In a hole in the ground there lived a bat pony. The hole wasn't the sort of dark and dank place one might imagine, nor was it just a simple pit. This was a properly quarried hole, with several rooms, ventilation ducts, central air, plumbing, and even arc lamps. This was a bat pony hole, and that meant industry.
The hole was accessible from a small shed which sat a few hundred yards from the very edge of the Everfree forest. Inside the simple wooden shed was a hatch, beneath the hatch was a staircase, and at the end of the staircase was an antechamber with a single large steel door at the far end. The door was a large rectangle wide enough for three ponies to enter at once, and tall enough for an alicorn to enter comfortably. The door had no knob or handle. Instead, it had a small console built into the wall which worked the hidden mechanisms allowing the door to open.
Inside the door was a short hallway leading to a large hollowed out dome: a nice space with smoothed and polished stone walls, half of a vein of gold left in the far side for decoration, carved stone furniture topped with soft cushions, a deep pond in the room's center heated from beneath to form a constant warm bath, and five round steel doors arranged evenly around the sides of the room leading to the hole's various rooms. Most bat pony homes are built in such a fashion, a nice underground safe feeling den with all necessities on one floor, and a second floor beneath that for the utilities.
The hole had two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room, a small lounge, and a bathroom on the first floor. Behind a hidden door in the master bedroom stairs leading to the utility room could be found. The bottom floor was little more than storage rooms, a large furnace, air purifier, water treatment system, septic system, and of course the arcana reactor which provided the thaumaturgic current to power everything. It was a fairly typical bat pony hole.
What made the hole unusual was its location. Bat ponies prefer to live in colonies deep within mountains, their individual holes connected by common shared tunnels with a hundred of families all working together as a single community. This hole however, was all on its own. A single hole, connected to nothing but the surface, with only a large workshop and the Everfree forest near enough to its entrance to be called 'nearby'.
Ponyville was a twenty minute walk away from the hole. Which is good because otherwise the bat pony who lived in the hole would have had a very hard time earning a living. She was a somewhat wealthy bat pony, and her name was Pattern Steel. Her wealth came from years of hard work at her craft, and the good fortune to have a very handy special talent for somepony in her family.
Steel's family had been blacksmith's and miners for a dozen generations before she was born. They never took on apprentices from outside the family, and were responsible for discovering and perfecting many tricks of the trade. Which is why Steel was so fortunate to have the special talent of finding and working metal. With the training her family had been able to provide and her natural talents, Pattern Steel could match or exceed the work any smith in Equestria despite only being in her twenties.
Steel could work metal as easily as a pegasus could move a cloud, a unicorn lift an apple with her magic, or an earth pony coax plants to grow. On a good day, if she had the proper materials available and a unicorn to provide the spark of magic Steel could even create enchanted items. Picks which bit into rock like butter, armor which reflected magic, kitchen knives which couldn't cut a living creature or counter top, and locks which only opened for specific ponies were what made Steel the bulk of her wealth.
Unfortunately even her vast skill and talent were not enough to give Steel a place within her family. Had she been born as any other sort of bat pony Steel would have been happily living as her family's heir and in time headed the clan business. But that was not to be, for despite how much her parents had loved her, no colony welcomes a vampire bat.
Vampire bat ponies were the shame of the bat pony race. A throwback to the distant and savage past when their ancestors had hunted other ponies for food. They were the rare reminders of their species days as monsters before being uplifted. Long ago a bat pony out hunting had chanced upon a battle between an ancient dragon and the Lady of the Night, Princess Luna. The bat pony saw Luna was in danger of losing to the great dragon, and came to her rescue. In thanks Luna cast a spell, forever changing bat ponykind into the fruit eaters they have been ever since. She gave them the gift of new life, and in gratitude they swore to protect her forever.
No spell is ever perfect, not even those cast by an alicorn. So from time to time a bat pony like Steel would be born with the pronounced fangs which marked her as a blood drinker. Not a one of the older bat ponies would acknowledge their existence, and many parents would abandon such children. Steel had been fortunate enough to have parents who loved her despite what she was, and who had been intelligent enough to acquire synthetic blood from pony hospitals to feed their child.
But aside from her parents, nopony had ever spoken to Steel. She never had even a single friend, her teachers never spoke a word to her directly, and if she wasn't being picked on viciously by other foals Steel may as well have been invisible. Her lack of a social life meant Steel spent all of her time perfecting her skills at the forge and in the mines. Even so, Steel grew up fearing other ponies' hatred for her and learned to move around silent and unseen, ironically gaining the stealth attributed to a true vampire due to being treated like one. Unfortunately this caused many bat ponies to believe Steel was more than a simple hemovore, and when she had turned nineteen her colony had her exiled.
Her parents had helped her as best they could. They did business with miners in the Ponyville area and were able to purchase a plot of land through Filthy Rich for Steel to live on. Some investigative work showed the town lacked enough blacksmiths to provide for the needs of the entire town and they found Steel somepony she could sell her products through in town. While she did not want to leave her parents Steel didn't want them hurt for harboring an exile ether and so accepted their help, and moved to Ponyville.
The first thing Steel had done was to dig her hole. It had been far smaller those many years ago of course, merely a place to put a bed. Over the years as her business had improved she expanded it into the high-magic high-tech hole it now was. There was little else for her to spend her money on besides for the hole and her personal projects. Synth blood was cheap, especially if a pony made it at home like Steel did.
Despite the love and money Steel had poured into her hoof-quarried hole she could not bring herself to call it a home. It was perfect for a bat pony, no windows to let in the pesky sun, solid rock and metal on all sides, and filled with the warmth of the earth, but it did not feel like a home. It was a place for her stuff and nothing more.
Steel's workshop on the other hand was almost a home to her. The large square structure sat on the surface just beside the shed through which her hole could be accessed. Inside Steel's workshop were the tools required to make anything one could imagine. It had a fully functional forge, a top of the line machine shop, a small foundry, and a library of engineering texts all under the same roof. The moment the sun began to go down Steel would enter her workshop, light the forge, switch on the lights, and resume her work.
Steel's body was shaped by her lifetime in the mines and at the forge. While she was clearly female, her body rippled with muscle as much as the sleek build of a female bat pony would allow. One might mistake her for an athlete, perhaps a competitor in Ironpony triathlons. Of course anypony with a knowledge of metalworking would take one look at her shoulder and back muscles and know exactly what her profession was.
Her cutie mark did a better job of proclaiming her job to everypony then her muscles. It was a perfect representation of her talent, but told nothing of her skill at her chosen profession. A gray steel anvil set behind a crossed smith's hammer and miner's pick decorated her coat. She had earned it after years working the forge after inviting a new form of pattern welding using ore she had mined herself.
Steel's coat had the exact same color as rusted iron, and often glittered silver as iron filings would cling to it every time she used a bench grinder or power sander. Her eyes were the normal slit pulped eyes of a member of her species, but had a luster to them unique to vampire bats and were the exact color orange of molten steel. Her mane and tail were unkempt and the wavy hair liked to form small curled spikes, more so in the dull violet hair which made up the majority of her mane and tail coloring then in the teal stripe on the left side of her mane.
Tonight her mane and tail were especially unkempt, for she had been in her forge a whole three hours before sundown working on a project for a pony named Lyra. Steel had never met this pony but the note from her business partner, a unicorn stallion named Ironwood, insisted Steel was the only pony for the job. While she was not one to boast after reading the requested item Steel was fairly certain Iron had judged the job correctly.
Lyra wanted a pair of gauntlets. Steel had made armor before such a task presented her with no problem. The problem came from the fact that Lyra was a pony, not a diamond dog, dragon, Minotaur, or other species with hands, and she wanted fingered gauntlets which she could manipulate. In essence, Lyra desired a pair of metal hands she could slip on and use. A tall order for any smith to fill.
Steel had started on Lyra's order months ago during midwinter. The spells needed to animate objects were familiar enough to Steel. She had made a pair of construction golems for a business in Manehatten several years ago. Inlaying the quartz circuitry and constructing a thaumaturgic current insulating alloy were easy enough, and getting a power crystal was as simple as ordering one from the local magic supply store. The trick was making a 'golem' which could be controlled by thought.
Steel had never designed an enchantment before. This was uncharted territory for her, and she loved it. Normal golems were controlled by a pony speaking orders aloud while wearing an amulet which designated them the 'controller'. But for Lyra's orders these prostheses would need to respond to the thoughts of the pony they were in contact with like a normal body part.
Tonight, after seven failed prototypes, several thousand bits of materials and time spent, and three trips to Canterlot to acquire tomes on mechanical enchanting Steel finally had a working product. Not a finished product, but a working one. There was still polishing, fine shaping, and metal dying left for her to do. But at long last she had a pair of gauntlets which could be controlled by a pony, functioned like the five fingered hand Lyra had demanded, provided a sense of touch, and could fold and slide back leaving the hoof free for a pony walk normally with them on.
Of course before those finishing touches were done Steel had to be sure they worked at least as well as hooves. She slid one of the pair onto her left hoof. The magic prostheses hissed as it adhered to her arm and hoof, the fingers slid down from their stored position, quickly locking into the hand shape Lyra had requested. It took Steel a fair amount of effort, but eventual the hand moved, fingers flexing. It would take a fair amount of practice to use these.
She reached over to her anvil, closed the fingers around her hammer and lifted it. Carefully twisting the wrist and fingers Steel did her best to be sure her invention worked. It performed well enough, not as good as her hooves or a unicorn's telekinesis but a pegasus or earth pony might benefit from the device. The gauntlets were nowhere near as dexterous as the grip of her hooves, which were enhanced by her species magic. But they were powerful, very powerful. Steel felt as if she could snap a titanium-osmium bar with them.
The feeling of strength went to her head for a moment. Steel pictured herself clad in full armor, fending off a swarm of changelings atop a tower in Canterlot, while shielding some lovely mare with her body. Steel's ears perked up as she realized a half finished set of Lunar Guard armor was sitting atop her workbench. She could indulge in her fantasy just a little bit.
Steel slid the other gauntlet on and activated the hand. Then she reared up, wobbled for a moment, flared her leathery wings for balance, and walked to her workbench on her hind legs. As she carefully stepped over Shield mumbled a classical tune appropriate to gearing up for battle under her breath, “Dadadada da dundundun, dadada da dundundun...”
With great effort Steel picked up the breastplate from her workbench with the gauntlets and slid it over her barrel, continuing to mumble the old bat pony war song. The back plate and flank guards were next, followed by the boots. In Steel's mind her workshop was gone, replaced by a vast armory somewhere atop a frozen mountaintop. Her mumbled tune was replaced with a full 120 piece orchestra. Trouble was brewing and there was only one pony who could stop it!
Finally, with reverence due to her fantasy Steel lifted the helmet and slit it onto her head, spinning around in her hastily donned, two sizes too large armor and striking a dramatic pose as her imagined tune built up to a crescendo. A small smile parted Steel's lips just enough to reveal her fangs just in time for somepony to knock on her workshop door.
“Eep!” Steel jumped, the helmet falling off of her due to the sudden moment.
Snapped back to reality by the three soft knocks Steel stripped off the armor with a speed born of panic kicking the half finished set under the bench she had taken it from. Another moments work and the gauntlets were on the workbench. Another set of three knocks echoed through her workshop as Steel trotted to the door and opened it a crack to peek out.
A gray pegasus mare stood at the door, one hoof raised to knock, a timid expression on her face as she turned to look into the single eye Steel allowed to be seen behind the door. “Er-Hello. Are you Pattern Steel? Ironwood said you're a smith too.”
“Yes.” Steel answered doing her best to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
As Steel peered around the gray mare she saw a second pony with her, a unicorn filly. She was also gray, since they both shared blond manes and tails Steel assumed they were related, possibly mother and daughter.
“My name's Ditsy, this is my daughter Dinky,” Ditsy introduced. “I-I was hoping you could make some shoes for Dinky, she just wore out her last set.”
“Ironwood wouldn't make them?” Steel asked.
“Not for what mom could pay.” Dinky informed bluntly, looking at Steel's orange eye with interest, “Your eye is weird. Is it just that one?”
“No.” Steel answered.
Ditsy's ears drooped, “Oh. I'm sorry for wasting your time.” She turned to leave.
Steel sighed and pulled the door to her shop open the rest of the way. “Not you miss. I was talking to your daughter. What can you pay?”
Ditsy turned back around, as she did Steel noticed one of her eyes drift off to look in a random direction. It was unsettling, but also a little liberating. Perhaps this mare was also an outcast of sorts. “I have twelve bits that I can spare right now, but on Friday I get paid and can spare another twelve then. We could work out a payment plan or something.”
Steel almost said no. Twelve bits would barely pay for the steel needed to make a single shoe. But just before Steel rejected the job Dinky kicked one hoof against the ground. The faint scrape of metal on stone reached Steel's ears, her echolocation showing her the worn, cracked, and chipped shoe on the filly's hoof. Even worse was the sound the metal made.
“Show me your shoe.” Steel ordered looking at Dinky.
Dinky held up her hoof obediently. The shoe was very worn, there was simply nothing left to protect her hoof. Even worse was the material, a silvery white metal with no sign of rust despite it's obvious age. “This is aluminum. How old is it?”
“Um... Six months?” Ditsy answered, “Is that bad?”
“Soft metal, also cheap. Probably just cast to shape and sanded. Cooled too quickly, crystallized and brittle. What did you pay for these?” Steel asked looking over to Ditsy as Dinky put her hoof back down.
“Fifty bits.” came the reply.
“These are worth ten bits as decorations. They should not be used. You have been getting ripped off.” Despite her anger at the unscrupulous deeds whomever had been providing this filly's shoes Steel's voice remained flat. But her eyes did narrow in anger. “Eight bits.”
“Come again?” Ditsy asked.
“I'll make her shoes for eight bits. Total, not each. They won't be new metal, it will come from my scrap pile. They will be an appropriate metal, not aluminum.” Steel answered.
Ditsy smiled wider than anypony Steel had ever seen. With an exclamation of “Oh thank you!” she threw her arms wide to wrap them around Steel in a hug.
Steel jumped backwards with a terrified squeak, crouching low to the ground, wings flared out as she prepared to flee into the setting sun. Ditsy's smile quickly switched to a confused frown, “I-I'm sorry.”
“She was just going to hug you.” Dinky giggled, trotting up to Steel to look at her wings, “Your wings are cool! I've never seen a bat pony before. You can see sound right?”
Steel's heartbeat rapidly as she slowly stood back up, closing her wings. “Please don't try to hug me. Yes I can see with sound. Please come to my workbench.”
Steel walked back over to her workbench, taking several sheets of parchment and a charcoal pencil from the table and setting them on the floor. Ditsy shuffled her hooves then followed with Dinky just ahead of her.
“Stand on the parchment.” Steel ordered, tracing the shape of Dinky's hooves as she stood on the parchment.
Once the shapes had been traced Steel set the parchment on her workbench and turned to Ditsy, “I will be done in an hour. There is a bench over there.”
“That's fast! It normally takes a day to get her shoes done.” Ditsy commented, trying her best to start up a friendly conversation.
Dinky trotted over to her mother, gently tugging on her saddlebags for attention, “Mom, she's really sacred of us. Let her work.”
Steel winced, fearing that her fear being obvious would somehow make things worse for her. She couldn't ask them to leave now, she had already accepted the job. The best thing would be to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Shhh, I know honey.” Ditsy replied, “Do you have a social phobia? I don't want to make you uncomfortable. We can come back in an hour if you like.”
“No.” Steel answered, “Shoes have to fit properly. She needs to be here for fitting.”
Steel moved over to a large box of scrap metal next to her forge. She sorted through the scraps of metal, ignoring the quiet conversation the two ponies were having behind her as best as she could. After a few minutes she had a small pile of titanium rods, rebar, a few shards of nickel, and some bits of steel sheet metal piled up next to her. Satisfied with the collection of metals Steel gathered them up, took them to her work bench and began to stack them in a pattern of steel, iron, nickel, titanium until she had a small tower.
She she picked up her welding torch to spot weld the metal into one piece Ditsy's voice reached her ears, “Excuse me.”
“Yes?” Steel asked slipping on a pair of welding goggles.
“Ironwood told me you are nocturnal, and I just realized that makes sunset dawn for you. Have you had breakfast? I have a few muffins in my bags if you would like one.” Ditsy offered.
“No thank you.” Steel replied as she lit her torch, quickly spot welding the layers together.
“Why not?” Ditsy asked sounding taken a little taken aback that somepony didn't want her muffins.
“Can't eat very much pony food. Doesn't digest well.” Steel answered, turning her stack around to get the other side.
“Not even one muffin?” Dinky asked curiously.
“Maybe half a muffin. But no thank you.” Steel grunted, wanting to focus on the work, not the ponies nearby.
“But if you can't eat normal food what do you eat?” Dinky asked.
Steel's ears drooped, she couldn't not answer the question, that would be rude. Lying would only result in more questions. Figuring the truth might buy her a minute of silence Steel answered, “Blood.”
Ditsy gasped in surprise, “You're a vampire bat? Wow! You're really rare. Oh... Um... Are you getting enough food? I know that Ponyville General is low on donor blood right now so I imagine you can't be getting enough either.”
Steel blinked, confusion welling up inside her until she had to turn around, push her goggles up and ask, “You don't hate me?”
Ditsy shook her head. “Nope! You obviously don't hurt ponies for food, I would hear about ponies losing a lot of blood in the paper. So if you don't hurt ponies you have to be at least a little nice, and why would I hate a nice pony?”
Steel didn't know what to say. Nopony had treated her like that save for her parents. Confronting this issue was just too confusing for her at the moment and so Steel turned back to her work, quickly finishing up the weld and taking the metal bundle to the forge.
The bundle of metal was swiftly placed into the forge, then removed the moment it reached a nice white heat. Holding the nearly molten steel with sturdy tongs Steel brought the metal over to her power hammer, sprinkled some powders over it, and with the touch of a foot pedal forge welded the bundle into a single ingot of metal in a shower of sparks.
The moment Steel was certain she had fully welded the ingot, it was placed back in the forge. While she normally did not use fragments and chips to make this particular alloy, it was one she used quite a bit. Allowing it to cool too much before tempering would ruin the metal.
Once the ingot was reheated Steel took it to her anvil, sprinkled it with flux, folded it in half and forge welded it to increase the layer count. This was repeated another three times, with each fold serving to strengthen the metal. The entire process took about fifteen minutes, and was in actuality the bulk of the work. Steel could make horseshoes in her sleep if she wanted to, but correctly making this particular alloy was always a challenge.
As Steel took the ingot to her power hammer again, this time to draw it out into a thin bar Dinky waved for her attention. “Yes?”
“Can you make them slip on please? I don't like the nailed kind.” the filly asked.
Steel stopped dead. A hint of anger crept into her voice as she turned to Ditsy and asked, “You make her use nail on shoes? Her hooves are still growing!”
“I can't afford slip on...” Ditsy admitted sounding rather ashamed, “I know it's not good for a foal, but at least she gets the better grip.”
“Ponies charge more for slip on? Slip on are easier to make. That's stupid.” Steel asked shaking her head and getting back to work. “They must cast them. Can't forge nail on shoes and selling them cheaply.”
As she finished drawing the ingot out into a long bar Steel quickly cut the metal into the pieces of the length needed to make the shoes. A small fifth piece was left over, and on a whim Steel placed it in the forge along with the four shoes in the making. While Ditsy's kindness was confusing, and something she did not want to think about, she still felt as if she should repay it somehow. After all no foal should have a bad set of shoes, making them was a duty not a kindness.
Shaping the shoes was not a problem at all. The four lengths of metal quickly had a lip pounded into them which would grip Dinky's hooves around their edges, and the curve of each shoe while slightly different, was something Steel could have done with one eye shut. The leftover piece was the tricky one. Steel had no idea what to do with it.
As she shaped the last shoe Steel knew she would have to do something with it soon. Taking the leftover piece Steel hammered it into a long thin oval shaped rod to buy time. As the rod took shape Steel smiled, and hammered the ends of the rod into flat circles the size of a bit. A few more taps of her hammer and the circles became leaf shapes, and the rod was quickly coiled into a wavy bracelet.
With everything roughly shaped on the anvil Steel tossed everything back into the forge and sat watching it heat up. Dinky trotted over, looking into the forge with interest. “What are you doing now?”
“Heat treating. Hammering makes it brittle. Heating distresses it.” Steel answered.
“Is that why my old ones broke?” Dinky asked looking at her cracked front left shoe.
“Yes.” Steel answered simply.
Once Steel was satisfied the metal had reached the proper temperature she removed each piece from the forge and dropped them into a nearby barrel of brine. The orange hot steel sizzled and hissed, and the brine bubbled as the cool liquid quenched the metal, cooling it down within a few minutes. The moment the brine stopped bubbling Steel took the pieces out and brought them to her bench grinder.
It took her only a few minutes to grind the final shape into each shoe. Steel called Dinky over, carefully removed her old shoes and the nails holding them in, and slid each shoe on and off, making small adjustments with the grindstone until each fit snugly and comfortably. Then each shoe had a tread pattern ground into the bottom for extra traction before being set aside.
The bracelet took a bit more work. Each leaf shape had to be beveled and ground to have the proper leaf shape and pattern. A bit of decorative scroll work was ground into the rest of the metal to make it look like a vine. Once Steel was satisfied she took the piece to the other wheel attached to the grinder, and began to polish it to a bright shine. When she finished the shoes were shined as well.
“Are you done? They look great!” Ditsy asked as Steel switched off the grinder.
“No.” Steel replied picking the shoes up and carrying the over to a bucket filled with a dark green liquid.
Dinky trotted over as well, peaking into the bucket, “What's th-”
“Acid!” Steel barked, making the filly jump backwards in fright. “Ferric chloride. Don't touch.”
Ditsy quickly moved over and scooped up Dinky, moving her back to a safe distance. “You should keep a lid on that!”
“Nopony but me is ever in here.” Steel rebutted carefully dropping each piece into the acid.
“What are you doing?” Ditsy asked, her hurt tone indicating she believed Steel to be destroying her own work.
“It's not that potent. Watch.” Steel pointed to the bucket as she got her tongs.
After a few minutes she fished each piece out and dropped them into another bucket, this one filled with water. With the acid washed off each piece Steel picked them up, dried them off with a scrap of towel, and held the shoes out to Ditsy.
Each shoe had been useful before the acid wash, but now they were a work of art. The acid had eaten away the outermost layer of the metals within the alloy at slightly different amounts. Each individual thin layer of differing metals were visible as light and dark rippling lines. The steel looked like it had a wood grain.
Ditsy gave Steel a wordless look of pure gratitude. She opened her mouth to say thanks but Steel cut her off with a raised hoof.
“Those are made from a Damascus pattern alloy. They are mostly titanium, nickel, and ten-fifty-five steel. Nopony could wear these down in a lifetime. Dinky will outgrow them. When she does come back to me. I'll make her bigger ones. Eight bits.”
“I-I don't know what to say.” Ditsy smiled, resisting the urge to hug Steel with all her might.
Ditsy passed the shoes to Dinky who put them on eagerly, smiling as she slid on easily but refused to come off. Steel smiled, she had built just a little magic into the shoes. Just enough of an enchantment to prevent them from coming off unless Dinky wanted them to.
Steel held the bracelet out to Ditsy, “This is for you. Thank you. Now please go away.”
Ditsy took the bracelet looking at it curiously then with delight, and lastly with sadness, “I can't pay for this. It's very pretty though.”
“It is a gift. Please go.” Steel frowned, shuffling her hooves awkwardly on the floor. She was simply overtaxed on socializing for the day.
Ditsy blushed, ears drooping in embarrassment as she remembered realizing the other mare was a sociophobe. “Sorry. Thanks so much though!”
Dinky giggled happily as she zipped towards the door five steps ahead of her mother, “These fit perfectly! Thanks!”
The two quickly left, closing the door behind them. Steel waited where she stood for a full five minutes, then when she was sure they were not coming back sighed in both sadness and relief, “Oh thank Luna that's over!”
It had been nice talking to somepony who didn't hate her, but that was simply far too much talking for one week. Before she could decide what to do next Steel's stomach growled. The question of what next thus settled, she trotted over to the small cooler in her workshop, pulled the door open, fished out a mason jar of synthetic blood, popped the top and gulped the contents down as quickly as she could.
“I wonder if those muffins she offered were any good.” Steel asked herself between gulps. The question was quickly forgotten, after all she had a pair of gauntlets to finish tonight. There was more work to do.
Author's Note
If you have any ideas for situations Steel could be put into which would be amusing/funny due to her phobia I would love to hear them! Put em in the comments along with any other thoughts you have. I just may use one or two!
