Stick Figures

CHAPTER IV

"...HOLY RAPTOR JESUS JOSEPH AND MARIAN ON A POGO STICK!" I could not believe what I had just heard and, honestly, nopony in their right mind would believe the whole "robot instrument" deal in the first place. You'd have to have seen it to have believed it.

"Your Cu-Cu-Cutie Mar*crackle* is the same as his," the instrument continued. It had obviously not realized that I was freaking out.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" I demanded harshly.

"I, Mr. Savage, a-am an automated bass guitar," it stated calmly, beating its string and producing a deep noise from a speaker inside it. "I-I-I think I have a rock in my vo-voice compart-artment. Could you get it ou*buzz*?" It turned around, then used one of its long arms to tap a small door on its back, opening it. Inside were a bunch of wires and other shit that made absolutely no sense to me. I spotted a rock at the bottom of the robot's shell. It was tangled in some wires, which I gently brushed aside as I slid the rock out from its prison using my magic. The robot gave me a sigh of almost... pleasure. "Thanks, man. I appreciate it." It flipped the compartment shut with its arm and turned back to face me. "So, I'm going to guess you have a first name?"

"Yeah," I replied nervously, still coming to terms with the fact that I was talking to a bass guitar. "Its Phantom."

"Well, Phantom," it continued. "I'm Mr. Bassman. I know you're probably shocked to see a walking, talking and seemingly sentient inanimate object, but I assure you, I'm totally harmless... unless you piss me off."

"So... uh... what do you do, anyway?" I asked, calming down.

"Well, I've been on sleep mode for around nine hundred years or so, but I originally played with all these other instruments." Mr. Bassman motioned over to what was behind him. It was a bunch of other instruments... but none of them were moving. "All of them have either ran into a problem that needs to be fixed through maintenance, which I can't do, or they just ran out of battery. Stupid bastards didn't listen to me when I said going dormant would help. I couldn't be dormant for any longer so I woke up and found all of 'em like this." He sighed. "I can't do anything to help them because I've got fuckin' metal balls for hands."

"So you would play music with them?" I confirmed.

"Hell yeah," he said. "I was always the leader of the pack, givin' 'em instructions on how to play. They would always talk about me behind my back, though. Callin' me names, making jokes about me."

"What would they call you?"

"The stick figure," he sighed.

"Why that?"

"I guess it's 'cuz I'm tall and skinny... except for this." Mr. Bassman was motioning around the body of his guitar.

"Were there other Bass men?" I wondered out loud.

"There were going to be," he answered disappointedly. "I was the prototype, and I was apparently Terror's greatest creation."

"So his name was Terror!"

"Yeah," he perked up a bit in his tone. "I guess it's better than what some morons name their kids."

"At least he wasn't named Sly Clop or something" I laughed.

"That's pretty much naming their kid "Shady Fuck"," Mr. Bassman added. We both chuckled a little more. "I should probably ask what you're doing here" he said, breaking the silence that had fallen between us.

"I came to find out what my predecessor did that was so amazing," I explained. "I need to do something amazing myself and then write about it in one week so I can keep a publishing deal it took me SO LONG TO GET!"

"You have that Scatter-vision thing, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," I smiled demonically, remembering the bandits I  slaughtered mercilessly.

"Isn't that something you can write about?"

"I need something I've done, not an attribute or a trait or anything like that," I sighed.

"Shit, uh..." Bassman stood there, obviously in thought. "I guess finding me was pretty cool. I mean, it's around three and half hours to walk here and it's through the Everfree Forest, so that's a pretty big deal to a lot of ponies."

"That, and I murdered, like, ten bandits on my way here," I mentioned.

"WAIT, WHAT?" he stopped

"Yeah, I killed an entire camp of 'em," I repeated. "That's why I have this sheathed machete on my back." I motioned with my neck to my back where the machete sat in its scabbard.

"DAMN!" he yelled. "That takes some skill!"

"I guess that means we should go back to Ponyville then," I shrugged, finding nothing else to do there.

"Woah, woah, woah! Wait right there!" Bassman began. "Are you sure I should go, because last time I checked my database, we means you and I in this situation."

"Why wouldn't you go?" I asked.

"Ponies might freak out," he said. "They may take me as a threat."

"I have a machete," I re-iterated. "Nopony will even be able to get near you with bad intention without losing their head... literally."

He gave a sigh of defeat. "Fine, I'll go with you, but when everypony freaks out, I will say I told you so."

The walk back to Ponyville wasn't anything special. Just your typical walk in the Everfree Forest. We never ran into anything problematic, except for Bassman occasionally tripping on a root or a rock or something, but with only one wheel, I'm surprised he can even stand up on his own. The townsfolk in Ponyville didn't freak out either... mostly because it was close to midnight when we got to the town's outskirts. It was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop... onto a mattress... in a soundproofed room.

It was then when I realized that Bassman's wheel made no noise whatsoever. I would have questioned it, but I didn't have the time. We were already back at the apartment of Octavia and Vinyl. I opened the door slowly, hoping that I wouldn't wake Octavia... had she been asleep. She was waiting in the desk chair when I came in, to which she sprung up and jumped on me, hugging me. "You're back!" she squealed.

"Yes," I gasped, barely able to breathe from her oddly powerful grip. "Yes I am."

She dropped me the second she saw Mr. Bassman. As soon as she found a tall bass guitar standing on one wheel gently swinging its arms back and forth, she freaked out. "Phantom?" she whimpered. "What the hell is that thing?"

"This is Mr. Bassman," I introduced him. "He's a creation of my predecessor. Apparently he's a robotically operated bass guitar that can talk and see and all that crap."

Bassman gave a tiny wave with one of his long metal arms. "Howdy."

"Is he safe?" she asked.

"As safe as bubble wrap," he answered.

"Well, he sounds like somepony... or something that Vinyl would want to see."

Octavia would have gone to get Vinyl, but she bounced around the corner. "I heard it all!" she erupted. "Where's this bass guy?"

"Uh... here?" Bassman spoke up, raising an arm a little to reveal his location.

Vinyl's eyes widened, but Octavia had caught on. "If you drop him I will kill you."

Vinyl suddenly got really sad. Bassman laughed, "It's okay, well not to drop me, but I mean I'd be pretty excited, too."

"So, can you play yourself or something?" Vinyl asked, trying to forget about dropping basses.

"Watch and see," he said. He then began to play a really cool sounding bass melody. He was playing so perfectly, I would have guessed that it had taken him years and years to perfect it like that. After about thirty seconds or so, he stopped and asked, "Is that a cool tune or what?"

"That was fucking EPIC AS ALL FUCKING HELL!" Vinyl screamed.

"Vinyl!" Octavia hissed. "There are people next door, on both sides of us, that are trying to sleep!"

"Oh yeah," Vinyl chuckled, blushing a little.

"So it's okay if I hang out here with Phantom?" Bassman interrupted.

"Of course Mr. Bassman," Octavia smiled warmly.

"Awesome," he exclaimed. "I'll just be in sleep mode in that corner over there during the nights." He pointed to a small dark corner of the room. It wasn't obstructed by anything, but it had a few chairs from the small nearby table a few feet from it. Bassman wheeled over and shrank down on his stopping pin and leaned himself up against one of the walls in the corner of the room. He then made a small "power down" kind of noise as he... well... powered down

I sat down at my desk and was about to get back into my flow of writing but Octavia interrupted me. "Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked.

"I dunno," I sighed, staring at the blankness on the paper in front of me. "I just... I think I... I just don't know." I guess I just didn't know.

"What's the matter, Phantom?" Octavia asked in a "don't you hide this from me, ass hole" tone.

"I wanted to find out what my predecessor did that was great, thinking that it would help me figure out what I could do that would be great, but now I've just got another idiot I can call a friend."

Octavia laughed lightly. "You have done some amazing things, Phantom," she told me. "You brought that thing back here, you went on an epic adventure in the Everfree Forest, you were born with your Cutie Mark, you can see people getting their bones broken from the inside for pony's sake! You've done some crazy and amazing things and you haven't even realized it yet!"

I began to nod quickly. "You're right Octavia," I agreed. "Thank you!" I picked up the quill and instantly began to write faster than I ever had before. It went from Midnight to 10:00 AM and I had written and edited my first copy of the first four chapters. I still had six days to re-write them, which was good because I would need six days to do it without getting exhausted.

That morning, I decided to show Mr. Bassman around the city and introduce him to as many ponies as I could so they wouldn't have a heart attack the first time they saw him. Things went over surprisingly well, especially with Lyra who had a lengthy conversation with Bassman about hands and other crap like that. Other than that, I spent the day writing. I got around one chapter of the edited work re-written and ready to send off to Printing Press in Canterlot.

I was hoping that I would get to see Written Script sometime that day so he and I could just talk, but he had to go somewhere right after I introduced Mr. Bassman. It was the next day when I got to talk to him. He was kind of out of it because he had apparently gotten drunk the night before. His brother was in town or something, so they went out and got hammered. Anyway, he wasn't feeling too good so he wasn't as talkative as normal.

"So how's your work coming?" he asked, groaning a little.

"A lot better," I smiled. "Should you take some painkillers or something?"

"Nurse Redheart already gave me a few. They should kick in soon." Script scratched at his neck gently. "What are you gonna do about the rest of your book?"

"I don't know," I sighed. "I'll think of something, I guess."

"Did Bassman ever say anything about there being more of him?" Script asked, probably trying to find something else I could do so I could write more.

"Yes, actually." I sighed again, remembering a detail that would foil the plan I knew he had. "They all need to be fixed though, and nopony except Bassman knows what to do but he can't do it because he has metal balls at the end of his arms."

"Shit," Script mumbled.

Something hit me and it hit me hard. "Lyra," I uttered quietly.

"What?"

"Lyra," I repeated. "She knows about these "hand" things that should help with this exact problem! If I go to her and ask her if she can help develop some of these "hands" for Mr. Bassman, he might be able to do the maintenance necessary to get the other robots up and running again! Some of them I could just shock with electricity to power their batteries and they'd be fine."

"So... now what?" he asked awkwardly.

"Now, we go see Lyra!"