Gears clicked, oil hissed and popped, and metal clanged to fill the cavernous space. The stench of electricity and chemicals permeated the workshop, confined by its underground nature. Here and there the clattering of its inhabitant could be heard rifling through bins of parts, searching for her supplies. Its voluptuous, radiant mechanical genius.

Me!~

Okay so I wasn't exactly radiant at the moment, covered in blackened grease and soot. I still have a figure that could kill on all its own, and no one could ever hope to compare to my intellect. Well they could compare, they just wouldn't match up.

I picked up a spanner, and threw it up to Deathtrap to hold while I found a three quarters wrench. He barely managed to grab it, I really should work on giving him some malleable mitts.

I returned to my workbench, and worked to tighten the arm to the... other part. Whatever it was called.

It was in my concentration I didn't notice a train of visitors entering my workshop. And they didn't even put on the safety booties and face masks, how rude can you get? Tromping dirt and all manners of other stuff all over my lab. That's how explosions happen. Okay, so often the explosions are my fault, but I'm sure tracking dirt in could do that too. Especially the exploding dirt right outside my lab.

What? Where else was I supposed to put it?

So anyway, I didn't even notice I was surrounded, my lab filled to the brim with Unicorn and Pegasi until their leader let out a sharp bark of a command.

"Gaige the Mechromancer, you are under arrest!" he shouted, distracting me from my experiment.

"Excuse me, do you mind?" I asked testily. "I'm kinda in the middle of something here, do you think you could come back in like, ten minutes or something?" I waved a hand dismissively, returning to my patient.

"Okay, so I'm going to start connecting the nerve endings, and if it doesn't immediately explode you will still be in a LOT of pain for a few seconds," I assured my patient, a middle aged minotaur who's left arm had been chewed off by some sort of large cat. He had told me in detail what had happened, but I lost interest in his mouth noises after 'lost my arm'. Everything after that point was inconsequential, after all.

"Wait, what?" he asked, along with a few of the guards around me.

I gave another crank, and attached his new arm to the socket. He nearly jackknifed backwards, for a second I thought he broke his back with his spasms. I'd just fix that if that happened, but oh well. His screams of anguish did exactly what I needed them to, distracting those around me as I typed into the liquid steel keyboard on my own mechanical arm. I sent commands to all the compression generators within my lab. With a sharp whine that nearly drowned out my patients cries of pain, everything in my lab dissolved into particles of light.

Well, that's what it looked like to all those present anyway. I could explain in detail, but I'm sure your feeble minds would explode into gooey grey eeeeuuuuck, and slide out your ear holes. I'll just give you the cliff-notes. Machine, parts and other stuff biiiiig. Big stuff hard to move. Generators make small. Go in arm. Safekeeping. Make so nosy ponies don't steal my stuff.

Get it?

All that was left was the table the Minotaur was lying on, and the entire garrison it seems they dragged out to corner my ass.

"Where'd everything go?!" the captain yelped, " What did you do with it? Bring it back, all of your belongings are to be confiscated, for the safety of the nation!" He commanded, trying to regain his composure.

"Uh..." I trailed off, amazed at the stupidity of this certain pony. "No? I don't want you to take my stuff. So why would I bring it back? Hellooo~, duh."

"Bring them back!"

"No!"

"Do it!"

"Nope!"

"I order you to!"

"Don't tell me what to do, bitch!" I yelled out in an exaggerated tone. "Anyway... Manny, right?"

"Actually it's Oscival the-" The minotaur started, cutting off as I interrupted his unimportant ramblings.

"Manny the Minotaur, just as I said, anyway, the new arm, it didn't explode! ~Yay~" he cringed as I mentioned this. I already told him about that, right? Seriously. "So give it a couple flexes, try out the movement. It should work fine."

Manny waved his new arm around, the light glinting in the glow of the light crystals embedded in the ceiling.

"It seems to be okay..."

"Awesome! So it runs off of a Newtonian positron collider, so it will last longer than you will. By a few thousand years. Keep it in your family after your death if you want, bury it, donate it to a museum, I don't really care. And you-" I stalked over to the offending pony barking out orders like he owned the place. "Who died and made you the boss of me? Why are you trespassing? This is private property I'll have you know!"

He wasn't fazed in the slightest, getting right up in my face and letting out a sharp breath. Oooooh, it smelled like cranberries and musk! God, I haven't been laid in a while. Once I got the Pounder -title pending, I also am particular to the Penetrator- working, all my worries would be put to ease~

Of course, I'd never get any if they locked me up.

"It is private property!" he agreed, although somehow I could tell he wasn't really agreeing with me. "This land, and the ground underneath it, belongs to the nation of Equestria! You do not hold any ownership over these premises, and once more you are under arrest!"

"Under what charges?" I said flippantly.

"Disturbing the peace, thirty seven counts of public destruction, kidnapping a diplomat, unlicensed acts of development and surgery, urinating in a public water source, sexually assaulting Prince Blueblood and insulting him with the title of 'blueballs' ," a hearty snicker ran through the ranks, I wasn't very fond of that night, thinking about it just made me ache and feel disappointed, "Impersonating a member of the royal guard, filling the Princesses pool with dead fish, doodling in the books of the royal library, covering a member of the guard in tree sap-"

"Oh, you're not still mad about that are you Shiny? I just made you shinier!" I exclaimed happily.

Shining Armor was not amused, and let out a low growl, "And the princesses favorite," his voice dipped down to a whisper, "Cannibalistic waffle irons."

"Oh come on, that was just a design flaw! How was I supposed to know they'd start attacking other machines for power? I didn't make them like that!"

"That somehow makes it even worse!" he retorted cutely. "You endangered the citizens of Equestria without a single thought! You're a menace, and you need to be stopped!"

Well that wasn't gonna happen. Nope, no how no way.

"Well then copper, ya got me!" I crowed, holding my hands out in front of me. "Yer not gonna kill me are ya mastah? Not gonna ship me off to an island, not gonna lock me's up's and's forget's where ya done put the keys?" I asked, my smile never leaving my face.

"Not exactly," He said cryptically, charging a spell to his horn and zapping my robotic arm. To my surprise, all systems went dead! What a cheeky little turd! They levitated a harness, and used it to fasten my other arm around my waist. Was gonna have to look into whatever they used on my arm, it wasn't electricity. Couldn't have that happening again. I could feel it buzzing though, the intricate circuitry working hard to reboot itself. I'd give it five, ten minutes.

I got walked outside, and shoved inside a cage. Moments later I felt myself going airborne, they must have had a couple Pegasi attached to the front. Stupid equines, didn't they read any of the designs or blueprints I sent them? If they had one of my external polarity and g-dampener engines attached to this thing, we would have been there in minutes! This way... we'd be lucky to get there in under three hours.

I'd actually measured before, if the wind stayed prevalent, we'd arrive precisely three hours and twenty seven minutes from now. If we didn't slow down. Which seeing as we had an organic engine, was inevitable. Idiots, why did they have to keep looking a gift horse in the mouth?

Heh. Ponies, gift horse. Ha.

I spent my time wisely, waiting for my arm to boot up after a few minutes. I cut off the ridiculous harness, and set about analyzing what the hell he had hit me with. Turns out he shorted me out with a feedback mmenmonic pulse. I had my nanites build a sound shield, so that I could cancel it out next time. It increased my arms weight by fifteen grams. I'd have to find a more quality material for my little buggies to use than the iron bars of the cage.

I could worry about that later though. I booted up a game of solitaire to pass the time, sending the image over my optic implants so they wouldn't see the flickering light of a hologram.. Nothing worse than being interrupted from a game. And interrupt they would. Some people just have no manners.

I quickly grew bored of such a stereotypical game, and moved onto a homemade first person shooter. I'd designed it after Doom, but with the aesthetic of Equestria. You fought shadow creatures instead of demons, humans, or otherwise. And my favorite part, I had made all the weapons extremely goofy. A water pistol, candy sourball, a disembodied hand, a wet blanket, and for the BFG I took a note out of yet another game. A unicorn, farting a rainbow. Of course I made the unicorn look like Celestia. Animating the pained expressions had been fun.

What? If a breakfast cereal can rip off Doom, why can't I?

I was almost to the third to last boss -a squid made out of shadows, I was especially happy with how this fight turned out. The boss was the center of the arena, and you ran to the left or right around the circle track to avoid the nearly shmup level of shadow orbs it pumped out.- when the cage landed with a arm shaking thud. The tremor steered me directly into a shadowy projectile, killing me. How rude, couldn't they have given me a little warning?

"You... when did you?" Shining Armor sputtered, looking at me through the bars. Apparently he didn't take well to my dissembling the leather harness. He eyed my arm, and tried zapping it again through the bars. His eyes nearly bugged out when nothing happened, and his face developed a frown as I waved at him. "Fine, you can just stay in there, you don't need to be out of it for this anyway."

I shut down my game, returning my eyes to normal. I looked outside of the temporary metal cage they thought could actually hold me. Oh hey, there was Luna, and Celestia! I waved at them excitably, but they averted their gazes. Awww, spoilsports. There was also a number of normal guardies, and... Oh hey! It was the main six! Cool, was Celly gonna try to get Fluttershy to reform me? Awesome! I could build her an automatic feeder-trap to help her feed animals and stuff, and then she'd tell ol' sunbutt I was all better and then they'd leave me alone for a while! Sounded like a plan!

"Jordan Gaige, The Mechromancer," the Supreme Tallest stated. Oooooh~, first/real name basis, that meant she was steeeeeeeeeaaaaamed. "I am truly sorry to have to do this. For your crimes against Equestria, I'm afraid we will have to take measures against you."

And heeeeeeeeeeeeeere came the part where she informed me about my... 'house arrest'.

"Ordinarily, I would have simply suggested enforced living habitation with my little ponies, to encourage a harmonious attitude."

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!~

"But I cannot risk the safety of my little ponies." She let out a low sigh, "I can't even depend on Discord to keep you in line, his words were, and I quote, 'keep that crazy mare away from me'. So I'm afraid we will have to discipline you to the furthest of our abilities."

Wait, she couldn't mean...

"Girls... you may proceed when ready," she informed them ,and they all got into formation. Far too late, I realized they were all adorned with their Ultimate Fuck You weapons, the overpowered bullshit super jewels, the Elements of Harmony.

No! I couldn't go out like this! I didn't wanna be a bird poop receptacle for a thousand years!

"Wait! No!Don't do this! I'll be good! I'll take up knitting! Something safe, I swear!" I belted out.

"It's too late buster!" Rainbow Dash yelled, all six of the elements burned bright, the light turning white.

It came to a head, and a giant rainbow raced towards me. I stupidly closed my eyes -I was going to be turned into a STATUE for crissakes, can you think of anything worse than being trapped, unable to move, unable to SEE for any given amount of time?- and cringed as the Orbital Beam of Harmony washed over me.

I could feel the energy in my body, I could feel as my arm burned and twitched, I could feel as... nothing happened?

I opened my eyes, carefully patting myself down to make sure nothing was stony. Had it already been a thousand years? Was I trapped for centuries and I hadn't even known? Looking around, I could see... literally nothing had changed. I was still in a cage, there were still a bunch of guards in the exact same positions they were before, along with the princesses and the element bearers.

Everyone was silent, until I broke that by shouting at the top of my lungs.

"Booyah! Take that Tia! Turns out I'm too harmonious for them to work on me! Suck it!"

"But... but... she's... her!" Rainbow Dash belted out, pointing at me with a horrified look on her face.

"I... never could have foreseen this turn of events..." Celestia said sadly. "Shining Armor... take her to the dungeons. We will... deliberate on a future course of action."

Without further aplomb, I was airborne once more, and within the hour I was in a cell

Ehn, I consider it a win.

Gaige 1, Celestia and her hit squad 0.

Author's Notes:

To anyone interested in participating, Feel free to leave a question for Gaige in the comments! She'll be more than willing to answer in the authors notes of the next chapter, and give you each a shout out!