//------------------------------// // (Present Chapter 42) Forget-You-Not // Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic // by Shadestyle //------------------------------// Gilda came in like a wrecking ball, tossing the door open somewhat carelessly as she and her friends came in. "Yo, dork, where's the robot!" Gilda howls with a talon to her beak. Immediately, her friends shush her with looks of exasperation. "Gilda, this is a library," Fluttershy quietly admonishes, sitting on the couch nearby, comforting what appears to be Rainbow Dash, with Spike awkwardly standing around, trying to look like he's just there by happenstance, reading a comic book. The pony in question just raises her hoof. "Robot present," she says self-deprecatingly. Sunset immediately sets to studying her in a way that seems all too like Twilight's own studies, the main difference being the slightly less rational bent to her expression as she does so. Something a bit more emotional and less logical in the condiment-colored unicorn's gaze as she examines every inch of the golem. "I've been talking to, er, Metal Dash, and she's nothing like what you might be thinking," Fluttershy attempts as Sunset lifts one of Metal Dash's wings with a telekinetic tug, prompting a confused look from the golem in question. "Oh, wow. Well, that's impossible," she muses, poking Dash's leg. "What?" Dash responds self-consciously. "Feel that? I read your design document, there's supposed to be an Orichalcum frame covering your entire body, but whatever this stuff is, it's somehow emulating not just surface details like fur and skin, it's actually defying the physical composition underneath as well. It's not just covering it up, it's like it's... Superimposed over your physical form, forcing it fractionally out of reality. Like a physical transformative magic," she explains in a tone that makes it seem like she's answering for her own benefit first and foremost. Gilda tugs away Sunset. "Sorry Robodashie, I brought her over cause she was in a funk. Thought it'd be cool to see what your deal is," she says with a shrug. Metal Dash waves it off with only minor discomfort. "It's cool. Just go easy on me if I act weird. I'm..." Trixie and Gilda look confused at the pause as she freezes up. "...Twilight could probably explain it better. I can't remember things, and it's hard to think," she finally says. Sunset nods. "She has Rainbow Dash's memories up to a certain point, but everything after that? Weiss had to do some incredibly hacky things to emulate long-term memory retainment. She can only remember so many things at once, if the notes I read are correct. Is that right?" she asks Metal Dash, who just nods. "So you know what I'm... Made of? Twilight is kinda going crazy trying to figure me out," Dash murmurs, looking down. Sunset thinks about this. "Well, not exactly. I have your blueprints, but I don't know what Weiss did to your design after that. You could be completely different, for all I know. I probably know the rough strokes, though. Is there something you want to know?" Dash just shrugs with a frown, but some fear runs through her at the mention of Weiss's name, something she shrugs off with stubborn resentment. "Doesn't really matter, does it? I'm just going to forget whatever you said in a few seconds." Sunset raises an eyebrow. "Well, if your recording crystal isn't broken, you technically have eidetic memory. I don't mean to try and give you the "It's not all bad" garbage, I get that this is probably really bad, but you've definitely got a few advantages." At Dash's raised eyebrow, Sunset hums. "How old were you when you lost your fifth tooth?" the unicorn asks. "Two years and nine months old. I lost it after running headfirst into a tree," Dash instantly responds. "See? I bet even Rainbow Dash doesn't remember that," Sunset retorts. Trixie interjects. "Trixie doesn't mean to be a bother, but where exactly is Twilight?" Fluttershy blushes. "I told her to go calm down. She was getting..." Spike raises a claw "Totally neurotic? It was really starting to freak us all out, but she said she'd go get her thoughts together. She really wants to know what makes her tick," he jabs a thumb at Dash. "Yeah... Look, uhh..." Dash begins, before freezing. "...Sunset. I get that it's probably a good party trick, but they aren't even my memories. Does it really matter how well I remember those? I'm still just a fake with nothing to call my own," she frowns. "How many times did I use the letter 'A' in the last sentence I said to you?" Sunset retorts. Dash freezes, but the period is shorter than a second. "Three times. 'Rainbow', 'Dash', and 'that' all had the letter 'a' in them," she responds. She blinks. "Wait, how did I know that?" Trixie and Gilda both look intrigued at this as well. Sunset smirks. "Like I said, eidetic memory. Just because you can only remember so much at once doesn't mean you don't remember. Half of your 'brain' is a powerful, if fairly outdated magical computer. The memory crystal alone, if you have the one I read about, could hold a century of video and audio recordings. More if Weiss used some modern downsizing tricks when he put you together. Albiet, most of it was meant to hold commands, but eh. His redundancy is your oyster." She gives Metal Dash an excited look. "If you want experiences of your own to treasure, you could go out and get them, and you'd remember it for the rest of your life, even if you needed to be reminded of them. The rest of us fleshies have to make due with pictures, usually," she says insistently, making Dash blink a bit in thought. Gilda interjects. "So basically, all we gotta do is get her some new happy memories, and she's good to go, huh?" The griffon gets a calculating look in her eyes, like a golem being asked obscure questions about sentence structure. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" she muses, looking to Trixie and Sunset, who nod. Fluttershy and Spike, meanwhile, just look bewildered, not injected into the trio's friend circle deep enough to read minds like they seem to be able to. Suddenly, Gilda grabs Metal Dash around the waist, hefting her up off the couch. "Alright dork, you're coming with us," she says, holding up the surprised and squirming golem as she turns to leave with Trixie and Sunset. Spike hops up in shock "Uhh, Twilight wanted Metal Dash to stay here until we could figure out if she's-" "Bah! We'll bring her back, don't worry!" Gilda waves the little drake off. Fluttershy stands up and gives Spike a sympathetic look. "I'll go with them to make sure they don't get into any trouble, alright? Tell Twilight we'll just be in Ponyville, alright?" she says, turning to the trio with a meaningful look. "Don't worry, we just gotta turn this hunk of junk's happy circuits on, we'll be right back," Gilda smirks. Sunset sighs. "You know she's not a robot, right? Robots are strictly mechanical, or at minimum, they're mostly mechanical. Her body doesn't even utilize electricity," she explains. Gilda flaps her talons like a mouth. "Blah blah blah. Let's quit with the nerd talk and get this party on the road!" Trixie nods. "If there's one thing Trixie has learned, it's that pedantics and entertainment do not go well together, Sunset." Sunset grumbles as the ponies leave with Metal Dash in tow. "Being pedantic can be perfectly entertaining," she mumbles with displeasure. "So, there a reason you dragged me all the way out here?" Metal Dash grumbles as she's poured out of Gilda's grip onto the grass, flopping over in the process. She had carried them all the way to the edge of Whitetail Woods, where the spring season had made the place a muggy mixture of pristine grass and trees that had yet to fully wake up from their yearly winter slumber. "Like I said, we're going to have some fun. Unless you're too scared to have a little race?" Gilda taunts, crossing her arms as she looks down at the golem. Metal Dash grimaces, hopping to her hooves and flapping her wings. "As if!" Gilda smirks. "Good. I'll put together something. Give me a minute." With that, the griffon takes flight, zooming around to gather stray clouds to mould together into bits of racing props. As she did, Metal Dash tried to take flight, flapping hard with wings that seemed intent on obeying all known laws of aviation rather than letting her ignore them. After a few moments, she slumps. "Oh. Right. Fake wings," she murmurs sadly. Sunset approaches, feeling somewhat sad as well. "Hey, don't worry, I'm pretty sure you can fly, you should have the ability to produce a set of reactors for it, try to think," she says, laying a hoof over Dash's back. Dash goes through a swathe of memories, from her earliest to latest, parts being picked out as she recalls the four massive engines that were strapped to her at one point. Hellfire Reactors. With a flash of magic, a portal rips open next to her, and four rockets fly out of them, swirling around with blasts of cherry-red energy. She feels the Miracle Matter comprising her body melt around her barrel, the fake wings she had before disappearing to reveal four ports, each one having a reactor clamp itself into place, pinching the false skin and fur around the ports a bit as they did. For several seconds, she just stands, awkwardly trying to reconcile the strange sensations, things brushing up against her mind as parts of Metal Dash automatically prodded and pulled at her for answers, for logic to feed to the four engines to control them. When she still thought she was real, she didn't bother to think about the strangeness of the four alien appendages. She had more important things to do. Now, however, with nothing at all to do... "This is... Weird," Dash deadpans, waggling the four rocket-nozzles, feeling the bulbous metal structures deform and bend like rubber, whatever they were made of, it didn't feel like hard metal, but more like a plastic bottle. She could even curl them around like mittens. It wasn't at all like wings, and having four of them was something that seemed to rub at her mind like itchy cotton, with the way they seemed to move the way she wanted them to, without knowing what it was she even wanted in the first place. She swallowed as she got the faint idea that parts of her mind, things in her head were just... doing whatever they wanted without her say so. Gilda swoops down, landing in front of the quartet. "Alright, I think that should do the trick. You ready?" She tried to consciously control the rockets, Fluttershy, Sunset and Trixie backing away as she did. 'I can't make them move right. They just-' she thinks, only for them to move on their own, angling down as she suddenly shoots up a few inches above the ground on jets of magical flame. Fluttershy's eyebrows shot up at the sight, while Trixie simply looked impressed with the visual flair. "Wow, that's wicked," Gilda says. "I can't make them do what I want, they just take me wherever I think of going," Dash attempts to explain, the creepy feeling not going away without her intentionally trying not to think about it. If she let her attention drift, she started to not even notice them, as if she was just flying normally. "Alright, enough navel-gazing, nerd. See those clouds? On three, we go through em, first one to go through em all and get back to the cloud up there wins," Gilda interjects, pointing to where she made a bunch of rings out of clouds, each one floating quietly through the skies over the forest, meandering around to a larger cloud platform above them all. Metal Dash nods, thoughts slipping away as she focused on the challenge here in the present. The exact reasoning was getting fuzzy. 'Gilda wants a race, that's all the explanation I need', she thought to herself, cracking her neck and widening her stance. "Three... Two... One..." Gilda counted down, lowering to the ground as she spread her wings. "Go!" The two shot off, one metaphorically like a rocket, and the other literally like one, scarring the grass with a burnt starburst where she took off. The first ring was passed in a second, Gilda a late second to Dash's incredible top speed. She smirked triumphantly, turning to go for the second ring, as she did, something sapped her grin as it took an obscenely long time to actually adjust her course. It was like trying to run on ice, but in midair, her thrusters trying to cancel out her current vector to replace it with the next one. Gilda had no such problem, turning on a dime with a flare of her wings and another flap. She was still behind, as Dash managed to get heading in the right direction fast enough to return to her top speed, but the gap had shortened, sending a thrill of fear down the automaton's spine. The second ring, Dash managed to get through in time, and the third one wasn't in too horrible a direction, letting her mostly keep her speed and pass through that one as well. The fourth, fifth, and sixth rings, however, were in a narrow zig-zag that rapidly lost her all the ground she had gained over Gilda's greater maneuverability. Inch by inch, Dash was losing, and with one final burst of speed from Gilda, she overtook the golem and won the race. "Dang it, what happened, I haven't sucked that bad at turning since-" Dash grumbles, looking back and recalling where she was and why. "Oh. Right." Gilda laughs. "Wow, you would have had me beat no problem, you're crazy fast for a bucket of bolts," she says, clapping Dash on the back and hopping back with a squawk at her bright red talon. Dash looked back at her engines, which were glowing red from heat. "Well, that's what you get for calling me a bucket of bolts," Dash smirks, crossing her forelegs smugly. Gilda scowls good-naturedly. "Yeah, well, I still won, so there," she says, sticking a tongue out at the golem. As they hop down from the cloud, Fluttershy is the first to congratulate the two, albeit quietly. "You both did really well. That was fun to watch," she said. Metal Dash frowns after a few moments, however. "I don't think I'll have much fun racing like this, sorry," she says. Sunset interjects. "Well, the day is still young. I have an idea for something fun you could try." With a flare of magic, she slices one of the nearby trees to pieces, levitating a bunch of disks of wood around, affixing them to the surrounding trees and coloring them with bullseyes. "You might not know it, but based on what I've read, you were originally built as a weapons platform. I refuse to believe Weiss didn't equip you with some truly impressive armaments!" she says. Admittedly, Dash is somewhat intrigued by this. She's read comic books like any other filly, so the concept of being a badass gun-toting cyborg from the future isn't unknown to her, even if she's technically just from the present. The thought causes another flash of magic, and the two Hellfire Reactors on her upper back disconnect, slipping into portals as two other devices replace them, ones that look similar, save for the long tubes where there were once thruster nozzles, and the bright blue light glowing from within them. She looks at them with surprise, and once again, feels something poking around inside her mind, as if she's asking herself questions for her to answer. "Oh my," Fluttershy muses, watching the odd objects cautiously. Sunset beams. "Now try shooting those targets I set up!" With a grin, Metal Dash focuses on one of the wooden disks, and feels the things on her back shift around. With an anticlimactic "whuff", the two guns fire twin blasts of bright blue compressed air, smacking down a branch off of a tree with one shot, and blasting the cloud above them with the other. "Uhh..." Dash frowns. With a glare, she focuses harder on the target. 'Come on, hit it!' she screams in her head. The two guns hit the exact same spots they hit before, blasting apart the cloud and knocking down some leaves. Sunset hums thoughtfully. "You might not be calibrated correctly. That would explain the aiming problems." Metal Dash sags. "So I'm just useless, then," All the ponies and griffon flinch at this. "Girls, why don't we go get a snack? It always cheers me up when I'm down. Maybe some milkshakes at Sugarcube Corner?" Trixie offers. Metal Dash perks up at this. "Oh, yeah, that sounds good actually!" She had been feeling a little bit hungry, after all. They arrived at Sugarcube Corner to some rather awkward company, Pinkie hopping to greet them all and welcome them, but as she did, they saw over at one of the tables, another rainbow-mane'd pegasus was drinking a milkshake and nursing some cupcakes of her own, a worthy treat after getting let out of the hospital for head trauma from a bottle being smashed over her head by a certain zebra. Metal Dash and Rainbow Dash's eyes met for an uncomfortably long time, before Metal Dash was the first one to break eye contact, looking down ashamed of herself when she had gotten enough time to actually remember the circumstances. "Yeah, that's what I thought," Rainbow Dash grumbles, scratching her head where the bandages were still covering them as she quietly returns to her own snack. Gilda frowns. "I'll talk to her, you guys get me something good," the griffon says before taking a seat next to the mare. As she started explaining Metal's situation, the remaining four sat down at their own little table. "So, whatcha want?" Pinkie asks exubrantly, bouncing towards them with a little notepad in hoof. "One milkshake with extra hay," Trixie orders. "I'll just have a small vanilla cupcake," Fluttershy asks demurely. "Just water please," Sunset asks, stomach grumbling at the memories of the last time she ate here. "And maybe a slice of chocolate cake," she appends after a moment. "Just the usual for me, Pinkie," Metal Dash says without thinking. To her credit, the mare just nods, bouncing away to whip up the orders. Fluttershy smiles at Metal Dash, laying a hoof over hers. "It's alright. I know today hasn't been the best, but I think we can still end it on a happy note." Metal Dash simply covered her head up as she groaned into the table. How could it possibly end on a good note? Seeing Rainbow Dash, the real one, had reminded her of the truth even more horrible than the fact that she was a fake pony. That sense of wrongness that seemed to poison all the good parts of the day finally had a cause to append to it. She wasn't just a useless pile of enchanted garbage, she was made to be like this. Their orders arrive, and Metal Dash takes a bite from her own cupcake. Devil's Food with buttermilk frosting and as many sprinkles as would fit. She tasted nothing. It was just dry mush that she chewed on. It was the last straw for Metal Dash, who spat the tasteless confection onto a napkin. "Look, I know you guys are trying to be my friends, ok?! I get it! I get that you're trying to cheer me up, to help me be happy with all of this, but I can't be! This isn't good enough!" she shouts tearfully. "I don't want you all to cheer me up! I don't want to feel like a real pony, I want to be one!" she says viciously. "I thought I was Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty for Celestia's sake, but I'm not! I'm the exact opposite!" she says, pulling her chair out with a squeal. "I was literally built to betray everypony," she says, stalking out the door with the grim knowledge that her sole purpose was to bunk up using the Element of Loyalty with her treachery. She glares as Rainbow Dash tries to stop her from leaving, standing between her and the door with a guilty expression on her face. Guilt at her reaction to the golem. "What do you want? Want to rub it in? Fine! You win! You were the real one this whole time! I'm just a broken piece of outdated junk, a big bad robot sent to ruin everything! Now just get out of my way!" Metal Dash says with a stomp. "I'm sorry," Rainbow Dash responds apologetically. Gilda stands next to Rainbow Dash, speaking in response to Metal Dash's demand for her to move. "Not gonna happen bub, I know a thing or two about running away from my friends, and I'm not letting you make the same mistake. If you're scared, don't be, got that?" Trixie nods, standing to one side of her. "Gilda is right. Everypony makes mistakes, but you haven't made any yet! It will be hard, but you can still follow your dreams, find what makes you happy in spite of it all." Sunset stands to the other side. "You didn't want any of this. It doesn't have to be your destiny. Whatever it is you do want, we'll all help you get it." "What I want..?" Metal Dash says quietly, hanging her head. "I just want to be somepony real. What's so wrong with wishing for that?" Fluttershy gasps as a flash of light marks the arrival of her Star Rod. Everyone glances at her, but she is just as confused as everyone else. It had appeared on its own, this time. Following the bare hint of intuition, Fluttershy approaches Metal Dash with the rod in hoof. "I don't think... I don't think there's anything wrong with wishing for that," she says hesitantly, holding out the magical relic. Sunset realizes her plan. "Are you sure, Fluttershy? It might not work like you think," she warns. The warning is moot, however, as the relic itself suddenly lights up, and a voice can be heard echoing within it, a reprise of the words that once created it. "When "Wish" is spoken with panache By those whose heart and wish align Let not their hopes and dreams be dashed But manifest by their design." With a shiver, Metal Dash slowly reaches out, and takes the Star Rod of Wishes from Fluttershy. Everyone watches with baited breath as the relic's glow increases in brightness, and the magic flowing through it seems to surge with renewed vigor. She closes her eyes tightly, false pulse pounding in her chest. "I wish..." Metal Dash says desperately, begging with all her heart for it to come true. And like the best wishes sometimes do, it does. She blinks several times, feeling oddly unbalanced. "What happened?" she asks, jerking up from the couch she was laying on. Memories came slowly as she woke up quickly. Something about her voice sounded different. Chirpier, a bit smoother and crisper than she was used to. As she leans up, she winces a bit at the feeling of her wings getting pinched by her ribs, and looking down, notices something a bit off. Fluttering around her belly, where the engines used to be, are two distinct pairs of feathery blue pegasus wings. She looks around, and notices that she's in a small, but exceedingly fancy looking house. Gilda walks in from the kitchen nearby. "Oh hey, you're up. We had to haul your butt over here after you passed out. Welcome to my place. Fair warning, last I saw, Sunset told Twilight about what happened, and I saw them stapling notebooks together for 'extra room'. Pretty sure they'll be hounding you for a few decades of questioning after this," she smirks. "Mirror?" Metal Dash asks, feeling and looking a bit weirder than she usually does. "Yeah, pretty sure I've got a few dozen laying around. It's crazy what they try to talk you into buying when you're loaded," Gilda mutters, helping her get up on her hooves and walking her over to a large ornate-looking one in a dusty sitting room. The first thing she notices is her hair. It's weirdly different, but not necessarily in a bad way. It was a sort-of crew-cut, for one thing, and rather than being red, orange and yellow, it was red, yellow and cyan. Her tail was different too, shorter, and it had fewer colors. No deep blues or greens, just more of the same as her mane. The second thing that confused her was the beak. It took her a moment to realize what exactly she was looking at, but when it clicked, it suddenly made a lot more sense. She looked more like she did without the disguise. Like some kind of blend between the fake pony disguise that was around her before, and her true, metallic self underneath. Her muzzle was a victim of this, and some yawning and looking inside it revealed that she still had teeth, just hidden underneath the hard-yet-flexible blueish beak that covered much of where her muzzle was. She turned to the side, and got a better look at her wings. Sure enough, there really was four of them, two poked from her barrel, while two were where she expected wings to be, poking up from her back. Poking and prodding at the limbs revealed odd, hard ball-socket joints, and that led to her finding the same kind of joints where her hips and shoulders met her body. Where there should have been a heartbeat, she felt a strange humming fluttering in her chest. She felt some kind of power inside her body, and with that feeling, a small yellow star appeared, embedded in her chest just over her heart. As she relaxed, the star disappeared back where it came from. On her flanks, her Cutie Mark was simply a big yellow shooting star, like the one that had shown up on her chest, and with trails of the same colors as her mane and tail. She wasn't Rainbow Dash, or Metal Dash. She wasn't even a pony, that much was clear from all the odd little quirks she had now. She was just... Her.