//------------------------------// // The Good Doctor // Story: The Conversion Bureau - Synthesis // by FatesEnd //------------------------------// "Tonight we sleep with hands of flesh, but we will awake with hands of steel. With these hands we will destroy, and with these hands we will rebuild. We will raise our hands above us, cold steel shining in the sun, and with these hands that will not bleed, our battle will be won." Crowley was very glad indeed to arrive at the South American border of the Barrier. He had been stuck on an airplane ride with loudly chattering newfoals for hours, a now-painful grin plastered on his face. The plane itself had been crudely converted to allow for pony seating, and had been crewed, he noted with no small sense of disgust, by PER members. After that, they were transferred to a similarly converted old school bus where he spent another hour with the empty headed fanatics of both species. Immediately after leaving the bus, he rushed to the vendors that ran stands catering to the new arrivals. He converted all of his credits to bits; the fact that he did so for a reasonable price was yet more proof of the influence Equestria had over the Corporations. They were notoriously paranoid about losing business to their fellows, charging up to double the amount for exchanges, despite there being extremely low overlap in their products. He bought an Equestrian made cloak and a pair of saddlebags, as well as reluctantly buying a sombrero. The combination made him look like somebody from an old western, but it was the only sort of hat he could find sold. He'd have to deal with it until he found a decent shop in Equestria. Slipping away from the giggling mass of pony, he finally allowed his rictus to drop. He wandered down the Barrier, searching for an unwatched portion. He found an empty shack, likely abandoned by a native fleeing the encroaching barrier. He set his sombrero and cloak on a rickety bed frame and laid his saddlebags against the wall. Opening his bag, he removed three small vials filled with dark gray liquid and covered with color coded caps. Reaching into the largest compartment of the bag, he pulled out what looked like steel caps with many thin white fibers growing out of the convex ends. Two of them were large and oval shaped, while the other was smaller and circular. Opening a red-capped vial, he poured it onto the fibrous end of one of the larger caps. As it exited the tube, the liquid inside flowed like thin honey, but upon touching the cap, it thickened to a texture not completely unlike old library paste. Dr. Crowley stuffed part of his old cloak into his mouth, and, while still holding the cap with one hoof, retrieved a ruler and set it against his side before pressing the cap to his body. It took all of his concentration to hold it steady as the ooze ate into his flesh. He let his grip loosen as he felt the goo tug at the fibers at the base of the cap, bonding them to once-vestigial nerves. After what seemed like an hour, the pain segued into an uncomfortable numbness. Running a hoof along his side, he found that despite the pain, no blood had spilled, and the cap was now flush with his fur, like a socket melded to him. Taking a deep breath, he uncapped a vial with a blue lid and repeated the ordeal with the other large cap on his left side. As he let his legs slump, sprawled out on the squeaky wooden floor, he reached for the last vial, one with a violet lid. Binding the liquid to the small cap, he carefully held it to his head with both hooves. This time, rather than feeling much pain, he felt an overwhelming sense of dizziness as he underwent pre-programmed brain surgery. As the familiar numbness came to his forehead, his body felt heavy and his vision darkened, before his consciousness once again abandoned him. --- By the fact that he was laying on the floor, the doctor could surmise that he had fainted during the procedure. 'Oh dear. Well, fingers... One... One? No, wait, I don't have fingers anymore. Hooves, then. One, two, three, four. Still have a tail. And a head, of course.' All body parts accounted for and in working order, Crowley opened his eyes. He had clear and steady vision, so chances were that he didn't have brain damage. Running a hoof over his forehead, he confirmed that the cap was melded to his skull and flesh. Getting back to his feet, he pulled three large and peculiar objects out of his bag. The first were a pair of symmetrical metal rods. They each had three joints and a row of thin pieces of metal shaped like elongated spoons running down one side. A single end of each one was widened and riddled with small pins on the flat side. He twisted and pushed them into the 'caps' on his sides, where they each fit with a click. Well, the 'caps' were less like caps and more like electrical sockets. Well, if electrical sockets were directly connected to one's nervous system and carried magic rather than electricity, that is. The final object looked like a robotic ice-cream cone, electrical tracks running from the base to the tip. At the base was a cylinder shaped like a large thick coin, with the same array of pins on the bottom. This he inserted into the socket on his head, where it gave the same click as the contraptions on his side did. This was his pièce de résistance: a melding of magic and machine, becoming something greater than either could be alone. They gave him the ability to harness the ability of both pegasai and unicorns, awakening parts of the pony nervous system existing in all of their races, but only utilized in those with the appropriate magical conduits. Of course, this didn't mean that he was any more powerful than he was without; they worked by redirecting his internal magic and using one would weaken the others. What this really gave him was versatility and unpredictability, able to act as any race at will. At least, it would when he got the hang of manipulating his internal magic. For now he would have to settle for acting as a living sparkler or tricking a scale. Putting his cloak and hat in the saddle bags and resting them on his back, he immediately noticed that even without consciously using them that they were taking away from the extra strength granted him by earth pony magic. Good. That was confirmation that they were working. Stuffing his old cloak and his empty vials into his bag, he trotted to the Barrier and tossed them at it. With a flash of white light, the man-made objects were vaporized. Looks like he had to do it the hard way. Remembering the words from a book that his former coworkers had retrieved from a town built by the newfoals, he mentally reached down into himself and found a heavy feeling in his hooves, like they were filled with mud. He tugged, and, with a sensation akin to sucking molasses through a straw, felt some of the energy reluctantly rise. Pushing atrophied flight muscles to move, he meekly wiggled his mechanical wings, the movement coaxing magic up through the socket and into the false feathers. Screwing his eyes shut, he shoved the remaining magic up through his horn, red sparks drizzling from the tip. He rammed into the barrier, and felt as though he had ran into a wall of rubber as it touched his horn. The confused arcane construct ran over him, attempting to divine the nature of his creations. Almost reluctantly, it let him through, the sudden lack of interference knocking him ass-over-teakettle. He was in. --- When Alan Crowley first arrived in Manehattan, he had compared it to his native Phoenix, although the buildings were smaller and cleaner, their edges much less rounded, and were broken up by more unique designs that he was certain Estatecorp wouldn't approve of. The second thing that had struck him were the ponies. Sure, he had seen native Equestrians on occasion, though very few that were not enemy combatants. The only time he had actually seen many ponies at once had been the newfoals going to the barrier. Seeing this city, though, if he ignored that they were ponies, he could almost believe he was looking at archival footage of New York from before the Corporations gained power. Sure, being a different species they had their cultural differences, and every pony in earshot would get nervous if someone let slip something that might seem critical of their government, but he could tell that their mentality wasn't alien in the least. These were people. He could do this. Now, about a month later, Solenoid, the earth pony from up north, was quite comfortably settled in to his new home without raising any suspicion. He had managed to do decent work dealing with clockwork, his talent in working with tiny to microscopic machinery translating well enough to the little springs and gears and other tiny ticking components. He had also managed to pick up a few acquaintances, including his neighbor, Lyra Heartstrings. In Dr. Crowley's not-exactly-expert opinion, Lyra was a madmare. He wasn't quite sure what exactly first made it click. Perhaps it was the fact that she used her magic to create ethereal hands to do things rather than just manipulate things with her magic directly. Perhaps it was the replica of a sarcophagus that she had made by hoof and had stored in her closet, much to her fillyfriend's chagrin. Or maybe it was the fact that she was obsessed with humanity and yet got hardly anything about them right. "...but that's when George Washington dropped the bombs on the Tower of Babel and won the Trojan War! Pretty cool, huh?" ...Case in point. "Lyra, I think that you got something mixed up there." "That's ridiculous! I'm the best human researcher in Equestria!" "You're the only human researcher in Equestria." To be honest, he had no idea whether he should enlist her help or try to stay as far away from her as possible. On one hand, she was obsessed with humans, and would no doubt sympathize. On the other hand, she was obsessed with humans, and, frankly, Crowley was skeptical about her capacity for hiding the fact that she was friends with a former human sane enough to still want anything to do with humanity. "C'mon, Sol, you know I wouldn't tell you something I wasn't sure about." "Don't call me 'Sol'. And what about the 'hobbit'?" "Hey, how was I supposed to know that hobbits don't store nuts in their cheeks?" "It was a squirrel. It had a big bushy tail and lived in a tree. Hobbits are shaped like short humans, don't have tails, and, most importantly, don't exist." "How do you know? There could be loads of them outside the Barrier. Besides, how many humans have you seen up close?" Crowley swore, if Celestia didn't kill him, Lyra would do him in with an aneurysm. At the moment, they were both headed up to their respective apartments, Lyra from a recital, and Crowley from a long day involving a cuckoo clock that tried to kill him and that he was reasonably certain had been possessed by the devil himself. At least back in the HLF things didn't spontaneously come to life and attempt to dismember him. Lyra had thus decided to regale him with some 'human history'. "Lyra, hobbits were ma- Ah!" Though he had been getting used to walking on four legs, navigating a large staircase using them was still difficult, and not something to be done following a harrowing battle with a demonic robotic bird and while in a conversation. It was thus that he had tripped on the last step before their floor and tumbled down, his cloak over his head and tangled in his front legs. Upon regaining his balance and putting back his cloak, he looked to Lyra. She was the picture of bewilderment. "...Why do you have-" Crowley sprung into action. He raced up the stairs and to his apartment, grabbing the mint unicorn. 'Shitshitshit.' He scrambled to open the door and dragged her in, quickly locking and bolting it. "What the hay was all that about?!" Slowly breathing in, he turned around an removed his cloak and the porkpie hat he had gotten to replace his ridiculous sombrero. "I suppose I have a bit of explaining to do." "Well yeah. Why is your cutie mark a robot liver?"