It took a few more weeks, as it turned out. Summer was just about halfway over when she got to make her first trip across Ponyville—a walk all the way to the Apple family farm. That would be good enough—it wasn't like she visited Scootaloo at her home very much anyway.
That trip wasn't made during the cover of night, keeping her from being accidentally seen. It was her first time out in the open. "Are you sure you're ready?" Rarity asked, lingering near the back-door of her store. "It could be dangerous. You've never been outside for that long. What if there's an unexpected rain?”
Sweetie shrugged one shoulder. She realized after only a few seconds how wrong that instinct was, though. Rain was deadly to her now—definitely her body and maybe that crystal brain too.
"I made sure there was no rain tonight, Miss Rarity!" Scootaloo called. She was taller now, just like Apple Bloom on her other side. Sweetie had mostly adjusted to the differences in her voice by now. Mostly. "I'm pretty sure Rainbow let the whole weather team know. There won't be any unexpected showers."
"And the family knows we're coming," Apple Bloom added. "Granny even planned a special dinner—" she trailed off, looking away awkwardly. "Maybe—it's the thought that counts on that one."
I should've asked for taste instead of magic! Sweetie had no hunger left, or any ability to eat. She didn't have moisture, or even a throat the same way ponies did. Basically everything was different between her and her friends, except for having four legs and a tail.
I'm the prototype. My next body will be better. She had plenty of problems right then, but at least she had hope.
"I can't stay inside forever," Sweetie said. "Come on, sis—I still live in Ponyville. Ponies are going to see me eventually. Might as well be today."
Rarity sighed, then wrapped one leg around her shoulder. "I suppose so. But please—at the first sign of trouble, come straight back. Or send one of your friends to get me. I already lost you once, I won't lose you again."
She let go.
Apple Bloom held the door open for her, and together they set out onto Ponyville's afternoon streets.
Sweetie might be another kind of life now—but her hometown still felt so familiar. The brilliant sunlight shining down from overhead, the faces of so many ponies she had lived around her whole life. The smells were all the same too—sagebrush, thatch roofs, and the dirt road with just a hint of moisture to it.
She stopped just outside the Boutique. She sniffed, and almost started to cry all over again.
"You got this," Scootaloo said. "We'll be here every step."
She sniffed again, but of course there was no moisture to her nose either. Maybe that didn't matter. Sweetie wasn't the same pony anymore, but Ponyville was still her home.
The streets of Ponyville could be a dangerous place—doubly so when your body was made of plastic and had plenty of open cooling ports. Thankfully Sweetie Belle couldn't feel all the strange parts of her new body, or else she might spend every waking moment confused by joints that bent differently, or the many sections of solid, inflexible material that covered most of her.
Where she walked, ponies of all stripes stopped what they were doing to stare. She hurried along without slowing, pretending not to notice. Seeing all those staring eyes fixed on her might've been enough to make her give up after only a few steps, and maybe dart back into the boutique. But when she glanced to the side, she saw Scootaloo there, and Apple Bloom on the other side.
They could clearly see what she did. "We knew ponies would be surprised," Apple Bloom said. She kept her voice down, but for once that wouldn't be enough to keep their conversation from being overheard. Where they walked, ponies of all kinds fell utterly silent. Ponies dropped things, peeking around stalls or buildings to get a look at her. "Nopony's ever seen someone who was... quite like you."
"I know word was getting around. Being able to bring ponies back like that bat did—it'll change everything. Either ponies are afraid and think it's awful, or they have somepony they miss they'd like to see again."
Sweetie Belle kept her head up, smiling at everypony like she always used to. Compared to her last memories of being outside, this was still an improvement. Sweetie could smell again; she didn't feel like she couldn't breathe. There was no ache in her stomach, and no danger she would throw up. Maybe she would never have to worry about those things ever again.
"They'll be disappointed. Lucid didn't bring me back, this is more like—a transfer. He put me in a machine, instead of letting me die. So far that hasn't happened to anypony else, but he says it will eventually. They just couldn't test it until they found someone who was..." She trailed off, pawing at the dirt.
Compared to before, she still felt numb all over. Her hooves just didn’t have the sensitivity they used to. She felt pressure and temperature, but not everything translated directly. Like standing out in the sun—this should feel wonderful, but instead it was just a warmth on one side of her body, and not the other.
"Anypony?" Apple Bloom asked, voice nervous. "No exceptions?"
Sweetie Belle winced. Of course she knew what the other filly would be thinking of. But a house-fire from many years ago was nowhere near boxes and boxes of weird equipment. "Don't think so. But I think—if they thought the way you did, they might not want you to do this to them, even if you could."
Sweetie stopped in the center of the road. Normally there was traffic to worry about, carts flowing in the steady procession of ponies through town. A little filly had to keep alert, or else get squished by big ponies who couldn't see her. No carts got within fifty paces in any direction. Some of them even changed streets, crossing a block away from Mane Street, rather than approach her. At least ponies didn't flee in terror.
"I don't feel exactly the same. Having a real body is way better than this. This is like... a thick suit, for the coldest parts of winter. I'm all wrapped up, and I can't feel through it all. I can touch things, but they're different. Can't eat, or sleep, or swim. But it's still... way better than before. Better than being curled up in bed, needing somepony else to put a pillow under my head for me. Better than not remembering exactly how I got there, and having needles in me every few minutes. I'll take it."
"I understand completely," Scootaloo said. "If I got in an accident or something and it was be a robot or never wake up, I'd wanna be a robot. Buck, maybe one day they'll make robot wings that actually work." She opened her own, flexing them uselessly.
"Maybe. I still don't have a working horn. Lucid Storm said it would be hard to figure out magic."
"For him. Not Princess Twilight. Pretty sure she could figure out any magical problem there was."
They walked in silence for a time, with Sweetie considering what her friends had said. The princess had forgotten more about magic than anypony else in Equestria knew, except maybe Celestia herself. Rarity could probably get a meeting for her, even with Twilight's much busier schedule.
"Hey.” Someone interrupted their walk, when they were most of the way through Ponyville. Sweetie turned, barely even recognizing the speaker at first. Not so much because she'd forgotten what Diamond Tiara sounded like, as she didn't expect she would be the pony not to flee.
Sweetie stopped, turning to face her. Without looking at anything, she could feel the power she had left—about half remained for the walk up to Sweet Apple Acres, and the charger waiting there for her. Enough for a few words with an old frenemy. "You're Sweetie Belle, aren't you? Ponies have been talking."
She nodded slowly. "Yep, it's me. In the..." She trailed off. "Not flesh, technically. Mostly I'm plastic, but there's some aluminum for my skeleton, and silicon for all the computer stuff. Magic in the crystal brain, not sure how much."
Diamond Tiara wasn't alone, of course. Silver Spoon lingered nearby. She kept away like everypony else—until Diamond glared sidelong at her. Then she made her way over, eyes down in shame. But was she ashamed of her fear, or worried about what Ponyville would think?
"I was sorry for what happened," Diamond Tiara went on. Of course she sounded a little different too. She'd grown as much as Apple Bloom, on track for that larger earth-pony stature their tribe was known for. "Getting sick like that—not fair."
Sweetie Belle nodded weakly. "Definitely wasn't. But it's over now! Lucid says I can't even get sick anymore. I'm immune to... everything. Except water."
"Water?" Silver Spoon asked, finally breaking her silence. "Why—"
But they didn't stay to keep talking. Apple Bloom nudged her shoulder, pointing towards the road. "You have to get to my place, remember? You can talk more when you're not running out of energy."
Having a single stranger approach her was a little like flicking a switch. Conversations all around Sweetie just sorta resumed. Ponies still occasionally peeked in her direction, their faces appearing briefly in the windows or around corners. But for everypony else, the strangeness of the whole thing had passed.
Never would've imagined Diamond Tiara would be the one to do it. Maybe it had to be a pony like her, somepony popular enough that others would listen to her, and not afraid of losing friends because of her differences.
The stares and the prodding started up again when she reached Sweet Apple Acres. But it was a good-natured kind of attention then. The Apple Family might look on her with skepticism, but she was also Rarity's little sister. They would never be anything but kind.
She got basically the same reaction the first time she walked into class, when summer ended. Ponyville's students changed—first they were afraid, then they just avoided her, and eventually ponies were willing to talk. After that, she could go back to being friends.
That wasn't to say everything just went back to normal. She had to take a special seat by the side of the class, next to where her charger was attached to the wall. While other students played in the dirt and the mud, she stayed in the grass just beside the classroom, where she could be perfectly clean and dry. Whenever the class took field trips, she was excused to stay home, and fill out worksheets instead.
There were some improvements—for one, math got so easy she was basically cheating. She didn't know how it worked exactly, but looking at problems just caused her to have an answer without even understanding where they came from. It was the same way with anything she could memorize—reading over the page once was enough to entrench it so firmly that she could imagine the entire page exactly as she'd seen it whenever she wanted, and review anything she missed.
Then there were the little things—Sweetie didn't bring a lunch to school, and just used the time to talk to her friends. Her improved memory meant she could watch them get taller over the next school year. It got even worse after the following summer, when she left one year behind and started the next.
Everypony knew her by then—and many of the younger students chose her to befriend, while the ponies she'd known since her first year were often off by themselves.
At least they were friendly with her. Better than trying to hide the way new ponies sometimes did.
The years were not kind to her body. It was just like Lucid first told her—she wore down, and didn't fix herself the way a growing pony could. Every month or so some little motor or servo would burn out, and she would spend a long while not able to lift one of her legs all the way, or twitch her eyebrows. By the end, her white plastic shell was yellowing in some places, and going transparent in others. She couldn't even let her sister give her a shall or something to cover it up, or else cover the critical cooling ports she needed to survive.
But then came a special day, one she'd been looking forward to for what felt like forever. She got to miss school, and stop instead at one of the biggest new buildings in Ponyville.
"Lucid Bioinformatics" was made of white bricks, with fancy glass windows and a roof covered in solar panels instead of Ponyville's traditional thatch. In two years it had grown from the workshop in a bat's garage to employing a hundred ponies, mostly transplants from across Equestria.
Sweetie was always a bit of a celebrity when she visited. Ponies stopped what they were doing to try and talk to her, or even have her sign something. Photos of her dominated the walls in the lobby. Some of them showed her robotic body from the inside—but all of them were of her new self, not the one who had suffered from that awful sickness.
Her sister walked along beside her, keeping her company all the way to the elevator.
"Are you nervous?" she asked, as it finally started to rise.
Sweetie rolled her eyes. "I would've been. But now... I'm so ready. If I didn't get a new body before my last year of school was over, I'd just scream."
Technically she had screamed about it many times, mostly when she thought she was alone in the house and nopony could hear her. But if Rarity knew, she didn't call her on it. Rarity reached to the side, touching gently against her mane with one hoof. "You're a brave little filly. Setting the example for the rest of us, if Lucid's dream is to be believed."
"Would you do it? If you got sick like I did... would you be an android pony too?"
Her sister looked away. Sweetie didn't hear her answer, because the elevator opened, and ponies started cheering.
The top floor was Lucid's new workshop. It was a great deal like the old one, except that the machines were newer, at least ten ponies were always working here, and lots of half-finished robotic ponies sat in various stages of assembly.
There wasn't usually a row of cushions tucked up against the wall, filled with ponies. Most of them wore the little white vests of Lucid's employees, but not all. Apple Bloom and her latest coltfriend Tender Taps were here. Scootaloo wasn't far away, making sour faces at the stallion when he wasn't looking. Her own parents were there near the front, along with Cheerilee, and some others that she didn't know as well.
Princess Twilight Sparkle was here, but not in the audience. She stood in the center of the room, speaking with Lucid and his assistants.
Sweetie Belle's new body was there too, resting on the tabletop. She was wrapped entirely in foam and plastic, so that even Sweetie couldn't see much of her. Only the light behind her suggested anything—there was a horn, and a tail of individual stands instead of a plastic piece.
She waved to all the cheering ponies, gave her sister one last hug, then advanced into the workshop.
It was time for Sweetie to grow up.