Stick Figures

CHAPTER V

"I love you,"

"WHAT THE FUCK?!"

"I love you." Lyra was drooling in front of me.

"WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!" I yelled, trying to grasp this.

"You are the first pony I've ever met that has believed my Human theory!" she exclaimed happily.

"AND?!"

"You are the one pony who understands the truth about everything!" she continued drooling. "I want your-"

"Fucking Christ, Lyra!" I cringed. "Just because I asked you to make my robotic friend hands doesn't mean I'm gonna give you sex in return. Frankly, I find that kind of creepy."

"Alright," Lyra rolled her eyes as she turned and headed towards... where the hell was she going?

"Where the hell are you going?"

"Metalwork," she answered, not even bothering to give me another glance.

"Well... that was interesting" Bassman said randomly.

"Not really interesting as it was weird as all hell," I corrected him.

"I guess I'm gonna get hands then?" he asked.

"I guess" I repeated. I just wrote and wrote as soon as we had gotten home. It took several hours for Lyra to even come back with some form of a prototype.

"Could you control these anyway?" I asked.

"If they conduct electricity, it's definite that I can control them." he clarified

Lyra was done fastening on the prototypes. "How do they work, Bassman?" she asked, a small gleam in her eye that showed hope for it working.

Bassman was able to move the fingers he now had, and I now understood, perfectly. "Well, that's oddly convenient that they work this well!" he laughed.

"Convenience is sometimes something that can really help" I chimed in.

"I guess I'm gonna head on back to the cave and work on those other instruments," he sighed. "I think you should come along, too Phantom, that way you can charge some of the instruments' batteries."

"Okiedokie," I shrugged. There were only eighteen out of the twenty-three total instruments that only needed recharging. Sadly, none of them were given the power to speak English like Bassman. The first three were small violins. They operated in the same way Mr. Bassman did, except the balls on the ends of their arms secured a violin bow perfectly, that way they could play themselves. On the other arm, they had what seemed like a single finger to move along their single string The fourth one was a cello that operated the same way, only it had two strings and two small finger-like claws to go with the two arms. The claws would slide along each string while one arm would play using the bow and the other would play pizzicato (by plucking).

the next five were all things for the drum kit. They were all small drum sticks that could hover around to play each drum, two of them being mallets for bass drums. Three were small clappers and one was another floating thing except it was for a triangle. One was a floating mallet for the gong and the last four were mallets for special percussion instruments, two for vibraphone and two for metallophone. In short, we had a bunch of floating sticks and four actual automated instruments.

The ones that Bassman still had to fix were an automatic pan-flute, a double-synth laser that was apparently also able to talk and was on a rolling platform, a three-stringed acoustic guitar that could talk named Ace and a huge rolling tower of brass horns. Needless to say, all the instruments were mobile. The last one was the poor bastard working on them, Mr. Bassman.

For the next forty hours at least, Bassman wouldn't shut up about everything regarding the instruments. His friend Laz0r, the synth laser, was one of the main things he talked about the whole damn time. Finally the point came when he said, "There! Finally done!"

"You're already done with all of the robots?" I asked.

"Hell no!" he shot. "I'm done with Laz0r!"

A little platform rolled over to me. It had two odd-shaped metal tubes attached to it on an axel with a glass bulb on the end of both, one was purple and one was red. "What's up?" it said in a heavily syinthisized voice. Lasers of red and purple shot from the color-corresponding tube as he spoke.

"So you're Laz0r?" I asked.

"Hell yeah," he buzzed. "You're Phantom Savage, correct?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?" I asked, a bit curious.

"You just seem like that Savage-Family bastard to be named something like that." Laz0r would probably have been smiling if he had a face. "It's been a common name in your family. I read the Savage-Family history from those books you guys keep writing."

"Ah," I nodded, him having answered my question before I could even ask it.

"I remember your predecessor saying something about us playing at some event before he died," Laz0r spouted randomly. "Do you know anything about that?"

"He could have meant The Grand Galloping Gala, but I'm not sure." I bit my lip in thought, trying to think of another event like that.

"That was the one," Bassman interrupted. "I remember it clear as day."

"Alright," Laz0r laughed a little. "Do you think you can tell Princess Celestia the reason as to why there was no musical guest that year? Knowing her, she's still pissed about it."

"I wouldn't put it past her!" Bassman chimed in, hoisting what could only have been Ace onto something that must have been a workbench,

"Alright, I'll tell her." I turned and was in the process of leaving when I realized... "Bassman, could you come back to town and tell me when you're done with all of the instruments? I still need to write a little more and I've only got around three days to do it."

"Can do," Bassman responded monotonously. And at that, I turned and left to go fulfill Laz0r's request.

The train seemed to go unusually slow as I thought of what I could possibly say to Celestia. I didn't know if she's even want to see me after being born with this Cutie Mark. It'd remind her of her husband from three thousand years ago. Finally, the train came to a grinding halt, revealing the Canterlot station through its opening doors. I slowly stepped out and looked around, seeing that there were "high-class" fuckers everywhere. I slipped my modified pure-white fedora on so my horn fit through the hole and it sat snugly on my head. I proceeded to walk out into the streets, looking around in all directions to find the palace.

It was as big as it was when I was last in Canterlot. Hell, it never changed from the outside. Approaching the castle entrance, two guards stood in front of the door. As I walked past, one of them gave me a nod. I walked up the many stairs to the throne room where Celestia was likely to be. Turning into the room, she was sitting on her throne, conversing with one of her royal guards about what was probably an unimportant matter. If it was important, she wouldn't be smiling.

I approached her throne, the guard finishing his conversation and walking away to return to his duties. "Princess, I was wondering if there was a lack of musical guests at one Grand Galloping Gala a thousand years ago or so?"

The Princess raised an eyebrow. "What does this have to do with anything, Phantom?"

"Please, just humor me," I sighed.

"Yes there was."

"Well, I know why," I told her.

"Why?" she asked. "It was a Savage with his birth-Cutie Mark that was supposed to perform, right?"

"Well, kind of." I was nervous to continue with such an unbelievable story. "It was a group of instruments that can play themselves that was meant to play."

Celestia laughed a little. "Very funny, Phantom, but I know it was Terror that arranged it. He was the one that was going to play."

"Hey, if you don't believe me, I can show them to you!" I huffed angrily. I hated being laughed at, even if it was only indirectly.

"That won't be necessary" she said, raising a hoof to shut me up. "I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal. If these things are real and they're still operational as you've implied, then they should be able to play at the Gala this year, correct?"

"Sure," I agreed, still irritated. I turned and began to leave. As I left, I turned my head towards her and shouted "I'll inform Bassman and his friends and they will BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND, WOMAN!" It was midnight when I got back to Octavia's from telling Bassman and co. about the Gala. Bassman was psyched to show off him and his pals' hard work on their song which was still un-named. Bassman asked me to try and think of a name for it if I could, which I agreed to, but I obviously wouldn't think of one right then and there. I still had to get back home and write until I was too tired to breathe.

Two days... I had two days to get all of my revisions done and printed and all of that. It only took around 30 hours in total, which was good because that meant I had a lot of time to get it ready packing-wise. Ditzy was working the post office that day. She was really nice about it all and decided to ship it out for free because some assholes had come in earlier, making fun of her eyes and I never did that to her so she regarded me as a great friend. In short, the whole shipping problem was solved... not that kind of shipping you stupid twat.

I was finally done with the first portion of my autobiography. I had written it, revised it, re-written it and sent it in to Printing Press, and now, I could celebrate. It was just a small celebration with a little bit of wine that Written Script's marefriend, Berry Punch, made herself. Octavia ended up drunk, before Written Script, who was downing glasses of wine like it was water and he was in the middle of a dessert. I have an... interesting alcohol resistance, so I didn't get drunk at all... that, and the wine tasted like shit to me, so I barely drank any of it. Vinyl, however, brought out some Gin (which was apparently half alcohol) and I drank that with her. By the end of the night, everypony except for me had passed out. As soon as I realized I was totally alone, I started to laugh. I went to my sleeping place on the sofa and fell asleep.

It felt like nothing could go wrong... What the fuck was I thinking?