I have his attention now!”
“That is what I am worried about!” Steel Braver exclaimed. The black synth growled and retracted the chains, and Loopy didn’t see the debris it had captured with the grappling spikes, broken crates swinging back towards it, right in the masked hero’s blind spot.
Sparks flew and steam vented from every joint when Steel Braver launched into the air. It was almost like slow motion, the way he arced up high overhead. Even the huge synth reacted with surprise, obviously not having expected it. It dropped the crates it had been dragging, snapping its blades back into place to launch them again at Steel.
Steel Braver twisted, venting more steam, adjusting his trajectory and dodging the attack by a hair’s breadth. The larger synth reared up, throwing Mare Do Well aside and out of the way. Steel Braver impacted with the bigger synth’s face, his rear hoof exploding with sparks as he delivered a kick with every bit of his strength and weight behind it right to the black-armored monster’s form.
There was a sound like a thunderclap, and the big synth’s head shattered, armor twisting and joints buckling. It collapsed with a wailing, squealing sound, and Steel Braver went down with it, his rear hoof mangled from the kick.
Mare Do Well walked over carefully, holding a pipe, and swung it into the black synth. It didn’t react, the inert machine taking the blow like any other broken machine.
“I think you got him,” Mare Do Well said.
“Oh, good,” Steel Braver said. “I do not think I can do that again.”
“I didn’t know you could jump like that,” Mare Do Well said, helping Steel Braver up. She grunted with the effort of pulling him up. “Buck, you must weigh a ton…”
The synthetic pony wobbled on three hooves. “I cannot jump like that,” Steel Braver corrected. “I had to override several limiter systems. I believe my transmission and hydraulic systems will need significant maintenance.”
“So you had to exceed your programming?” Mare Do Well asked.
“Yes, I suppose so,” Steel Braver said.
“That’s your first taste of being a real hero, then,” the masked mare said. “How does it feel?”
“I’ve been better.” Steel Braver said. He looked at the smoking, crumpled form of the other synth. “But winning is… good.” He nodded. “It feels good.”
Loopy patted him on the shoulder, and he fell back over.
“Do you want me to…?”
“If you could call an engineer to assist me, I would be thankful,” Braver said. “I will wait here until they arrive.”
“You just rest,” she said. “You did a good job.”