It had taken a day for me to reinvent the electric wheelchair, I didn't feel much forward onto walking with all my broken and cracked ribs. So Now I felt like Charles Xavier, gliding down the hallway, in my makeshift robo-chair and ordering doors to open and shut on my command. Aku and Bowser had returned to me, albeit after I had managed to free them both from ice and portal them back home. Though after about half an hour of striding down the hallways in my new chair, I grew bored and went back to my projects. They weren't strenuous by any means and it provided me something to do as my body recovered. Though I'll admit it was tricky to use my tools in my left hand, but I managed to compensate by using more robotic appendages from the walls to make up for my casted arm. Absently I swapped through projects that were in progress, a partially made suit of armor that was so far only an arm and a chest plate. It was a slow and arduous process, one that I wouldn't be done with for a long while. One that was only made possible by the sheer amount of space and resources that I now had in comparison to my past traveling life.
Besides that project, there were others. Masks that were still in construction, props and tools that were but blueprints upon my wall. Dozens upon dozens of things to build, to make, and to see come into reality. It never hurt to have a massive variety of utilities, but a knock on my door broke my attention. A master work of projects both being built, and I looked towards it, "Come on in." I spoke up, removing goggles that had rows of magnifying glasses on one side that I had momentarily forgot that I put on, before turning my chair to face the new company. To my surprise it was the limbless pegasus, cass, who was on the other side. "Ah, Cass, was it? Please, make yourself at home." I gestured at the part of my room that wasn't currently a creative mess, and she nodded, and flew in, landing somewhat roughly on the clean surface of my bed, "What brings you to my domain?"
For a moment the pegasus was silent, as she considered her own words, and then she spoke up. It was the first time I had heard her voice, and it blew my mind how she sounded like. Somehow against all odds I was staring at a pegasus with the voice of an angel, surpassing with softness to the point of outstripping Fluttershy. One could get lost in that voice, and if not for the slight hard edge that came from an unfortunate past, I think my jaw would of dropped. It took me a moment before I registered what she had said, "I... Heard you might be able to help me..."
"Pardon?" I asked, not quite gripping what she was asking but she sighed.
"Sorry, sorry." She amended, "What I mean to say, is that Amber said you had some knowledge in strange magic, and that you were constantly creating things that had... well... limbs."
"Ah." I said, dumbly, before shaking my head to clear it, "To be honest, I was considering to offer my help as well. Though I was having a few problems."
"Oh...? Sorry. I don't want to be any trouble..." The voice of Cass was downtrodden, and I had to speak up.
"No, no. Its no trouble at all, It was more of a... technical issue." At the look of her blank face, I continued, "You see, I'd need to take some measurements as well as ask you some personal questions regarding your... ahem... Loss of limb. Besides that, I'd have to explain each part and its origin as I made it to you, else it wouldn't work properly once you put it on."
I was a bit surprised at my own forthcoming nature, but I blamed that on the painkillers I had found on my desk soon after Skart had left. My surprise increased as Cass formulated her response and looked to me with a sense of longing, "Is... is that all?"
"Well I'd probably ask you to never use the limbs to kill or to betray the location of this base to Celestia or her ponies, but that's a subject for another day."
After a moment of a pondering look, which was cuteness itself as she tilted her head, "Why would I tell Celestia that?"
I deadpanned, "I'm sort of a villain in this nation."
"Oh? But why would a villain help two ponies out from other bad ponies?"
To that, I had no answer, and she smiled, the first one that I had first seen her, and continued, "I'll be fine with the measurements though, but it will take a while for the questions."
"I have till Nightmare Night." I responded in turn, "How about we take a few hours of each others time, and start on it." I smiled, putting away my current projects, in favor of opening a new one, a fresh blank sheet of paper, and taking out my measuring tape, as well as a choice few other supplies.
A new seat appeared next to me and I gestured for her to take a seat in it, and she gladly did, scooting closer to me as she eyed the variety of sketches and half finished projects. "You're one of those busy types, huh?"
I chuckled, "Yeah, guess you could say that. Would you mind if I?" I gestured to her arm with a tape measure and she nodded for me to continue, "So, if you don't mind me asking, how did you and Trixie meet in the first place?" I started measuring the stumps of where her limbs had been, taking careful note of exact measurements, something like this wasn't going to be easy, but it would be easier if I had exact measurements to work with rather than a vague assumption of her body size. Idly my mind picked out a medical text from the stolen horde of books from Twilights Library, and I turned to a page on the pony skeleton.
"We met a while back, I was having a stroke of bad luck finding work, kinda hard to work when you only have wings." she waggled her wings, "even if they're ambidextrous, and Trixie had recently loss her home to some Unicorn mare and a weird bear thing called an Ursa Minor. We shared the same alleyway for a time, and soon enough we became friends."
Cass was cheerful, for a shy pony, something I respected, and as I continued my measurements, correlating her muscle mass to the charts, and getting an appropriate sketch of how large I was going to need to make these cybernetics. However, one of her missing limbs bothered me. Three of them had healed up to a neat round, if uneven stump, however the last was almost flat, like something had cut a straight line through it, leaving an uneven plane of jagged scars and tissue on it. That one would require a form fitting mold, something I would need to prepare for. Quickly, I started up a mixture with the robotic assistance while I explained what I was going to do next, which was to apply some anti-stick material to her fur, before coating the stump in a thick almost cream like material which would harden enough to become flexible plastic. Normally one would never apply this to fur, but Equestria had enough of an art depot to have invented the material I needed in order to make sure it didn't tear out any fur. As I applied these two mixtures to her stump, I asked her, "What happened to your limbs? Sorry if it seems a bit rude, but it will help with the reconstruction process."
That was only partially true, I did need to know more about her, but it was more on part of my curiosity. The pegasus paused, flinching a little as the cold gel like substance was applied to her. "Lost three of my legs to a particularly sadistic dragon, who managed to capture me shortly after I had been released from the wonderbolts."
"You were part of the wonderbolts?" I asked, and she chuckled.
"Yeah, my stage name was 'Rewind Flight', On account of being able to stop in a second flat and go back at max speed as if time was being rewound." she chuckled to herself, though I could see a sadness in her eyes.
"What caused them to release you?" I pryed a bit further, and she sighed, "The loss of my first leg. We were experimenting with lightning clouds and trying to make new acrobatic tricks where we would dodge around a storm of it, sadly one of our members tripped up on a cloud, and accidentally sent off a cascade at Spitfire, a captain at the time. I barely managed to push her out of the way, saving her life, but in the end it came at the cost of one of my legs."
I winced, as her mane covered her eyes, "My apologies for asking so suddenly."
"No need to apologize," Cass told me, "After the incident, I was awarded an equestrian medal of valor, and retired from service, though the security checks handled for a while, my next accident while trying to figure out what to do with life cost me the rest of my bits in order to pay for the medical costs." She sighed, "Some worth that was."
I tried changing the conversation, "What... What did you usually do when you had limbs, and weren't part of the Wonderbolt routines?"
She sighed dreamily, "Believe it or not, I used to take long walks in the park, and lounge about under the trees, either day dreaming or reading up on the latest music trends."
We continued to talk, and the more I learned about her the more she opened up. After a while she even started to try and pry at my own life, and while I told her mostly the truth, I left out any bits that would make it seem like I was from another dimension entirely. Once the mold had been peeled off of her, I thanked her for her time, and told her that I would be ready tomorrow to continue. But for now I had to make an additional two molds out of the first one. The second mold would be made from filling out the first with a jelly that was usually used to imitate false flesh, from there a third mold would be made as well of a quick drying solid cement instead of flexible plastic, and that would serve as a base for my expanding foam, and allow me to start working on the the most complex of the four limbs first.
Though after another two hours I had meant to put down the project, I found myself strangely attached to it, unable to put it down until my eyes started to droop, and three dozen painted parts and pieces laid before me, a half completed diagram underneath it. I pulled myself onto my bed, and passed out, a satisfied smile adorning my face as my mind still rambled through the possibilities.