One Last Job

There comes a moment when a pony must accept that they are no longer a foal. A moment when the innocence is cast away and one is subjected to the harsh realities of the world.
A parent always hopes that their child would never have to face such a moment. It is their duty, in a way, to protect their filly or colt for as long as possible, to maintain that beautiful innocence that every adult pony wishes they could experience again.

But sometimes that protection isn’t offered. Sometimes a parent doesn’t want to protect their child. Sometimes they don’t even want their child in the first place. Foals born into families like this never end up the same as their classmates or their friends. They always become the odd one out. Alone. Cast aside. Ignored. Even teachers rarely know what to do with these foals, and it’s even more rare that they can help in any way.

Ayize fell into the same boat as these foals. Everypony cast her aside like she wasn’t worth their time, she had none of the social skills that her fellow foals had, and as a whole, she was nothing like other ponies.
It certainly didn’t help that she was a zebra.

Zebras weren’t particularly hated in Equestria, but they weren’t trusted either. Many ponies saw them as devious, dark magic users that had an air of unsettling energy around them, though this was always just their own feelings being put forward as a physical manifestation in their mind.
Ayize had lost her parents at a young age. So young, in fact, that she remembered very little if anything about them. All that her orphanage knew about her was that she had been found in the wreckage of an abandoned hut on the outskirts of town and she had been missing her right front leg.

The zebra had never fit in. The orphanage staff couldn’t help but blame themselves, in a way – they had failed to notice how poorly she was treated by the other foals, usually ending up shunned, left alone and sometimes even openly ridiculed. By the time they got them to dial back on their behaviour, the damage had been done. Ayize was hurt badly, and nothing they did could make her feel any better.

Ayize’s only comfort was technology. Without any toys to play with, foals to talk to, or parents to interact with her, she had spent most of her time tinkering with metal, wood, whatever she could find, and adding it to her prosthetic right leg…or just some other project she had in the works. Given the limited funding of the orphanage, it was difficult for them to maintain it, so the bulky metal and plastic thing was primarily just a crutch rather than a functioning limb.

Ayize’s adoption was something that the staff longed for, more for the zebra’s sake than their own. However, her dislike of ponies and her stand-offish personality definitely didn’t help at all when meeting with prospective families, and the simple reality was that most ponies didn’t want to adopt a filly with a physical disability like hers.

Another reality was that they couldn’t allow her to stay forever. One day, they needed to get her to leave. She was surprisingly calm about it – she was a mare of few words, and when she turned 18 it seemed not to change. Still, the mares running the orphanage were simultaneously terrified and heartbroken by the angry stare Ayize gave them as she left.

From the beginning, Ayize never had a chance in life. That was what everypony told her, and she had trouble saying they were wrong. She was homeless, moving from town to town trying to find a job but unable to make one stick. It didn’t help that her constant meddling with her artificial limb made it unpredictable, to the point that she once hit a customer across the face while working as a waitress in Las Pegasus.

She bounced around Equestria with nowhere to go, until she had nowhere left to turn. She spent some time working in Appleloosa, which admittedly lasted longer than any other job she had. For a whole month she lived there just fine, until a particularly prejudiced earth pony decided to confront her in the street.
That pony died in the hospital a week later.

With nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, a leg that was only now starting to function and an attitude that was shifting from lost and terrified to angry and confused, Ayize gave up.
She had planned to throw herself off the edge of Ghastly Gorge. If the fall didn’t kill her, the animals there would, that was her reasoning.

But something didn’t work out. When she was standing there, staring out at the expanse of the gorge, wind whipping through her mane, she found herself feeling less and less confident in her decision. Not because she felt she had more to do, or that she could have a better chance at life – rather, she realized she had so much to learn about technology, so much to gain, so much to innovate…
And the had a long list of ponies she wanted dead, too.

She was shocked how easy it had been to build up a name for herself in the criminal underground of Equestria. Crush a few skulls, raid a few smaller towns, and you’ve got a target on your back the size of a dragon. Ayize relished in it, though – within a year, she had started her own organization – the Gifts of Mutation, as Ayize dubbed it.

The Gifts of Mutation – or GOM, as most law enforcement referred to them – was especially cruel. Many of their recruits went in with no idea of what would happen to them. The group specialized in cybernetic enhancement, most of it administered by Ayize herself, and most of it involving limbs being chopped off. If you were good, you got anesthetic. If not, well.

Ayize was a madmare, that was the way everypony who knew her would describe her…when she wasn’t listening, anyway. Once she had really started making bits, she started changing herself even more. Her bionic right leg had enough power to snap a pony’s head clean off their shoulders, many of her muscles had been cybernetically altered to be far stronger and better than a normal zebra, and her eyes, despite being completely untouched, carried a terrifying gaze that made any pony lock up if they made eye contact.

Even with her troubled background being taken into account, Ayize’s insanity was downright incomprehensible. Surely she must have had a screw loose from the beginning, but it was like there wasn’t a single one holding her together anymore. Any attempt to capture her ended with death, and any attempt to go undercover within her organization to get to her was met with equally fatal results. Truly she was a force to be reckoned with, and her group’s actions got bolder with each new member she obtained. Equestrian services have varying estimates on how many are with her. Even though the majority of their members are visibly enhanced, many are not.

The Royal Guard estimated that her organization stands at least 200 ponies strong, but the MBI (The Monarchial Bureau of Investigation) estimated only 80. Regardless, it was a group that needed to be stopped, and Ayize was a mare without remorse.

There were few solid images of her full body, but the most clear one showed a zebra with very noticeable features. Her mane was worn in a sharp mohawk, with a thick braid running down the back of her neck to contain the excess hair. A scar ran from the top of her left temple across her left eye, and all the way down to that same cheek. Her eyes were the most terrifying part of her – cold, steely, blue orbs that struck fear through even a photograph, and a grimace that displaced surprisingly perfect teeth. Her right foreleg was quite obviously metal, and as strong as the rest of her – more, even, but this was just visual. On the side of her face, slightly covering her left eye was a small visor. No one knew what it was for, but it was presumed to be some kind of communication or scanning device.

Equestria couldn’t risk using any more horsepower to try to kill Ayize, or lead any more attacks on their organization. To deal with her, they were running out of options. Celestia only realized what a threat they were in the last year, too busy dealing with the aftermath of Dusk Rider’s recent exploits to understand the full extent of the GOM’s power.

Celestia only had one option, the way she saw it. But she was fairly certain it wouldn’t work out in her favour…