My Little Cyborg

by Ignimbrite

Leaving this World Behind

{SYSTEM LOG:
{BEGIN STARTUP PROCESS
{INITIATE SCAN
[========100%=======]
{SCAN COMPLETE
{NO VIRUSES DETECTED
{INITIATE SYSTEM CHECK
{BATTERY: 78%
{NO PERIPHERALS DETECTED
{USER ACTIVITY DETECTED

Great. I just love it when that thing starts up while I'm asleep.

The cyborg sat up and looked around. His vision was still blurry from whatever had happened. Even the lettering cluttering up his field of view wasn't quite as crisp as it should have been.

Where am I?

{LOCATION UNKNOWN

Oh shut up...

As his vision slowly cleared, he looked around again to try to get his bearings. He was in a bed in a simple room. The walls around him consisted entirely of curtains, and he could hear some activity beyond them. Through a gap in the curtains, he saw a door, although he couldn't tell where it led. Hearing a beeping behind him, he stretched his neck around to see some monitoring equipment.

Well, that at least explains where I am. But why am I in a medical facility?

{DATA UNAVAILABLE

He rolled his eyes.

The curtains parted, and a creature walked in with a clipboard. The creature was some sort of quadruped with blue fur and a green mane. How the hair formed such colors in the first place, he didn't feel like trying to guess at the moment.

{NAME UNKNOWN
{SPECIES UNKNOWN
{AG...

He turned off the facial recognition scanner. Fat lot of good it would do anyway on what was clearly an uncharted world.

"Oh, hello there. Good to see you're awake. My name is Nurse Tenderheart." She set a pen to the clipboard. "So, how are you doing this morning?"

Might as well answer honestly.

"A bit disoriented, and I don't quite remember last night. How are you?"

She made a few notes. "I'm doing well enough." She looked up from her notes. "You were brought in here unconscious, but we still don't know why."

She flipped a page on her clipboard and looked at him. "The kinds of things that can knock a pony unconscious usually involve brain damage, so I have to ask, do you remember anything about yourself? Your name perhaps? Where you came from?"

His mind was still foggy, but the question of where he came from stirred a memory. It was not much of one, though. It was just a word that repeated in his head...

The nurse made a note on her clipboard. "Shadowpiercer... Interesting name."

...a word that, until that moment, he did not realize he had said out loud.

He was about to specify that that wasn't actually his name, but decided against it. He went by pseudonyms often enough anyway, and it wasn't every day that a locally believable one was dropped in his lap.

Are names like Tenderheart and Shadowpiercer normal around here?

At least his new name wasn't something stupid like "The Wizard" or "Mr. Machine." Those got old rather quickly.

"Uh... thanks."

"The good news for you is the tests we have so far show that you aren't too seriously injured. We'd like to run a couple others, but other than that, you should be able to go soon."

"Thanks. I was just wondering about that."

He decided to try standing up. As he picked himself up though, he found that he had a harder time balancing than he should have had. His feet were long and stretched out, and they automatically bent at an odd angle as if they were meant for a digitigrade stance instead of a plantigrade one.

He proceeded to collapse quite unceremoniously onto his face.

{IMPACT DETECTED

It was at this point that he noticed his hands, or rather his lack thereof.

"What happened to my hands?"

He looked down at his legs.

"What happened to my feet?"

He then made the mistake of looking at his reflection in a piece of equipment. His skin was covered with gray fur, and his physiology matched that of the nurse. He looked at what should have been his hand again. In its place was a hardened hoof.

This had better be dream or a simulation or something.

The way the nurse was fussing much more over his fall than over his change in physiology indicated that he must have been brought in here in that state. He made a note to go over every recording he had as soon as he got out.

At least his eyes were still green and his hair was still brown, although he never remembered seeing it in a style quite like this before. It went all the way down the back of his neck.

Looking around, he saw that the staff and the patients he could see all had the roughly same physiology as well. Had they been affected by what had happened to him, or were they the native species here?

This has to be a dream. That's it.

He slapped himself across the face, startling the nurse again.

No luck. It must be a simulation then.

He gave a quick command to his processor.

{SHUTTING DOWN

No change.

". . ."

There was no change at all.

He climbed up into all fours and examined himself more closely.

For some reason, he briefly considered the possibility that some form of shapeshifting was involved, but he dismissed the thought just as quickly. He was no expert on the topic of shapeshifting, but he knew he should have been incapable of it. He only knew of one species that was capable of such things, and except for a a couple old friends, most members of said species wanted him dead. Details like that made it rather hard to figure out how the process works. Even his friends weren't entirely sure beyond "it's just instinct."

He looked again in the impromptu mirror.

He was not unaccustomed to bizarre circumstances. The incident involving a talking asteroid came readily to mind. This, however, was far enough outside his usual realm of normalcy to slowly develop into an entirely new form of terror. Here he was, a quadrupedal, fur-covered, alien creature on an unknown world with no idea how he got there.

For reasons he himself didn't understand, he turned his processor and facial recognition system back on and looked at his reflection.

{SPECIES UNKNOWN

He turned it off and back on.

{SPECIES UNKNOWN

Third time's the harm, I guess.

{SPECIES UNKNOWN

Stepping closer, he tapped the surface, staring at his reflection.

"Where am I?"

He rotated to one side, still scrutinizing the image.

"What am I?"

He rotated farther and stopped.

. . .

"WHY IS THERE A TARGET ON MY BUTT?!?!?"

Comments

[Oreng Pingvin]

is this some kind of crossover? or already used OC, just the narrative is as if the reader knows at least something

[Ignimbrite]

Admittedly, the character here was created for something else. I was basically goofing around and decided to throw him into Equestria on a whim. I'm trying to write the story in such a way that everything important is revealed at some point, but this is my first time writing like this, so if it's not working properly, let me know so I can fix it.

[Ryebuck Coppercap]

11618988
I feel it works good as an introduction, mate. The way the character's backstory is left vague at this point mirrors the disorientation he's feeling by being thrown to a new place he knows nothing about, and leaves readers curious as to what's gonna happen :3

[tsaukpaetra]

Anomalous transference detected. Method unknown. Flavor unknown. Multiverse connection not established. Further inspection required.

[ramdom_player201]

He was about to specify that that wasn't actually his name, but decided against it. He went by pseudonyms often enough anyway, and it wasn't every day that a locally believable one was dropped in his lap. The local naming conventions seemed odd, but his new name at least wasn't something stupid like "The Wizard" or "Mr. Machine." Those got old rather quickly.

Am I missing something? He hasn't heard the names of any of the locals yet to judge the naming conventions by?

[Ignimbrite]

11664593
He was mostly going off the fact that they instantly assumed "Shadowpiercer" was his name and not him still being slightly out-of-it. Arguably, the fact that he's drawing that conclusion from only one sample was a rather dumb mistake on my part. I should probably find a way to fix it.

[ramdom_player201]

11664601
Edit: {the previous comment was linked to the Epilogue, I'll delete it}

Just finished reading the chapter. I thought I posted a reply to this before, but I'm not sure whether I sent it. If you're going to edit the chapter, I'd suggest getting the nurse to introduce herself. If you want any feedback, I find the dialogue to be a little stiff, and the nurse doesn't really do much here. I did like the dynamic with his console responding uselessly to his thoughts, it was funny. I find this to be an interesting concept and will continue to read.

[Ignimbrite]

11664632
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried making a few adjustments to see if that would help with the dialogue and the name issues. I'm not sure if the adjustments helped or not, though, as my dialogue tends to be almost as bad in real life.