The Six Million Bit Stallion

by tony1695

Chapter 1

The castle in Canterlot was easily the most recognisable landmark in all Equestria. Images of the grand structure adorned every work that spoke of both the Princesses and Equestria’s history. Constructed in one day from the purest marble, it was regarded by many as a testament of what Princess Celestia was capable of. Along with the Princesses the inhabitants of the castle included advisors, wait staff, cooks and guards.

Nimbus Strike suppressed a yawn. As prestigious as being a royal guard was, it was also incredibly boring. The only time anything interesting happened was when Blueblood or some other idiot noble tried to barge in, or during the most recent Grand Galloping Gala. But that had been different, closer to a small disaster. It had taken three whole days to clean up. He let out a sigh as he tried to settle himself into a more comfortable position and find an interesting patch of wall to stare at. He was sure it would be another long day. He was so deep in thought and boredom that the white pegasus failed to register the panicked screams until it was too late.

He poked his head around the doorway to the castle’s magic laboratory and was immediately barreled over by a purple unicorn mare. He was spun around and his head slammed against the marble door frame, knocking him unconscious. He didn’t know that every other pony in that area of the castle was being evacuated, Princess Luna herself having teleported out the instant things failed to go to plan. By the time he woke up, he was completely alone. That wasn’t exactly unusual, but the fact that the whole corridor seemed to be glowing like a small sun definitely was.

Instinct took over and he took flight. He nearly made it to safety. He was less than a yard away from the door when there was an earth-shaking tremor and the space behind him ignited and exploded, sending him rocketing out with enough force that when he impacted the wall, he left a small crater.

---

“Luna, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Tia, it’s my fault he’s injured. I can’t just leave him to die.”

“I know, but...” Princess Celestia looked through the one-way glass, watching the surgical procedure. “Are you sure this is the best idea?”

“That explosion did too much damage to heal magically.” Princess Luna sighed. “He’s just lucky he wasn’t any closer, or the magical radiation would have finished him off.”

Both sisters watched in silence as one of the surgeons levitated a bonesaw and brought it to Nimbus Strike’s left foreleg. “Okay, get ready to cauterize this area the moment I finish cutting,” one of the masked ponies ordered to the others. “Can’t risk any major blood loss.”

“Why are they...?” Celestia asked quietly as they started cutting.

“There was enough radiation to slowly kill parts of his body.” Luna started shaking. “T-this is the only way to make sure he survives. By removing the affected areas, it’ll stop the spread of the entropy.” Celestia didn’t say anything, instead just reaching down to nuzzle her sister. “I should have been more careful. It could have just as easily been me. Or your student.”

“Luna, stop. You made a mistake. We all do. You’re trying to make amends, and that’s all that matters.” Celestia wiped her sister’s tears away before becoming still, watching what was happening in the room in confusion. One of the surgeons had brought in what looked like a bundle of electrical wiring. “What are they doing?”

A small smile played across Luna’s features. “Healing magic won’t do much good with the amount of radiation he soaked up. Instead, we’re doing the next best thing.” She watched as more electronic parts, along with bizarre equipment, were brought in. “We’re replacing everything we have to.”

From within the operating theatre, one of the ponies began to speak. “All right, everypony. I know this is risky, but we can do this. We can rebuild him. After all, we have the technology. Everypony ready?” The princesses watched as the real work began.

---

Nimbus Strike felt heavy. His eyes refused to open, and his legs and wings were unresponsive. His head felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool, and he was aware of a faint beeping to his left. He forced his sluggish thought processes into action, trying to piece together what had happened.

There was the unicorn mare that had knocked him out. At first he was angry, but the longer he thought on the matter the more he was sure that her expression had been one of fear and dread. She had obviously been running from something, and had meant him no harm.

Then he remembered trying to outfly something himself. It must have been the explosion that had claimed him afterwards. He didn’t know what had caused it. All he remembered from that was the intense light, the burning pain and the feeling he had been punched by an Ursa Major. Shuddering at the idea of how much force an Ursa Major could put behind a punch, he opened his eye and looked around.

He was in a pristine hospital room. Everything was white and seemed to reek of bleach. He tried to move his leg to wipe at his eyes but found it stiff and unwieldy. Must be in a cast, he thought as he used his other leg after pulling it free of the blankets. He didn’t think much of the bandage covering his left eye.

He took another, closer look at the room he was in and noticed a few things. Apart from what looked like a heart-rate monitor quietly beeping to his left, there was a lot of other complex machinery the likes he had never seen before. One of the perks of being a royal guard was the best health care in Equestria. Every stop must have been pulled to ensure a full recovery.

The door opened and in walked a midnight blue alicorn, the princess of the night. Her look of relief at seeing Nimbus Strike awake would have been amusing in any other situation, it seemed that exaggerated. “Thank goodness you’re awake.”

“Your highness,” Nimbus Strike responded with a salute as years of training took over. “I’d bow, but I’m in no position to do so.”

Luna smiled a little. If he could attempt to crack jokes, he was obviously going to recover just fine. “I didn’t think you’d be awake for a few more days.”

“It’ll take more than a little explosion to keep me down, princess.” Nimbus Strike winced as he tried to force himself up into an uncomfortable sitting position. “A four-headed hydra might, but certainly not an explosion.”

The princess ignored that comment and instead bowed her head. “It’s my fault you were hospitalised, Nimbus Strike. I am deeply sorry.”

The guard pony could hardly believe what he was seeing. Princess Luna, one of the most powerful beings in Equestria, was bowing down to him, a lowly guard. “P-please, p-princess, it’s okay,” he stammmered. “It was a lab accident. Even the best fliers crash from time to time.”

“I know,” Luna responded, looking up while wiping a tear away. “I just didn’t think you’d be so forgiving.”

“It was an accident, your highness,” Nimbus Strike said lightly as he waved his hoof around. “And I’m fine. I actually feel pretty good.”

“That’s... why I’m here, actually.” Luna bit her lip and tried to decide the best way to proceed. “The explosion you were caught in... It was very dangerous, to say the least.”

“Well, yeah, it was an explosion.”

“It wasn’t just any explosion, though. The fuel was very volatile.”

“Okay...” Nimbus Strike was getting confused.

“There was a lot of magical radiation within the explosion, and a large amount remained afterwards. We weren’t sure what effects it might have.”

Nimbus Strike held up his hoof. “Forgive me, princess, but I’m neither a unicorn nor particularly knowledgeable on the matter of magic. What do you mean by ‘magical radiation’?”

Princess Luna took a moment to think of the simplest way to explain this to a pegasus. “When you fly fast enough, you leave a contrail, correct?” Nimbus Strike nodded. “It’s like that, only it’s not visible most of the time. All unicorns radiate some whenever they use magic, but that’s not enough to cause any harm.”

“So...” Nimbus Strike put a hoof to his chin. “The amount of magic in the air during and after the explosion was enough to be deadly?”

“At the centre, not even my sister would have survived. Luckily, you were at the very edge and your exposure was minimal. It was still enough, though.”

“Still enough for what? I’m not going to grow another set of wings, am I?” the bed-ridden pegasus asked quietly.

“No, nothing of the sort. It actually had the exact opposite effect.” Luna took a deep breath, preparing herself for the hardest part. “It caused rapid tissue decay. Your body was dying and the only option was to remove the affected areas.”

“Oh.” Nimbus Strike blinked. “How much did you have to cut off?”

“A lot,” the princess answered vaguely.

“How much is a lot?”

“It’d be easier to show you.” With that statement Luna’s horn began to glow and the blanket neatly folded itself at the foot of the bed. Even though she had been present for most of the operation, she was still a little shocked by what she saw.

Her shock was no match for the mix of horror and amazement that showed itself on Nimbus Strike’s face. “What... what did you have them do?”

Both his hind legs had been replaced with strange metal prosthetics. The one on the right began just below his cutie mark, a nimbus cloud split in two, while the left leg was merged with his body in such a way that half the cutie mark couldn’t be seen. His left foreleg had been replaced as well, the sleek silver starting at his shoulder.

“Your heart and lungs were also replaced, as well as your wings.” A third voice, this one belonging to another stallion answered. Nimbus Strike had been too busy looking at what had been done to have heard him enter. He turned to the dirt-brown unicorn.

“Who are you? What did you do to me?”

“Calm down, Mr. Strike. As for who I am, I am Doctor Turning Cog. Feel free to call me Cog though, most ponies do.”

“Answer my question,” Nimbus Strike responded, feeling his temper rising. “What did you do to me?”

“Well, we rebuilt you.” Doctor Cog approached the bed and used his magic to slowly highlight the areas that had been affected. “Both of your hind legs were beyond any repair when you were brought in. The same applies to your left foreleg, but we were able to spare your right leg. Your wings suffered varying degrees of damage, the left one little more than bone when we removed it. Your right wing fared better, but don’t expect any of the feathers to grow back any time soon. As for your internal organs,” the glow started coming from within Nimbus Strike, which was a little creepy, “your heart and lungs were heavily damaged. Replacing them was the only option as they were sure to fail within a week. Part of your liver suffered, but that won’t have any adverse affects. A small part of your stomach deteriorated as well, but that will recover in time. I advise against eating anything spicy for several months, though.”

It was all too much for Nimbus Strike to take in. More than half of his body had been carved off and replaced. He rolled over onto his legs and managed to get onto the tiled floor, a little shaky. He felt like a character in one of the comic books his nephew read. Three fake legs, fake wings, artificial heart and lungs...

“Also, if you let me remove that bandage, I can show you what else had to be removed.” There was more? Nimbus Strike allowed Doctor Cog to unravel the bandages and stood there, not sure what to do now. “Look in this mirror and tell me what you see.”

At first Nimbus Strike couldn’t see what the doctor was talking about. He gazed into the levitating mirror but failed to see what was so interesting. “What am I meant to be looking at?”

“Princess Luna, could you possibly turn off the lights?” The room went dark. “Thank you.”

Nimbus Strike gaped at his reflection. His left eye seemed to glow. It was very faint, almost faint enough to be dismissed as a figment of his imagination. But not faint enough. “You replaced my eye!?” the pegasus yelled. “Why did you replace my eye!?”

“You had been blinded in that eye. Your new eye is superior to the old one in every way.”

“You think I care about that!?” Nimbus Strike turned to Doctor Cog, fury burning in his remaining eye. “I’m not a pony anymore! Look at me! I’m a goddess-damned machine! How do you expect me to fit in anywhere!? “ He stamped the ground with his front left hoof, not noticing the impressive crack he left in the floor.

“We don’t expect you to,” Princess Luna said, putting some authority into her voice. “Your... augmentations put you in a unique position. You’re stronger than an earth pony, and your new wings should allow you to fly faster than you could before. What’s more, your new body parts are capable of taking more punishment than you used to be able to.”

“So I’m going to be a hit-pony, am I?” Nimbus Strike asked bitterly.

“No!” the moon princess responded angrily. “There are many threats in Equestria that cannot be resolved peacefully. In those cases intimidation or an application of force are the only possible solutions.”

“What makes you think I want to do this?” He didn’t care that he was butting heads with an alicorn who could banish him with a thought. He was too indignant about this perceived injustice to care.

“You swore an oath to serve, Nimbus Strike,” Princess Luna reminded the angry pegasus, pushing her snout into his.

“I swore the oath to Princess Celestia! Not to her little sister!” He stamped again, this time leaving a small dent in the floor.

“You swore the oath to the Royal Sisters. That means you serve me as much as you serve Celestia. And I don’t know what she plans on doing with a pony worth six million bits.”

“W-what!?” Nimbus Strike’s reaction was just what she had been expecting. “S-six million bits!?” he stammered. A stunned silence, interrupted only by the strange beeping machine, filled the room as he tried to find words.

“A little over, actually,” Doctor Cog interjected. “You’re very lucky.”

“Why would you spend so much money on keeping me alive?” Nimbus Strike asked loudly.

“Because it was my fault you were exposed in the first place. I had to make it right, and this was the only way how.”

The lights were turned back on and Nimbus Strike could see how remorseful the princess seemed. Seeing her like this left him ashamed that he had let his temper get the better of him. He took a deep breath and turned away. “Okay, I’ll do this.” He shook a bit in a subconscious attempt to ruffle his feathers before forgetting that his wings were now different. “What do my wings look like?”

Doctor Cog generously floated the mirror towards the pegasus, angling it for ease of use. “Now, we weren’t able to replicate the pegasus wing structure perfectly, so we had to take a few... liberties with the design.”

At first, Nimbus Strike didn’t know what the unicorn was talking about. He willed the wings to unfurl, expecting to be met with metallic mockeries of what had once adorned his back. Instead, what he saw were gleaming, functional works of art. Twice as big as the wings he was used to, they were closer in size to the ones of Princess Celestia when they were unfurled. Instead of the multitude of feathers he was accustomed to, there were long slats of metal that stretched out from a frame. The left wing was entirely artificial, with the right wing using what remained of the old one as a base. He gave them an experimental flap, making them clink as he began to hover. He was amazed at both how easy it was and how light he felt.

“Your entire skeletal structure was magically reinforced to compensate for the extra stresses use of the prosthetics could cause,” Doctor Cog said with a smile. He was seeing much of his life’s work in front of him functioning better than he could have hoped. If only it wasn’t so costly, he thought. We could make this available for everypony. “And those wings use your own innate magic, so you won’t have to worry about falling out of the sky.”

As much as Nimbus hated what had been done to him, he had to admit that he liked his new wings. Maybe this isn’t so bad after all, he caught himself thinking. “So what happens now, your highness?”

“Well, you’ll need a few days to adapt to your new body,” Doctor Cog answered. “I should be able to have somepony make something to hide your legs.”

“I asked the princess a question,” Nimbus replied in a deadpan.

“Doctor Cog is right though, Nimbus,” Luna replied softly. “We can’t have you not knowing your own strength.”

The pegasus had a little trouble understanding what the big deal was. “I can’t be that strong, surely.” He went to the door, his metallic hooves making dull clangs. He grasped the handle with his left hoof and pulled the wooden door off its hinges. All three ponies stared blankly before Princess Luna started giggling. “I am?” Nimbus asked dumbly.

“We can’t have you tearing off doors, now can we?” Luna said playfully, a hoof covering her mouth. She grasped the door in her telekinesis and reattached it. “I shall return you to the royal guard barracks. The augmentations can withstand teleportation, correct?” she asked the smiling doctor.

“Hm? Oh, yes, they are capable of withstanding many things a pony normally couldn’t. Teleportation shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Okay then. Could you explain to the staff that I have taken their patient?” Before receiving a response, both the pegasus and the princess vanished in a flash of light.

---

Nimbus Strike lay in a heap on the floor, his natural eye spinning slowly in its socket. After a moment, he shook his head and stood up. He was in one of the guard barracks, five beds against each wall with a chest at the foot of each. There was no-one around, which led him to believe that it was the middle of a shift. The clock above the only door confirmed this, the face reading five in the evening, meaning that the afternoon shift was almost done. He found that he was right next to his bunk, so he went through his stuff to make sure it was all there. His armour was missing, but he was sure that was to do with the radiation. He closed the lid of his chest, cracking it in the process. Note to self, he thought bitterly, use right hoof for opening and closing things.

He was interrupted when he heard the door to the barracks open. “Is that you, Nimbus?”

Nimbus turned around and saw another pegasus, a dull white one wearing full guard armour. The voice and eyes alone were enough to tell him who this pony was, though. “Hey Sparky.”

Sparky approached Nimbus, disbelief in his eyes. “I heard you were dead,” he said loudly.

“You got your eye on my stuff, do ya?” he retorted. Both pegasi glared at each other before laughing.

“Oh goddesses am I glad you’re okay,” Sparky said, pulling his friend into a rough hug.

“Me too, man, me too.” They pulled apart, Sparky staring at Nimbus’ left leg.

“So... what’s it like?” he asked hesitantly. “Being, y’know, bionic?”

“Bionic?” Nimbus raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t hear that word being used before.” He shrugged and decided to ignore it. “It’s strange. Hay, I could probably kick down that wall now.”

“You’re bucking with me.”

“No, really.” To prove his point, he stamped the ground with his bionic hoof, leaving a small dent and a lot of cracks.

Sparky stepped back. “That’s a little scary,” he said.

---

“Luna, I respect your judgement, but are you sure?”

“There isn’t any other way without involving your student and her friends, and you did say that you wanted to give them a break.”

“True,” Princess Celestia replied. “I just feel that there must be another approach.”

“Sister, I’ve already checked, and the royal guard can’t get involved. It would be too public. We need somepony that can do this as inconspicuously as possible.”

“Yes, because a pegasus with metal wings can blend in with a crowd so easily,” Celestia replied sarcastically.

“Don’t worry, sister, I have a plan.”

Celestia knew that smile, one she hadn’t seen in a thousand years. Luna was scheming. This should have worried her, but she couldn’t help but smile herself.