Sipping root beer, Sideralis eyeballed the ponies around him. The weird floating stuff in his vision kept coming and going, if he stared at something long enough it would pop up. He had no idea how he felt about the changes that had been done to his body. He was bigger now, bulkier, heavier, filled with mechanical bits, hydraulic rams, actuators, and the weird floaty things that appeared in front of his eyeballs.

Species: equine

Tribe: pegasus

Health: poor

Warning! Bladder capacity nearing limits!

Sideralis blinked, the floating text flickering and vanishing as he continued to stare at Rainbow Dash. Suddenly, Stout always knowing how he needed to go to the bathroom was obvious. He watched as Rainbow Dash squirmed.

“Fluttershy, I need to go for a little walk,” Rainbow Dash said in a low voice.

The yellow pegasus looked at her blue companion and after a moment, an expression of understanding appeared upon her face. She nodded, gave Rainbow Dash a gentle smile, and then said, “All of you will have to excuse us.”

The pair departed and Sideralis watched them go as they crossed the cafeteria. When they vanished around the corner and went down the hall to where the restrooms were, he turned and looked at Stout. “A number of things now make sense. I’m guessing that you loaded some kind of nursing protocol or something into my head?”

“Just a general care protocol. Queen Chrysalis felt it was prudent, with you being an alicorn. You might find yourself in a situation where you to need to look after somepony.” Stout’s eyes, both of them glimmered with happiness. “I’m really very happy that you are awake again. So much has changed.”

“How is Mustang?” Sideralis asked.

“She took this hard,” Stout replied, shaking her head, “she took this real hard, blamed herself for you getting hurt. I dunno if it is her royal guard protocols or just her being her. She wanted to be here when you woke up, but she couldn’t deal with this. Mustang has changed a good bit. She’s not quite as angry now… just… more depressed.”

“Sounds like she needs a friend.” Sideralis took a sip of root beer through his straw, contemplating everything around him. His hearing was better than ever. Lifting his head away from his bottle he looked around the room, taking everything in, realising that he couldn’t find any one eyed ponies. “How is Twilight Sparkle taking all of this? Is she okay? Was she hurt?”

“Twilight is no stranger to being blown up,” Stout replied, her eyebrow raising, “she had some injuries, but nothing serious. Twilight has two very pretty eyes now but she also has a few new scars. She’s soft and squishy… the explosion did some damage. As for the rest of us, the explosion didn’t bother us much, although Mjölna had a steel fragment get lodged in her ass. Right in the plot cheek. She was fine though.” Stout looked up at Sideralis, who was much larger than her, even when sitting down. “I suspect that you’re going to find out what it is like to be like us… sooner or later, you’re going to get blown up. Or face an army. Twilight is itching to strike back now that she has six viable combat platforms.”

Species: equine

Tribe: C/Equine

Health: nigh invulnerable_n/a

Attention: receptive to breeding_enable breeding protocols (Y/N)

Blushing, Sideralis turned away, trying to be rid of the strange floating letters that had appeared while he was staring at Stout. The last bit was more than he wanted to know. He dropped his head and slurped down more root beer.

“You’ll get used to it… the heads up display I mean… Mjölna says that she keeps hers up all the time and she can’t function without it. She likes knowing everything around her. It tells us everything we need to know. It’ll tell us when another pony is lying to us.” Stout laughed, a soft, gentle laugh. “I’m guessing that you’re getting the breeding protocols prompt.”

Sideralis nodded and felt warmth blossoming through his ears.

“It’s just a suggestion… we have directives for survival… I suppose that part of surviving is having foals. Chrysalis did a bit of tinkering with all of us. We’re made to endure.” Stout smiled, reached out, and touched Sideralis. “There is so much that you’ll need to know. Thankfully, we have the means to dump a tremendous amount of learning into your head all at once, if you think you can deal with it.”

“Stout,” Sideralis replied, turning to look into his companion’s orange eyes. He focused on her and everything around him faded away, the sounds of voices around him were muffled, his stare became so intense that it felt like he and Stout were the only ponies in the room. “Stout, I think I can deal with anything. I came out of this feeling okay. Really. Want to get out and do something later? I’ve spent most of my life asleep… now that I’m like this”—Sideralis drew in a deep breath—“now that I’m fixed, now that I can move, I want to live a little.”

Stout heaved a sigh of relief, her ears perking forward as she did so, and she nodded. “I’ve been worried about you… how you would come out of this. Looks like you came out of this okay.”

“I’m actually more worried about Rainbow Dash,” Sideralis said, turning and looking in the direction where Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had vanished. “And Twilight.”

“Rainbow acts tough and brash, but she’s still fragile. She’s still recovering her health. She’s not upgraded like us, so she’s still recovering bone mass and she’s having to work out every day to get muscle mass again. She can’t bear to be alone even for a second, she’ll break down and start crying like a foal. As for Twilight… well, there is a reason why Fluttershy is Rainbow’s companion and not Twilight. I think everything will be fine… at least in time. Twilight was pretty crushed though. She threw herself into her work and Rainbow Dash is working hard to be awesome again.”

“So I guess Dash is staying with us?” Sideralis asked. He blinked, feeling strange, for him, it felt as though only a single night had passed, as if he had just gone to sleep and woke up the next day. He felt a moment of disorientation, but the feeling went away as Sideralis focused on something else.

“Yeah, Dash is staying with us. We’re in a different apartment now. We needed a bigger place with you, me, Fluttershy, Mustang, and Rainbow.” Stout’s eyebrow raised. “I got us a big bed… it’s been reinforced—”

“For breeding protocols?” Sideralis found himself smiling.

Snickering, Stout looked up at her companion. “That too, ya big goof…” She continued snickering, her body shaking, and she gave Sideralis an inviting stare. “You and I have a combined weight of over a thousand pounds. I tip the scales at a little over five hundred and fifty, I gained some weight when I got my wings… I suppose you could call me a plus sized mare, but you… you weigh in at almost seven hundred and fifty. You’re a big pony Sid, and when they rebuilt you, it took a lot of metal, and mesh, and organ replacements, heck, you have almost a hundred pounds of organic hydraulic fluid inside of you all squeezed into a high pressure system. You have two hearts now, both made out of synthetic tissue, and a specialised organic pump that manages your hydraulic flow systems. Just beneath your skin is a fine biomesh that acts as armor to protect your organs and your internal systems. Queen Chrysalis took everything she had learned from making the others like us and she did everything she could to make you perfect.”

“My teeth feel funny.” Sideralis’ tongue moved inside of his mouth, it felt strange, and the memory of seeing his own lower jaw made him shiver. “Why do my teeth feel funny?”

“They’re a special type of ceramic.” Stout smiled, revealing perfect, beautiful, white teeth. Her smile faded and she looked serious as she looked at Sideralis. “I just remembered, you and I need to be real careful in elevators. We can exceed the weight capacity. We also shouldn’t stand on some floors too close together. Mjölna and Apple Bloom were working together and fell right through the wooden floor. They both dropped almost twenty stories, smashing through one floor after another. They had a lot to fix when everything was said and done.”

Hearing Stout’s words, Sideralis let out a very equine wicker of alarm.

“Here they come,” Stout said as two pegasi approached, one yellow, one blue. “You ready to get out of here, Sid? You’re cleared to go. Your diagnostics say that you’re mostly fine and your system will fine tune itself.”

“I’d love to get out here… am I okay?” Sideralis asked.

“Your diagnostics say that you are fine, but you need fine tuning. The only way to do that is to do stuff,” Stout replied. “When they come back, I’ll let them know that we’re good to go. Are your power reserves a little better now that you’ve eaten and had a few drinks?”

Sideralis blinked and waited. In a moment, he saw it floating in his vision. It was strange, seeing floating text in his vision that told him how he was. He was now defined by a meter that told him how much energy was available.

NRG(.......|..)

Going cross eyed, Sideralis tried to focus on the meter and count the number of dots and where the indicator marker was. His vision fuzzed over and he blinked until the floating text went away. “Almost full.”

“Good… you should be fine for a while. Keep an eye on that, it’s bad running out of power. We’re big heavy machines, Sid, and if that drops, we become immobile. It sucks.” Stout leaned over and gave Sideralis a come hither stare. “I know of a way to drain our energy reserves…”

Stout was draining his energy reserves alright. Sideralis felt his wings pumping, hurling him through the air. Somehow, he knew how to fly. He had a basic rudimentary knowledge of flight, something he supposed was brain dumped into him along with everything else. Fluttershy was clinging to his neck, offering encouragement and letting him know how he could make improvements.

Flying beside him, Stout carried Rainbow Dash. Below him was farmland and the river as they flew back to the city of Maredina. Sideralis’ wings were now covered in blue feathers, an illusion, but it was a good looking handsome illusion.

“Um, try to level out… if you don’t mind, if that’s okay… oh, I don’t like being a bossy passenger, but, um, you’re listing pretty badly… there you go… you leveled out. Looks like your auto correcting self learning protocols are working just fine.”

Sideralis felt Fluttershy give him a reassuring pat on the neck.

“Pull your legs up a little more, keep them tucked closer to your body and brace your front legs out in front of you. Fly with your head down… you have such a long, graceful neck, just like Princess Luna.”

Sideralis had gone from hardly being able to walk to being able to fly. It was strange, it was as if he had just gone to sleep and woke up in a new body with a good working knowledge of how to do stuff. The wind tickled his sides and made his mane whip around. His tail streamed out behind him and he felt the wind tugging on his ears. He folded his ears back against his skull and that felt better.

“For being so big and so heavy, you fly so well… Doctor Gizmo worked very hard to make wings that replicated pegasus and alicorn magic. Oh… oh my… Sideralis, slow down a bit until you know a bit more about flight, if you don’t mind!”

Sideralis wasn’t aware that he was going all that fast. He was curious now, wondering how fast he was going, and made a mental request to find out. He blinked, and sure enough, his heads up display popped into his field of vision.

NRG(.....|....)

Air speed: 104.899 knots

Altitude: 276.003 feet

Thruster boost: unavailable_fuel needed

He blinked and made a mental command for the clutter in his vision to go away; much to his relief, it did. He had no idea how fast he was going, he had no clue what a knot was. He needed to learn what a knot was. He was moving though, no doubt about that. He wondered what the thruster boost option was and were the fuel for that went. He had a lot to learn about himself, but that would come later.

Now, now it was time to have fun.

Author's Notes:

Here we go.