Sweetie Belle could get used to her new body. It wasn't the kind of lesson she could learn in a day, or even a week. There was no magic switch she could flip and suddenly be comfortable with her greater height, strength, and grace. All that took the adaptation circuits Lucid had told her about, and that hardware took a long time to work. But it did work.
As the days passed, she became far less overwhelmed by the return of two old but familiar senses. Touch and smell were back, far stronger than she had known them since waking in an artificial body for the first time. With some conscious and some subconscious effort, she could dismiss the smells that surrounded her, relying on only the useful signals.
It was nice to know when ponies were around her again. It was soon trivial for her to identify which ponies were nearby. With some time and patience, maybe she could learn to identify their feelings the way the Sweetie in her oldest memories was able to do.
Then there was a bevy of changes that didn't come from within at all. She didn't look like an unnatural oddity anymore, or at least not so much like one that everypony she saw took pity on her. She was close enough to a pony that even strangers who saw her often didn't pay her much mind.
Granted, there were very few ponies in all of Equestria who truly didn't know about her anymore. She was the first to be reborn in a new, digital life. That made her a kind of celebrity, inside Ponyville and out.
She didn't just look less like a machine—she also looked less like a filly. Ponies looked at her in ways she had never seen before. Mostly it was stallions—but not always.
Maybe she should have asked to stay the same age after all. At least that way she wouldn't have to figure out how to cope with the whole world treating her differently.
But she was years older, wasn't she? It was time that she force the world to see it, the way she felt it. She wasn't just the filly who got sick, she had lived her own life since waking up.
Part of that life was spent caring for the pieces of her past. Instead of getting shelved in some museum somewhere, Sweetie insisted on keeping her old, broken body. She had plenty of space in her bedroom at the Boutique, since she didn't need a bed or any conventional pony furniture, and the storage from her organic life had been moved into the basement.
Sweetie had always been able to get bits and pieces, but a true working model had eluded her, until then. The first body was old and broken, but now maybe she could figure out why. There were no anatomy textbooks for her to study, not like everypony else could. Lucid Storm's new company would give her almost anything, but not her block diagrams or other technical information.
"It isn't that we don't trust you," Lucid said, when she finally got sick of being ignored and came down to his office in person. "But keeping you alive means the company needs to succeed. A population of digital ponies need a support system in place to keep making their replacement parts. And if we're going to get big enough to have a whole population, we need to make bits. That means we have to keep our advancements private, for now. Eventually there will be thousands and thousands of robotic ponies, and many different solutions for each body part. Until then—please, I'm looking out after your best interests. And we're doing great! You won't have to wait so long for the next new body, when the time comes! Just long enough for us to figure out what went wrong in the transfer."
She could get tools at least, and so she could poke around at joints at first, then more complex mechanisms. In most cases there was more than one of something, so she could use one half of the body to see how it should work on the other.
Sweetie's mind didn't work exactly the same as it used to, no matter what Lucid said about a total perfect conversion. She never got fatigued, so she could keep working on the same topic all through the day, then into the night and the start of the next. If she was in her room, she didn't even have to leave to recharge. She didn't sweat or get dirty, so there was no need to leave to wash, or even to sleep. She could remain highly focused on something for as long as it took to understand.
But in some other ways, her needs remained as powerful as ever. She wanted to spend time with her friends, as often as they were able. It was a little less than when they were kids, since they had both graduated from school and had real life to attend to.
But Sweetie could always visit Apple Bloom while she did farm work, and keep her company for a while. The mud and grit was less of a fear now that Sweetie's body was a closed system. She still wore boots on her hooves and covered up as much as she could.
It was too nice to see a real pony's face reflected in the mirror, she wasn't about to squander the privilege. Best not to force Lucid to prove how replaceable her parts were sooner than he expected.
Scootaloo was a little harder to get time with. She bounced from job to job, quickly trying and then flunking out of most of them within a week or two. Her passion to try weather couldn't survive her disability, delivery was too hard when she insisted on making every trip at extreme speed and not always extreme safety. Every visit with her was another conversation about how much harder it was to grow up.
"I know my aunts will let me stay as long as I like," she said, late one autumn evening. Late enough that Scootaloo had a jacket and a hood over her messy hair. Sweetie needed no protection from the cold, but she still took the opportunity to let her sister make her nice things to wear. Today that meant a scarf to go with her boots, and a ribbon in her tail and mane.
It was just the two of them. Apple Bloom had too many chores on her plate, what with Granny Smith no longer strong enough to work, and the harvest coming in. They probably wouldn't see her again through the rest of the month, unless they visited to help.
"But I hate being a burden. I'm supposed to be apprenticed to my trade by now, or have my spot in school. But I don't care about any trades, and the only school I want will never take me."
Sweetie sat on her haunches beside a stream, watching the reflection of the moon in its clear surface. She didn't have much to say, but her friend didn't seem to expect it. Scootaloo was usually happy enough just to have someone listening.
"Not everypony gets a trade. And plenty of ponies don't find it for a while. Why are you fighting so hard?"
Scootaloo didn't answer, at least not that question. "It all comes back to my wings. No matter where I go, no matter what I want to do—I'm still a pegasus who isn't. I can't fly, I can't do weather magic. I don't have anything to offer from the other tribes either. It doesn't matter where I try to work, they'll all treat me that way. I'm forever half of a pony."
Sweetie Belle giggled in spite of herself. It was so strange a reaction that her friend turned to glare at her, furious and a little hurt. But she remained just as intense. "At least you're alive, Scootaloo. Before I didn't know what you were going through, but now..."
She reached up with one hoof, and gripped at the base of her horn. That bone was usually an incredibly sensitive part of any unicorn's body, easily damaged and likely to cause extreme suffering if anything happened to it.
She felt nothing at all from it. Though much of her body was imbued with false sensory skin, this had nothing. It twisted around, then detached completely, coming off in her grip. It was hollow, and empty. There wasn't even a single wire.
Before Scootaloo could object, she tossed it to her, then brushed her mane down so it covered the gap. It wasn’t hard, really. "Lucid says he made it detachable so that when they figure out magic, we can plug that in to replace it. But I think he doesn't have a clue how to do it. Maybe not today, maybe not ever. I'm basically an earth pony forever now—and worse. Earth ponies have some magic—they can grow things, and they're tough. I'm a sculpture. "
For a long time Scootaloo was entirely silent, looking between Sweetie and the river between them. When she did speak, she was far more subdued than she had been moments before, voice relaxed. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is one pony in Equestria who can understand what this is like. So what are you doing about your future? You have one too... more than the rest of us, if Lucid is right. You don't age."
She giggled again, a little less energetically than last time. It might be true that her mind wouldn't just keel over and die, but she had plenty of experience with the more traditional form of just wearing out.
"I'm not immortal, I'm just easier to fix," she said. "But you saw when they switched me over—I think I almost died then. Lucid doesn't want to say it, because he's afraid it will scare off potential customers. But I know it's true."
Scootaloo settled down beside her, so close she could feel her touch with Sweetie's new senses. But that wasn't strange, why should it be? Ponies were close to each other all time, especially friends.
"You didn't answer though. What will you do with your future? Now that you can't do magic, now that you're not really a unicorn anymore. Not that... I'm saying it like that." She held out the horn in one wing.
Sweetie took it back, secured it in place. She might not be able to feel it or use it anymore, but that horn still felt like it was part of her.
"I guess just—since I'm the first, I want to be a good—whatever I am. I want to figure things out, so the next pony who wakes up in a robot body will be able to know what to do. And maybe with a little more practice, I can learn how to fix myself on my own—that way if the company ever goes under, I can keep myself going. I'm not just gonna give up and die."
Scootaloo met her eyes, silent for a long time. "That sounds amazing. You've got a purpose. Not sure how it will pay rent, but I bet it feels nice."
"Yeah," she admitted. "I guess. Figuring things out interested me before, but it's different now. Systems and machines and... there's rules to them, and anypony can learn. It's the way Twilight used to talk about magic, except this is something I can actually do."
"Makes sense. Maybe you can figure out how this works," Scootaloo went on. She definitely smelled different now. Nervous, but also something else. Something Sweetie had never felt before.
"How what works?" she asked, still grinning. "Now you're the one not answering my question."
"This," Scootaloo answered. Then she kissed her.
It was unlike anything she had felt before—but just like so many of Sweetie's new experiences, being different and strange didn't mean it was bad.
"Pretty good," she whispered, a few seconds later. She felt breathless, even though she didn't need to breathe. "Pretty good."