Chapters Adventures of Kaise and Co.
Prologue: Part 1
Hey! My name is Kaise. Although most ponies just call me “K” (it’s shorter and easier to remember!). When I was out enjoying a sandwich in the ever beautiful Ponyville weather I was approached by a filly who hadn’t yet earned her cutie mark, despite being well old enough, asked me a question I haven’t heard in a while…
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“Excuse me sir!” A little white filly bounced up to where I was enjoying my sandwich “What is your cutie mark?” Her question surprised me as my reply surprised her “I don’t actually have my cutie mark anymore.” she promptly sat down, slack-jawed and gazing to the black glyphic swirl where my cutie mark should’ve been. “So, then what’s that?” she asked in clear confusion as she pointed to the black, and could only continue to stare as I started to chuckle.
“What’s your name?” I asked as I picked up a sturdy looking stick and started poking at the black swirl as the filly looked on “Opal Shine…” she replied hesitantly. I gave the swirl one last hard poke and with a series of clicks all the rust red hide from my waist down came off like a loose sock. There was an accumulative gasp of shock from everyone who was spectating. “You’re a robot!” Opal remarked, apparently not shocked to see that half of the pony in front of her was in a baggy pile on the floor. “Ehhhh…. Well, not really… but…” I thought about trying to explain, but I couldn’t think of a way to put it simply “yep. I’m a robot!” I replied “really I’m a cyber-pony….” I muttered, as Opal keenly looked at the spinning gears and springs in my hind legs. I pulled off the cloth on my hooves as well, revealing more metal. She gave an inquisitive poke at my metal side, noticing that I didn’t notice continued tapping along until she found flesh, giggling when I jumped. She sat there, transfixed by all the wires and machinery. “You seem interested in how I work, would you like to see if your talent is engineering?” I asked she looked at my legs, to me and back down to my rear-half, before she nodded vigorously. “Okay then! Are you here with family? I’d like to tell them first” She nodded again and trotted over to a couple who were seated at a table enjoying a shared smoothie. I pulled my fake hide up and followed the filly to her family.
When I caught up to the little white filly, she was talking at a million miles an hour to the couple seated at the table. “…and here he is now! Hey mister! This is my big sis, Berry Frost and her colt-friend, Meadow Song! Sis! He says he’s going to help me earn my cutie mark!” when she finally stopped talking I clarified that I was willing to help her try and earn her cutie mark in mechanics and engineering and that she could come over any time, I gave them a card with my address and as I left gave a quick shout “See you tomorrow Opal!”
Adventures of Kaise and Co.
I lived a nice life, although not in the luxury of the city like most ponies desire; it was too cramped and too expensive for a larger family like mine. We lived with my on a farm in pretty much the middle of nowhere. I was small, by my family’s standards at least, but that didn’t bother me much, especially because I proved the strongest on many occasions! Almost all the rest of my family was a unicorn, although I was a genetic anomaly and was born an Earth pony. Sure I couldn’t pick stuff up and do magic like they could, and it took me a bit longer to do up my saddle bags and harnesses, but when it came to farm work, I out-pulled them all every time! That was until the raiders showed up.
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, a small group of around 10 set up camp on the edge of the farm; we had many groups of nomads in the area, but not usually in the middle of the season. Even still, we paid them little attention. This was a very big mistake.
I was in the field, taking a nap under one of the apple trees, taking a break from field work when there was that recognizable crack of a shotgun, accompanied by the shattering of glass, and screaming. I ran home as fast as I could, to find that the “nomads” had clothed themselves in thick leather and iron plating, and most of them had a gun of sorts. I was lucky they didn’t notice me at first, which in retrospect, probably saved my life. The unicorn that had the shotgun floating next to him also had a rather large knife strapped to his foreleg. I sneaked in through the back door to find my family curled up in a corner, with my dad holding his old service carbine, the royal guard had given him, as commemoration of his service in Celestia’s elite guard.
“You better come out little ponies! We don’t want to hurt you… yet. We just want to take you with us as travel companions!” The one with the shotgun said with a harsh, grating voice that hurt my ears. When there was no reply, he quickly lost his temper, which made his voice sound even worse. “You have ten seconds to get your tails out here or we slaughter you all, and hang your entrails on the fence”! Sheesh… talk about a short fuse to extreme measures… He started to count down, “ten, nine eight…” my dad shot me a sideways glance through a hole in the wall and said something that I couldn’t hear to mom, and my siblings, “Get out of here, I’ll deal with these guys!” he said as loud as he dared “go on! GO”. We started to edge out of the house and around the back. I knew my dad was strong, but he had no chance when the odds were 10:
1 and were much stronger, much younger and better armed colts, and he knew it. The raiders didn’t seem to notice our escape. “Four, three, two, one…” There was a pause, then the rattling of my dad’s semi auto carbine, two stumbled, but recovered quickly, the leader unicorn flinched, and somepony quickly threw up a magical shield. The majority of the bullets missed completely. There was a metallic ping as the cartridge was ejected. The pony who I assumed was the leader laughed, dry and cackling, loaded shells with a red and orange band and shot the plaster wall which exploded and caught fire. They all moved in, a short time later there were some loud thumps and a squeal or two, followed by a loud snap of bone and my dad was launched through a window, and landed in heap, limp, lifeless and bleeding badly.
“FIND THOSE OTHERS! AND BRING THEM TOO ME!!!” The leader bellowed. The youngest, Haystack, started to cry, and then without warning dashed towards the lifeless figure that was my dad. BANG. There was nothing left above his shoulders, due to the exploding buckshot. I turned to my family “Run, and don’t stop until you’ve found help, and for the love of Celestia, keep quiet.” I ordered. It was a strange tone for me, as usually I was not the one to lead, but they got the message and started running. Only to be mowed down by a hidden raider with a machinegun who had moved out from behind a tree. I was furious, I charged at him, my forehead connecting with his chest. He grunted and stumbled back a few paces. The commotion had attracted the attention of the main group, and they quickly had me surrounded. A streak of orange and black from behind a tree told me that Havoc, who was only a few months older than me, had survived. I pretended to not have seen anything. Havoc launched himself into the air and brought one hoof down on one of my attackers’ back. There was a sickening snap as his spine shattered. He landed gracefully he could, but he wasn’t unscathed. It looked as though he was keeping his weight off his back leg, as he limped to my side.
“Looks like yer friend survived. Well, that means more fun for us” a cream coated stallion with a rifle grinned taking the occasional shot to keep us off balance. I was enraged, I spun around, keeping most of my weight on my fore-hooves, and apple-bucked, my hind legs connected with the nearest chest, breaking bone and my old work horseshoes tearing flesh. Once the force of the buck had overwhelmed his mass, he was launched back a good five feet and landed in a crumpled heap, bleeding baldy and taking ragged breaths. The rest were in shock. Apparently, they’d never seen a colt my size, not even shoulder high, stand up to them, much less buck somepony twice my size that far. There was an unbearable pain in my flank as a hailstorm of lead ripped through it. “Well, looks as if you just earned yourself a hell ‘uv a beating, you have”, as the leader stood over me. He yanked the machete out of his colleague’s bindings much to his anger, and wrapped it in a field of black telekinetic magic and swung it in a wide arc toward my head, but rolled and it hit my knee on my right foreleg, leaving it hanging by skin and torn muscle. Having lost all my balance and woozy from blood loss, collapsed on my face, where he swung again and again. Purposely not killing, but severely crippling me, none the less, I did my best to dodge.
“You should keep still! It would end a lot faster!”. His friend walked over avoiding my body and whispered something that made the leader smile wickedly. “Now, you two get his friend!” they turned his direction but staggered back as a flash of red lightning, and the smell of ozone. “Why’d you let him escape!?!?!” He bellowed.
“Sorry boss, didn’t know he could teleport! Almost nopony can do that!” one muttered.
“If so, he can’t of gone far, scan the area! FIND HIM!!!”
He turned back to face me. “Okay, change ‘uv plan, we’re gonna let you run”
“Wh…What?” I managed to stammer over the pain and blood loss
“Eeeyup, we’re gonna let you run. It wouldn’t be very fair otherwise!”
Oh great, they’re going to let me run just to use me as a target. I tried to stand, and promptly fell on my face...again. The raiders laughed and teased. The leader lifted me up and practically slammed me onto my hooves. I ignored the rapid onset of light-headedness and disorienting colors that followed and started to half-walk-half-fall in the general direction of safety.
“Now MOVE, before I change my mind and gun you down on the spot”
I didn’t need telling twice. I ran as fast as I could, (which in my current state, was not very fast). They let me go for a less than 20 feet before they started to shoot. That probably had to do with the leader’s twisted idea of ‘fair play’. Most of the bullets missed, which was good, because I couldn’t dodge to save my life (no pun intended). Running with two-and-a-half-legs is hard enough when you aren’t in pain, woozy from blood loss, and being shot at. I didn’t get much further, when the barrage stopped. The leader had most likely had gotten bored of seeing me run and decided to finish me. A particularly large caliber tore through my side, narrowly missing most vital organs, effectively ending my escape. I skidded to a stop, stones and twigs making the hole wider and filling it with debris and collapsed in the dirt, done for. I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination, but I managed a weak smile as a stray cloud storm chased the raiders, five of the ones who remained got toasted when one tried to shoot it. Then the bliss of sleep took me one final time.
Adventures of Kaise and Co.
It was mid afternoon the next day when I awoke with a jolt to somepony ringing my doorbell. I checked my mental calendar (literally, when I close my eyes, out of the corner of my vision I have a little green digital calendar!) it’s not a milk day, newspaper is just left outside, so then who... OPAL! I quickly jumped out of bed, giving myself a shake to get my disheveled mane in some kind of order, sweeping various gems and mechanical components under a desk and grabbed a granola snack bar from the pantry on the way to the door, where the white filly was eagerly waiting. "Hey! Come on in!" I said as energetically as I could manage. Her smile dropped somewhat at my appearance.
"Is there something wrong?" I started to rub the last bit of sleep out of my eyes with a hoof, but instead of feeling fur felt cold steel. I groaned inwardly. "Hang on a sec" I said, quickly dashing back up stairs. I returned a moment later and clipped the faux skin into the clasps on the side of my face, with a small hiss; small magical talismans hid the seam where fabric met flesh. She relaxed a bit. "Sorry 'bout that" I apologized quickly, "come on in!” She followed me through the new ultra-modern style house and into the kitchen. "You hungry?" I asked. She shook her head, "I ate before I left."
"Oh, ok. Shall we get started?" she nodded. "Great! Follow me!". I grabbed a second snack bar from the pantry and started up the stairs. Because of the house's open layout and lots of big windows, the magically powered lights had already turned off, leaving just the warming colors of dawn. I led her over to my project table, which was, thankfully, less of a mess than usual..
“OK, let’s start off with mechanics as you should probably learn how the motors move the joints and such before you go and wire it up.” She nodded again. “So, how much do you already know?”
“Not much…” she confessed
“Alright, see if you can replicate the design of my leg” I undid the bolts that held the limb to my shoulder plate and took a step back from the table “Everything should be labeled and in the right place, but knowing my organization, if you can’t find anything, just ask.”
“Ok” she hopped up on the stool I had by my bench and began to work. About half an hour later, she was making good progress. I stepped out for a few minutes to make a sandwich, when I came back; she was sitting on the table looking triumphant. Two seemingly identical mechanical legs. “wow…” I picked up the leg closest to me and clipped it in, but collapsed when I put my weight on it, collapsed “it’s so good I can’t even tell it apart from my own! And I’ve had it for years!” I got off my face and replaced it with my own. “You just did in a little over 45 minutes what took a team of ponies who do this for a living two years who do this!”
“Thanks, I guess” she smiled
“Since you got that so quickly, let’s move on to making it work!” I paused “How about this, since I gotta meet my brother in a bit, so how about you come back tomorrow at the same time”
“You have a brother?” She perked up “Can I meet him?”
“Uhhhh...” I thought about it for a second “I guess… sure! Why not? I’m sure he’d love to meet you!”
“Yay!”
“Here come on, let’s go!”
Adventures of Kaise and Co.
The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness, the first thing that came to mind was a throbbing pain in the front of my head. I assumed it was from landing on my face so many times yesterda… wait, how long was I out? And more importantly, where am I? There were no hospitals within 10 miles of my house. I distracted myself from that semi-alarming topic and. I looked over my body in an attempt to forget about how I got here and block out the pain. I lay somewhere on the verge between sleep, and awake, kind of like day dreaming or delirium. Of what I could feel, my whole body was covered in injuries of varying degrees, scratches and bruises mostly. But when I glanced down and took a second look, it wasn't my whole body. My right foreleg was gone at the knee, the left at my shoulder, and I couldn't feel below my waist. As I observed my body, I noticed a strange black haze creeping across the right of my vision, but when I focused on it, it vanished. Strange. I managed to turn my head to look at my surroundings. As I looked, i noticed that I was in a white-washed room, to my right and left were teal blue curtains, and beyond them the vague shadows of what seemed to be other ponies. I noticed a mirror hanging on a wall. I jumped in shock at what i saw. It wasn't the me I remembered in the mirror. My right foreleg was gone at my shoulder, as I noticed earlier. But it was my back legs that surprised me. Or more correctly, what was LEFT of my hind legs. Below my waist was mangled into grotesque shapes. My right side was the most intact, although full of holes and scorch marks, but my right was a mess of tangled flesh and bone. I panicked, which caused the still open wounds to bleed profusely. I screamed out of (mostly) instinct. A cute white earth mare with a blond mane and a medical kit for a cutie mark barged through the door and too my bed she took a quick glance at my wrecked and bleeding body. She adjusted some dials on a panel near my bed. I caught a hint of empathy and sadness in her eyes. Then blackness.
When I regained consciousness I noticed somepony standing next to me. Not that cute nurse, but what I made out to be a doctor who was asleep on his feet. I looked around for that mirror, but I was in a different room. I noticed as I looked down that I was no longer bleeding and had fresh bandages. The doctor woke up with a start, causing me to jump.
"Ooh! Sorry there! Didn't mean to startle you! Just here to make sure that you’re alright!"
I looked at him dumbfounded. He chuckled to himself.
"You’ve been out for two weeks before you had that panic attack. Since then you've been out for another..." he paused, thinking "...week? Maybe? Something like that"
"My...family...?" I managed to say. The doctors' previously happy face darkened a bit.
"Yes, about them. I believe it would be best for you to heal a bit before we talk about that." I didn't doubt him, even though I know exactly how they were. The doctor turned and started to leave, but paused just before the door he turned around and looked at me
"That was amazing, what you did back there, son. Be proud of yourself."
A few days later, I was woken up and wheeled through bland white hallways into yet another stark room. Seriously, why don't they hire an interior decorator or something? It would make this place feel much cozier. I was met by the doctor as I was pushed into the room; he and all the others had surgical masks.
He lowered his voice and whispered in my ear. Who was he trying to hide what he’s saying from? His coworkers? That thought passed quickly, and I dismissed it as doctor logic. "Your wounds have healed enough for us to close them up for good now, it shouldn't take long" they re-inserted the IV tubes into my still attached foreleg again and pretty soon, I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer, and the blackness of sleep took over once again.
When the sedation wore off, I was back in that little room where I was before. I was astonished to find that it was decorated with get 'well soon' balloons. I thought everypony I knew had died! The doctor was in his usual spot next to my bed, but now he had pulled up a lounge chair and was reading a book. He looked up and smiled.
"Who did this? This is amazing!" I motioned to the decor around me.
He sighed "If you think it was your family, I'm sorry but now I think it's time to tell you. All your family is dead" I sighed, go figure, "No, this was done by Pinkie Pie, she pretty much keeps the town in a good mood singlehandedly"
“Oh, ok, although do you mind getting me a mirror?" I asked. He grimaced and pointed his horn at a wheeled floor mirror. It glowed softly as it rolled it to the side of my bed. “Just… don’t freak out, ok?”
I said thank you, and he nodded and returned to his book.
Most of the bandages had been taken off. Now I could really get a sense of how bad off I had been. My right foreleg had been cleaned up and the wound neatly sewn shut. Most of my back legs had been removed save or a small stump on the right, which ended at what would of been my knee, and my left hadn't been there anyways, so nothing much new there. Up my side were small metal ribs holding a medicated sheet to my side.
"What are these for?" I inquired. The doctor looked up.
"Those help your side to heal, and the ribs keep the pressure off if you so, say, roll over, it won't muss up the bandages" he seemed cherry again.
It was another week before they deemed it safe to be visited. I didn't really care because almost all my family had died and I knew nopony outside of the farm. I was surprised when there was a knock on the door. And a Blue Pegasus colt with a grey and green mane floated into the room accompanied by an orange Pegasus with a purple mane. They both seemed about my age. I paused and looked at the blue one. Hit with a sense of recognition, I gaped.
"Are, are you...?" Too weak to finish.
"Eeeeyup, I'm the cloud" he smiled "I'm Sky and this is Scootaloo" he nodded towards the orange mare. "And you?"
"I'm Kaise, but you can just call me 'K'" i said there was another knock at the door and nine more mares walked in. Three earth ponies, four Pegasus, and three unicorns. "Hello, I'm Twilight Sparkle, I've heard a lot about you." that name sounded familiar, but i couldn’t place where. "These are my friends Apple Jack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy... Fluttershy?" Rainbow stepped aside and hiding behind her was a little yellow Pegasus "come-on out silly filly!" Pinkie Pie said as she bounced, I shook my head. BOUNCING!?! How do ponies BOUNCE!? It's not allowed by our anatomy! Finally with some coaxing Fluttershy came forward still cowering. “I tried to smile, but it must have come out as threatening because she quickly dashed under the chair the doctor was sitting on.
"Don’t mind her; she's just a little shy"
"I can tell..." I mused
"Hay there, I'm Ditzy Doo! I baked you some muffins! I hope you get better soon! I can't wait to see you around town!" beamed the light grey Pegasus as she put a tray of warm pastries into my lap.
"Thank you!" I had never had this much attention at one time, and I was grateful for it! "And thank you too Pinkie Pie, for these decorations"
"You’re welcome!" she beamed
"Ok everypony! I think he has enough attention for one day! If you could kindly leave now, you can come back tomorrow!" said the nurse as she ushered them out the door. The last one to leave was sky,
"Hey, thanks again" I said. He nodded as he walked out the door.
"Why did he look upset?" I asked once the door had closed
"Neither of them knew their parents" came his answer "so they know just how bad you feel, look, their good ponies that you can trust so if you need something, when you leave, ask"
"One last thing, why am I so popular?"
"well, first, your recovery was amazing, second Scootaloo was a good friend of the little sisters of the 'mane 6', Sweetie Belle and Applebloom, third Pinkie Pies 'Pinkie Sense' claims that there is something special about you, and it's never wrong."
"Pinkie Sense?" I asked confused
He chuckled, "tell you tomorrow"