Dazzling New Life

by AFanaticRabbit

12 - Sonata

Sonata lived in a castle.

While it was only for the past day, that fact alone probably would have excited most fillies. Castles were where princesses lived, and while Sonata had little knowledge of current Equestrian politics, barely holding the name Celestia in her head from the few times Sunset mentioned her, she didn’t care much for that.

She did get the idea that castles were also where clever scientists and their experiments resided, though she had no clue where she got that notion.

Still, it made sense that she should live in a castle. She even had an entire room to herself, which she had taken to prettying up as best she could.

She had no paint. Sunset prioritised leaving any pigments or dyes at the old tower. Their containers were heavy and messy, and she’d stressed they weren’t vital to Sonata when she brought them up.

What she did have was an assortment of small containers and some planks of wood she’d stripped off the sides of the cart to act as shelves. Little pieces she found interesting to look at or figured she might have some use adorned each shelf as if she was displaying them for potential guests.

Unfortunately, the only other individual who had the privilege to enjoy Sonata’s collection was Aria’s disembodied head.

Her body was downstairs, somewhere. Sunset promised to look over it, try and fix it back up, good as new. In the meantime, Sonata had taken up the role of Aria’s caretaker. She was good at that, making sure Aria wasn’t too bored. She got loud when bored, grunting and moaning, unable to fidget or wander.

However, She made Sonata feel a little self-conscious with her new little idea. Having her sister stare down at her from on high as she worked through her thoughts led to feeling judged. Which, honestly, she probably was.

See, Sonata had decided she wanted to be more like Sunset. Watching her creator breathe new life into yet another being, especially one as cool and badass as Chrysalis? It inspired her. She wanted to do the same, even if on a smaller scale.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing?” Aria asked. She couldn’t move, not without the systems of pistons and crystal-powered joints, so she could only stare down her muzzle at the tattered cloth and metal parts spread across the floor. It didn’t help with the judgemental look, though Aria likely would have held that expression anyway.

“Making a surprise.” Sonata moved metal rods and plates with her hooves, one at a time. They slid over the linen, grease or rust, leaving black-brown stains in their wake. Each piece ranged from as long as half her leg to less than her snout, a random assortment of parts like Chrysalis.

Her answer didn’t seem to please Aria, though there wasn’t anything she could really do to improve that. It was a surprise, after all, even to Sonata herself.

Each piece in front of her was part of a puzzle she didn’t know the whole shape of, and she needed to figure out how they all fit. Plenty of approaches filled her mind, different forms she could make, layouts she could try. She had no idea if any of them would even work. She could ask Sunset, run the ideas by her.

But Sonata wanted to experiment by herself. She’d done so to her own body and still had the gap in her midsection to prove it.

Symmetry seemed the best thing to try at first, to see if she could split the jumble into two equal halves that looked roughly the same.

Several round plates made up the core, an amassed grey blob of metal that felt vaguely spider-like, then made all the worse by several long pieces that spoked out from the centre like eight long legs. Sonata snapped a few in the middle, adding what might amount to joints in the midpoints. Tipped on the end were various screws and rods and thicker slivers of metal that accumulated at the bottom of some of the crates, arranged in mismatched pairs or trios.

Then, using some spare copper wire, Sonata laid out strips along each of the ‘legs’, adding little loops in each joint.

She added slivers of gems to the loops, taken from their new basement and broken under her hoof.

Nothing stuck together, but why would it? She hadn’t anything to weld with or any glue. It looked fine, laid down as it was, but it needed some shape and definition.

Sonata looked up at Aria, and Aria grunted back at her.

“What?”

“Thinking.”

Sonata stared at Aria’s core. The red-pink gem inside pulsated, waxing and waning like a breathing star held inside a series of slowly spinning rings.

Sunset called it an armillary. Apparently, they were used as teaching and measuring tools when talking about planets and stars, not for whatever Sunset had put inside their chests. She just felt the name was appropriate.

Then she meandered on through a one-sided conversation, talking about new life, a new world, blah blah blah. Sonata tuned most of it out.

By Sonata’s guess, Aria’s core was about the same size as the smaller plates, where they curled up into a rough ball shape. The top would be open, but perhaps…

The thought barely formed in her head by the time she was up on her hooves and handling Aria’s head and core in her forelegs. Aria protested, but Sonata didn’t listen to her. She was too focused on setting both head and core on the floor, then placing the spinning sphere onto the plates.

For one glorious second, Aria’s bitching stopped dead, and her eyes opened wide.

“What the f—“

“It works!”

A surge of energy fired through the wires, turning them red, hot and soft, though the power within them dissipated as the shattered gems lit up. They pulsed with Aria’s core, and bit by bit, the pieces tensed up, pulling themselves together.

The middle plates curled upward, cupping Aria’s core in a gentle but firm embrace. Each leg curled up, then down, lifting the middle off the floor before staggering. It took a few moments before the skittering thing steadied itself.

One leg rose, reached for Aria’s face, and touched her cheek.

“…That feels super weird. What did you do?”

Sonata was ecstatic. Her face split in an exuberant grin, and she clapped her hooves together in front of her. “I did an experiment, and it worked!”

Giggling, Sonata hopped back up again, then trotted tight circles around Aria. It let her get a lot of different angles to examine the little body she’d constructed, and she watched as Aria pulled her head atop it, slipping the two front legs into the silicone where the cord to her core left her neck.

It took a few moments of tilting her head one way, then another, but eventually, Aria found a happy point to balance at. Aside from the roundness of her ‘body’, she looked at least a little like she had a tiny pony chassis. The only real problem Sonata could think of was Aria looked oddly balanced. Pulling her head back over her mid-point, she seemed to find a good place to rest, yet even then she seemed as though a small push would throw her onto her side.

There was also the fact she looked vaguely spider-like in appearance, but Sonata thought spiders looked cool.

“…Thanks.” Though quiet and cool, the little smile tugging at the corner of Aria’s mouth spoke of genuine gratefulness.

Sonata screamed, and she scooped up Aria onto her back before taking off down the hall, then the stairs. She just had to show Adagio and Sunset. She was sure even Chrysalis would be impressed.

#

Adagio glared at Aria, held aloft before her in Sonata’s hooves. She was on her way out of the main keep when Sonata ambushed her, blocking her path while repeating, “I made something!” over and over and over.

“…What did she do, Aria?”

The little body shifted in what might be a shrug, then tried wriggling out of Sonata’s grip. “I’m not even going to pretend to understand what she did.” Sonata kept adjusting her hooves, holding Aria up and then trying to pinch two of her legs to keep moving. One of the other two then jabbed down to the side, which Sonata understood meant, ‘Put me down’.

She acquiesced and gently deposited Aria onto the floor. She scuttled off to one side with a series of little tinks and craned her head up. “Is this what it’s like for Sunset?”

“Why is it so small? And so creepy?” Adagio shuddered. While unnecessary, it made Sonata giggle.

“I didn’t want to take too much from Sunset, and I’m just practising.”

Adagio hummed. “So you could make something bigger? Something more complex?”

Sonata shrugged, then lowered herself to the ground to peer underneath Aria. “Maybe! I don’t know if I just got lucky here, though, and I’m pretty sure there’s things that need fixing, but I don’t know what.” She stared at each of the legs in contact with the ground. Due to the simplified parts of the new miniature chassis, each leg ended in a narrow line, the corners of which Aria balanced. While Aria looked unsteady, slowly moving her weight to one side or the other, she managed to stay upright. Sonata considered that a win.

Usually, when Sonata was lost in her thoughts, she failed to notice how much time passed. She couldn’t tell anyone how long she had been in the forest or down the ravine, how long their visit to Ponyville was…

But she could tell it had been far too long since Adagio last said anything. She had expected more witty remarks or for her to excuse herself.

When Sonata looked back up, Adagio had a hoof to her chin while she looked down at the floor. Her eyes flickered side to side, not at either of her sisters but at some unspecified point on the ground.

“’Dagi?” Sonata asked.

Adagio snapped her head up. “Follow me,” she simply said. “We need to talk.”

Sonata and Aria looked at each other for a second, then back at Adagio. Sonata nodded and stood back up, prompting Adagio to continue walking out.

As Sonata followed behind, Aria’s clattering picked up and then dropped off, replaced with the odd sensation of a series of pointy limbs clambering up her backside.

Sonata knew better than to ask what was on Adagio’s mind until they arrived wherever it was she was taking them, though given she turned away from the main gate once they were outside, it was unlikely they would travel far.

Adagio wore a dour mask with thinned lips and cross eyes. That almost seemed normal, but an unseen tenseness lay underneath. Some feeling or thought Sonata could only feel but not know for herself.

After meandering through some collapsed stonework and the errant few trees that grew inside the castle’s grounds, Adagio came to a halt and turned around.

“I’ll keep this short: We need you to practice more and get better at the whole golemancy thing.”

Sonata blinked a few times. That sounded a lot like approval! “Sure! I was going to anyway. It’s the most fun thing I’ve tried so far, so unless I find something else I like more, I’ll probably get very good at it.”

“I don’t think you quite understand,” Adagio said with a shake of her head. “We need you to focus on it. Learn as much as you can, practice making or repairing more stuff. Talk to Sunset more and more. Learn to read so you can go through Sunset’s books.”

Aria snorted. “I’m not so sure about that last one.”

“I am. She needs to learn. We all do.”

“I guess I can do that, too,” Sonata said, uncertainty quavering in her voice. She didn’t fancy her chances at actually deciphering the squiggles in Sunset’s books, but she could probably convince Sunset to help her.

All that did raise a question, however.

“Why?”

“It’s because of Chrysalis, ain’t it.” Aria clung to Sonata’s shoulder, leaning forward to properly insert herself into the conversation. Sonata fought the urge to jerk her head around, or she might send Aria flying.

“I thought that was obvious.” Adagio sighed. “Let’s not kid ourselves. She is nothing but an improvement over us. You lost taking on two of those ponies that came for us—“

“I handled myself against four back in Ponyville!”

The daggers Adagio glared at Aria sent a shiver through Sonata’s metal bones. “Your body is made of spare parts and barely the size of your head. She faced down all the rest and came out dented at worst. We need a new advantage so we can be useful again.”

“We are useful!” Sonata protested. “We all helped get stuff over here. Besides, we can still cuddle with her. I’m sure she finds that useful, too.”

After glueing Sonata with an uncertain look, Adagio shook her head. “I’m sure she has other things on her mind. Just… Make sure you do as I say. Do you understand?”

Sonata nodded.

“Good. I think whatever you’ve done to Aria and yourself already helps you. Hopefully, she can tear herself from Chrysalis’ side long enough. Speaking of…” Adagio leaned over to one side, looking past Sonata. Following her gaze led to Chrysalis making her way through the castle grounds, far behind them, though as she noticed the others, she came to a halt mid-stride.

“Go speak to Sunset,” said Adagio, pitching her voice low. “I’m going for a walk.”

Adagio strode past Sunset, then further around the castle to put it between her and Chrysalis.

“Where?” Sonata asked. She reached out a hoof to Adagio, who just jerked her head in the vague direction of Chrysalis.

“Wherever she isn’t.”

With the conversation effectively over, Sonata settled her hoof back down and watched Adagio climb up over the rubble to continue her procession around the inner walls.

Looking back the way they came, Chrysalis continued staring at Sonata and Aria for a moment. Despite the glimmer in her eyes, they seemed a little duller than her other siblings and colder. Her core was a little brighter, but it felt more like a lamp down a corridor where it shone through her ribs rather than the soft translucence the others shared.

Chrysalis first broke the impromptu staring contest to regard the outer wall before her, then flicked out her wings and leapt onto it. The upper level was wide enough that Chrysalis disappeared, wandering to the parapets that overlooked the forest.

“Is Adagio scared of her?” asked Sonata, half-turning her head toward Aria. She started toward the keep’s entrance again, taking the same snaking path around pitfalls, trees, and rubble.

Aria pitched her voice quiet and low. “I’m a little scared of her, honestly.” She gave out a short laugh. “Which makes me think ‘Dagi has a point, even if she’s making too big a deal of it.”

“Do you think Chrysalis wants to hurt us?”

That got a snort from Aria. “Nah. Not unless we do something to Sunset, I think, which might explain ‘Dagi’s mood a little. You saw how she was acting when we were chased back.”

“I guess you’re right.” Sonata shrugged as they turned into the main entryway, Sonata’s hooves echoing off the hard stone. “I don’t think Chrysalis is bad. She’s just a little creepy. We see lots of bugs, and they’re all creepy, but none of them have hurt us so far.”

One of Aria’s little legs thumped the back of Sonata’s head. “You keep thinking like that, dumbass.” She smiled a small, lopsided, toothy grin. “One of us needs to.”

“I’m not a dumbass!”

Sonata’s words echoed off the walls around her, catching her attention in time before she bumped into the makeshift table in the centre of Sunset’s lab. She paused, looking over the headless body and tools around it, with Sunset carefully working something into its neck.

There was definitely something creepy about a body without a head. No identity, no marks to make it any one pony’s, and given none of the trio even had cutie marks, it made the lifeless metal and rubber even more anonymous.

She wondered idly if she could swap bodies with Aria. It made some sense that they’d be made from similar parts, especially as they came to life around the same time.

“Sunny?” Sonata tilted her head and reached out to the table, giving the body a slight nudge. Sunset responded with a start, suddenly straightening herself up and dropping the tool from her mouth and onto the table. The golden ring around her horn shimmered in the light, though there appeared to be some new scratches in its sides.

“Sonata? What—“ Sunset blinked and stared at Aria hanging off Sonata’s shoulder. “What, ah, what can I help you with?”

For reasons Sonata couldn’t place, she felt wrong about asking the question on her mind. It was as if it being Adagio’s suggestion made it inappropriate to ask. “I was wondering, um. Could you teach me more about this?” She poked Aria’s body again, the only energy it felt for the past day making it wobble ever so slightly.

Sunset smiled, though it was thin-lipped. “About what? Aria’s body?” She chuckled. “I’m not sure how much I can teach you that you’ll actually understand. I think you got lucky with your back…” She blinked, then switched her attention to Aria again. “Hang on, what’s up with her?”

“Oh!” Sonata beamed and reached for Aria. The little shout Aria gave did little to deter Sonata as she picked her up and placed her on the table beside her body. “I fixed her! Sort of.”

Sunset stared at Aria, unmoving, for a long few seconds. “…How?”

“I’m not sure!” She pocked at the back of Aria’s little body, making the odd spider-shape teeter forward. “I used some parts I thought you might not want or need and just… tried putting something together. I think it’s stuck to her now, but she can move around on her own, and isn’t it so cool?”

The fur on Sunset’s neck stood on end, fluffing her out a little. “Reckless is more like it. You did this? You can’t know how to power her down, right?” A disbelieving laugh popped out of Sunset’s mouth. “You could have shorted her, or melted the suspending rings together, or…”

Sunset then dropped her head low, looking underneath Aria’s body. Her eyes flickered from side to side, following something, and that something became clear as Aria lifted a limb to scratch at her head.

“You have control of each leg. There’s no way she programmed that in. And there’s more going into your neck…” Sunset straightened herself again and squinted at Aria. “Can you… Can you stretch every limb, including the two holding your head?

Aria quickly glanced at Sonata, then shrugged and did as she was told. Every leg on her arachnid-like body stretched out, and she lifted her head above her, disconnected from the thickest part of her little body except for the limbs and chord.

Tools scattered to the floor as Sunset blindly reached for her notebook, then scribbled into it with a pencil between her teeth. She never looked away from Aria once, nor did she blink. Once she wrote what she wanted, with a quick glance at the page to cringe, she spoke again.

“Do you think you can climb into your body? The inner silicone is damaged and torn, so it’s not like you’ll make anything worse. I just need to see if this works how I expect it to.”

“That might be a tight squeeze.” Aria snickered, but as she took a breath to say more, Sunset’s stare turned sour, frowning at the little bot.

“Get into the neck, got it.”

Aria lowered her head so it could sit flat on her body, but Sunset held out a hoof and shook her head. “No, keep that extended. Get the rest of… you in there.”

After another pause, Aria nodded, then slowly made her way to her old chassis. She probed at the neck, pulling it open like a sleeve. The material that made up their skin was the same through and through, with just a paper-thin, hardened layer that made up the outside. As Aria pushed her legs in, one at a time, the slightly tacky inner material tugged at her, sticking and sliding.

“Gosh, that’s gross…”

Sonata didn’t think so. She thought it was fascinating. She’d love to see more, but she didn’t know what she could mess with or take apart without damaging her sister. She wouldn’t want to ruin Aria’s body, anyway, not any more than it was.

Once most of Aria’s legs made their way inside, the core followed while she lay her head on the table. “I’m kind of feeling around blind in here. Not got much touch to work with. Feels like my legs are miles away.”

“Little touch, or none at all?” Sunset asked. She lifted her coat and pulled out the flashlight with her teeth. It clinked against her jaw as she turned it around and switched it on, shining it into Aria’s torso.

That didn’t reveal much, but Sonata could make out a little inside. Mostly where the metal sort of was, but she could see the faintest blur that was probably Aria’s little legs dragging herself in.

A clink, a zap, and a shudder across the body startled the three of them, and Sunset and Sonata shared a look before simultaneously turning to Aria.

She had a clenched jaw, but her eyes were focused, falling onto the two ponies looming over her. “That hurt!”

“I think you made contact with the circuit. Somehow.” She fell silent and tilted her head. “No humming or buzzing, so either you’re not in contact, or you haven’t shorted the other crystals.” Sunset chuckled and danced on the spot. “Ooh, new functionality and limiting parameters are exciting.”

“Yeah, cool, whatever.” Aria glared at Sunset, then pulled her head to her old neck by bending her little legs in. “What do I do now?”

“You said you can’t feel a lot. Can you feel anything?”

Aria nodded. “I’m kind of hooked on a few hard things. Why?”

Sunset drew a straight line across her shoulders with a hoof, cutting across her chest. “There should be some bars here if that helps. Try and get two legs around those and two legs along the back ribs.”

Aria furrowed her brow but said nothing. Her head moved down again while the bulge of the core travelled into her torso. She grunted and hissed along, and right as her head sat flush with her neck, the entire body flinched from neck to tail. One of the front legs missed Sunset’s head, who backed away enough to avoid its companion falling off the table.

“Aria!” Sonata clambered over the table, the metal slab shuffling over the boxes and nearly sliding out from under her. On the far side, crumpled on the floor, Aria groaned and rolled onto her back. She held her front legs close to her chest, though the magenta glow that usually ought to be visible simply wasn’t. That was likely due to the extra panels around it, Sonata figured.

Tentatively, Sunset approached Aria’s form on the floor and gave her shoulder a nudge with her hoof. “Are you able to stand?”

Aria blinked, then rocked herself over onto her side opposite Sunset. After some shuffling to get her clear of the table, she rose up, slow and shaky, then put a hoof to her head.

“I’d like to not do that again. It feels like I got smacked in the face a bunch of times, and my head is still spinning.” She groaned and shook her head hard, tossing her mane around.

“It’s probably best you take it easy for a while, then,” said Sunset. “If we have the luxury, anyway.” She then thinned her smile and turned her attention back to Sonata. “Speaking of luxuries… I don’t think I can ignore your talent. I was going to go on about how I don’t have the time or energy to teach you between everything else, but it might actually be beneficial to make sure you’re up to my standard.”

Sonata expected the weirdness of her request to fade away, and while most of it did, some strange feeling still lurked in her chest. Still, she smiled earnestly and leaned in. “So, you’ll teach me?”

“Yep. However, I will need to go over some basic procedures to make sure you don’t do anything so reckless as to perform complex maintenance or upgrades to a live and very delicate device.” She jerked a hoof Sonata’s way, her face turning a little more serious with a lowered brow and some of her own smile fading somewhat. “Do not fiddle with cores when they are active, and do not attach unattuned crystals to anything without being absolutely sure it’ll work. I’m still not convinced you haven’t got lucky so far.”

Sonata thinned her lips and nodded. “Right. What do I do instead?”

“Eh…” Sunset pulled back and shrugged. “I’d rather you didn’t do either, but I also can’t ignore your intuition. We’ll get to it.”

She turned to Aria and waved to the way out. “As for you, we need to be sure your new configuration can be maintained. The connections shouldn’t work, especially with how many unattuned crystals are involved.” Humming, Sunset tapped her chin a few times. “Stay within the outer walls, help out here and there. Let me know if there are any strange sensations or reactions to anything. We need to be absolutely sure you’re not going to experience a catastrophic problem at a bad time.”

“Laze around and snark. Got it.” Aria saluted Sunset, prompting the unicorn to roll her eyes. After sharing a look between the master and apprentice, she turned to the door. “I’ll go speak to Adagio and let her know the good news.” With a quick wink, Sonata’s way, she left.

With the table clear, Sunset proceeded to re-balance the metal top and the boxes beneath, then slowly retrieved the tools scattered to the floor.

Unsure if that meant the end of the conversation between them and her lessons to continue later, Sonata spoke up. “When can you start teaching me?”

Sunset blinked, holding a pair of forceps in her teeth. She gently placed them down on the table. “I’m glad to hear you’re eager, but we should probably figure out what to start with.” She tapped the table. “Please climb on and lay down. We’re going to try and fix you up.”

Sonata did as she asked and, with some care, climbed up and lay herself down. The boxes creaked under her weight, and again, when she spread her weight across her entire body, it remained steady throughout. “What do you mean? I figured out how to fix me and Aria! Couldn’t you kind of… talk more about that?”

Taking up some metal plate with etchings along one flat side, Sunset held it up to the gap in Sonata’s midsection. “I could, but the details might be lost on you. Do you know anything about thaumaturgic theory or aetheric manipulation?”

Sonata tilted her head. “What and what?” Those were long words.

Sunset chuckled, holding the rod to other parts of Sonata’s middle. “Proving my point that you have good intuition but no understanding of basic concepts. To be fair, you’re… barely over a week old, and this is stuff you learn around middle school age.” Taking up the pencil in her teeth again, Sunset once more scribbled something in her notebook.

There, Sonata stared at the page. Now that she focused on it, she could make out various distinct symbols, some repeated and spaced out in uneven patterns.

“What are you doing?”

Humming, Sunset lifted her head. “This? I’m taking measurements to figure out the rough area of missing material in your midsection. That way, I can figure out roughly how much new material I need to fill the gap.” Another hum. “Actually… Sonata, what is two plus two?”

Fully tilting her head, one of Sonata’s ears flicked up while her brow furrowed. “Four?”

“Good. Three times four?”

“Twelve?”

“Five times three, then divided by eight.”

Sonata went crosseyed, and her mouth worked as she noiselessly repeated the words to herself. “Fifteen, then divided by…” She had to think hard, trying to find the number in her head. Sixteen divided by eight was two, so it had to be less than that.

“One and three-quarters?”

Sunset chuckled. “Not quite.”

Sonata frowned and lowered her head, but Sunset shook hers with a smile.

“You’re not far off. You just indicated how much math you actually know and some active problem-solving. It gives me an idea of where to start teaching you. Maybe not knowing decimals is down to your inability to read. Should we tackle that first…?”

Quickly, Sunset flicked to a blank page in her notebook and then started scribbling again. More symbols, but these were spaced out fairly evenly, one at a time.

At least, the first row was. The subsequent row had two symbols grouped at a time but directly under the first. Two rows of ten, then a third…

There was a pattern. The rightmost symbol was the same in each group. An oval. A line. A squiggle, then half a butterfly wing.

Once Sunset had filled the page, she held it up to Sonata. “These are numbers, starting with 0, the oval one. The next along is one, then two—“

“The half-butterfly is three!”

With a confused, “Huh?” Sunset turned the book to face her for a moment. “…Oh, I never thought about that. Yes, you’re right.”

“The fork thingy is four. That means the double circle thing is… Eight!” Sonata gleefully tapped her hooves together. “Then… The far right one on the second row is… nineteen?”

Sunset’s eyes were wide, while the slack-jawed look on her face slowly curled up into a grin. “You’re going to be an excellent student.”

Comments

[Lex_Drago]

Well, either Sonata is savant or is she remember knowledge from somewhere... or somewhen.

[Talipedsnake780]

I need to stop being so suspicious of Adagio, she had me worried there for a second.

As for all of them being useful, I imagine if there are any full suits of old pony armor still around the castle Sunset will be getting a few ideas for some "battle bodies."

[Stahlseele]

Sonata being a smart cookie for once O.o

[Little_Draco]

Smart sonata is best sonata! Give her a 🌮!!!!

[hmaf43]

Time to make a bigger body that the smaller one can slotted in and take control like gurren lagann.

[Anon E Moose]

11727728
Probably both

[Oreng Pingvin]

I wonder how character development happens, it’s basically logical