Chapters Hyper Future Pony
Author’s Notes: There will be major, major spoilers for the Battle Angel Alita manga. While I’ve structured to story so it would be unnecessary to have read the whole manga (or even any of it), I’d still highly recommend it. Even if you never read this fanfic, actually. Just go read it, it’s a good one. :P
Prologue: Lotus Eater
Desty Nova had his foe right where he wanted her. They’d dogged each other’s best plans for over a decade now, knowingly or not. Since her rebirth, Alita had been in a constant battle against him, knowingly or not. She was his karma, and now Desty Nova was working hard to unmake that that thorn in his side.
Both of their backs were against the wall now. She’d invaded his home, obliterated his experiments, and left him with no place to run. He’d deal with his karma right now, or it would destroy him. Getting her back into the Ouroboros dream world had been a challenge; hacking into a military cyborg’s communication systems was no easy feat even for a master of nanotechnology and unparalleled genius like himself. He’d barely avoided losing his head in the process. But now she was trapped, and Desty Nova took it upon himself to personally wear down her blades and turn the savage soldier into a demure little pet.
He’d started slow, forcing her to give into the dream world. Alita had fought back, continually killing the faces from her past in an attempt to escape the dream world. But she could only soak her hands in Ido, her ersatz-father figure, so many times before she broke entirely.
Desty Nova laughed maniacally. This would be the final blow that would break her. She was reduced back to right where she started, a lost and nameless face clinging to life in the scrap heaps.
“Heh, heh, don’t you look pretty ,” said Desty Nova as he pulled Alita’s shattered body out of the junkyard, just like Ido had almost fifteen years ago. The barely conscious cyborg tried to recoil in fear, but she didn’t have the will to do much of anything. Desty Nova laughed again. “With your psychological stamina depleted to nearly zero, you probably don’t even know who you are.”
Her claws weren’t quite gone yet. Daisuke Ido had appeared, shocked at Desty Nova’s intent to make her tonight’s experiment, and pulled the badly damaged girl away from Nova’s clutches. Not that it mattered; it wouldn’t prevent Nova from drowning that pesky girl in the sweet cream of life until there was no fight left in her. Unwittingly, Nova had just snared himself in his own trap.
“I’m really cool about helping you with your studies Twilight, but I really don’t know how I’m going to help you with this. I’d love to bake you some cupcakes, or sing you’re a song, or maybe throw you a party when you succeed, but helping you with the experiment itself? This doo-hicky here is neat and all, but what am I supposed to actually do?”
“Hush Pinkie, I’m about to do science!”
Pinkie Pie was in Twilight’s basement, hooked up to dozens of wires and sensors, all feeding data into a nearby computer, which dinged and flashed in a pattern that seemed to be intelligible only to Twilight Sparkle. The pink pony’s causality defying powers had always perplexed and intrigued that brainy unicorn, and now she was nearing a major breakthrough. Somewhere in Pinkie Pie’s intrinsic magic field was the secret to conquering the bounds of time and space! No more exhausting teleports; Twilight would have the secret to effective, long-range and (relatively) easy jumps. Or even opening up fixed wormholes between two points! The possibilities for limitless.
Twilight fiddled with some switches, crunched a few numbers, and attached a few more sensor wires to Pinkie. “Gosh Twilight, that tickles!” A short electrical current ran through her body, causing her to twitch and shake Pinkie sense style for a moment. A printer spit out a ream of data, which Twilight scrutinized.
“EUREKA!” cried Twilight.
“Gesundheit!”
“Now is not the time for jokes. I’ve finally unlocked your secret. I’m going to be trying out the new spell, so you can go now.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to watch. Your experiments always turn out fun, and my Pinkie senses tell me this one’ll be a doozy.”
Twilight groaned. Still, she kept up her preparations, aligning the spell foci and rehearsing the thaumic manipulations.
“So what’ll it do?”
“Open up a fixed gate between to separate points, allowing instantaneous travel between the two.”
“Ooh, that sounds neat. Where are you going to go with it?”
“I dunno yet. Probably my backyard.”
Pinkie facevaulted the way only a comedic cartoon pony could. For a moment, Twilight could swear she saw a large cartoonish sweatdrop on Pinkie’s forehead. “Jeesh Twilight, you could go anywhere and you’re going to your backyard. Wouldn’t it be faster to walk.”
“Pinkie, you need to walk before you run.”
“Exactly, which is why I said you could walk to your back yard, and not run.”
Twilight groaned again, much louder. “Pinkie, it’s a metaphor. I can’t afford to take a huge risk with this spell because it’s never been done before. Now stand back, science is about to happen!”
Across the folds of time and space, another mad scientist’s plan was coming to fruition. A month had already passed in the dream world, and the once frightening warrior was now the picture of demure womanhood, her cold cyborg body hidden under frilly dresses and lace.
Desty Nova watched over the fragile young girl like a hawk, casually eating some flan as was his penchant. “So, little girl, do you want anything? I can make you some friends! Just name your heart’s desire!” cackled Nova.
She thought for a moment, holding her fist to her lips pensively. “I want…some flan.”
Nova frowned. “Err…just one bite.”
Alita left, satisfied by the delicious custard, and sat in Ido’s study with him, opening the pages of a well-worn book. Before she started to read, she beamed at Ido. “Someday I want to be a doctor like you, Ido.”
“That’s nice dear,” he replied, wiping the oil from his hands from the latest cybersurgery, “But if you don’t get some exercise, your joints will harden.”
“But I prefer to read.”
Desty Nova let himself have an evil smirk as she stood at the door. “To think this girl is the same person as Alita! ” he thought, “I’ll keep her here a bit longer so this new personality will take root! Back in while lab, I’ll perform nanosurgery on her brain to rid her of the memory of that icky Panzer Kunst. Then victory will be mine! ”
After a short argument with Ido, the girl grudgingly conceded, and went up to the rooftop to at least get a bit of fresh air. She sat, dangling her legs over the edge, blowing some bubbles at the rundown industrial vista of the Scrapyard City. The Factory’s impersonal foundries and assembly plants continued their monotonous routine in the dream life.
Nova stalked closer to the peaceful girl. “Are you happy? So you like bubbles eh? I could install an internal bubble machine in you!”
Nova’s Cheshire cat grin disturbed her greatly. “Umm…no thanks.”
Alita continued to blow bubbles as Nova crouched down beside her. “Uncle Nova, do you love someone?”
The wild-haired mad scientist was surprised by her candid question. “Love someone? Hmm…there was this one woman I wanted to dissect once…” he replied, trailing off to a whisper too quiet for her to hear.
The bubbles danced across the sky as the floating city of Tiphares loomed in the background.
Only too late did Nova realize that he’d been snared in his own trap. He sat pensively for a moment, before removing his distinctive utility spectacles. The Tipharean exile was trapped, and he didn’t want to be set free.
“Until now…what was it I was running toward? What is this feeling that wells up in my heart?” he asked aloud, not caring if anyone heard or answered. Because deep down, he already knew the answer. And it meant his whole life had been spent chasing the setting sun.
“That there should be an end to suffering and death in this world! If one can truly believe in happiness…one can only have this prayer !”
He sat beside the young girl, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, and wished the moment would last forever.
It couldn’t. Already, Alita’s ally, his son Kaos was trying to free her from the Ouroboros program. It came in the form of the giant cyborg Den, rampaging through the dream vista of the Scrapyard like a giant samurai.
Ido ran out on the rooftop, motioning for them to follow him back inside. “Professor, we need to get inside quick!”
“Ido, take care of her for me.”
“Uncle Nova!” cried Alita.
Presumably, Nova thought that if you have to do battle in a dream world, you might as well be awesome while doing it. With his best impression of an old Japanese super robot story, Nova shouted into his wrist communicator “Great Martian King! Time for battle!”
A giant toy robot appeared out of the earth, and Nova quickly mounted it to do battle. “Very tricky! I’m astonished you got through my electronic barriers, Den…or should I call you Kaos! No matter! You’ll never take my Alita from me!”
Alita and Ido hid below in relative safety, while the two giant mecha did battle across the dream scape. The rumble of the battle reverberated through the building, and soon Alita’s heart beat in time with the din of the fight. Something long dormant finally awakened.
“Ido, I have to fight too!”
“That’s absurd! Why would you?!”
The dream evaporated. The frilly dresses melted away, and the civilian cyborg body morphed into Alita’s rather battered and battle-worn Tuned body. “Because…I’ll be fighting for myself.” In an instant, Ido was all that was left of the dream.
“I knew this was a dream…and I let myself enjoy it. But now I have to go.”
The dream image of Ido smiled ever so slightly back at her. She was missing her right arm and left eye, and the right leg had been cut off at the ankle and patched with a peg, but she stood their confident, even satisfied at the woman she had become. Though the Ido she knew was gone forever, she finally knew that he’d be proud of her.
“You be careful…Alita,” said Dream-Ido. The dream world of Ouroboros collapsed.
They were thrust back into the cold, hard real world of the Granite Inn, buried beneath Cheyenne Mountain. Both Alita and Nova stood for a moment, backs to each other at dueling distance. In spite of years of mutual hate and opposition, at the final fateful moment, neither of them wanted this. The dream of endless possibilities had washed away the tears of hate, but left the necessity of their final duel finally understood.
Alita clutched the giant balisong tightly, hesitating to use the half-meter long Damascus blade like she knew she had to. She’d long dreamed of this moment, and now that she was finally there, she didn’t want it. She didn’t want revenge for his sociopathic meddling with the lives of the people she cared for, or for him ultimately being responsible for the deaths of almost everyone she’d cared for, and her separation from the few still living she cared for. The freedom she had long felt was revealed to be a cruel lie. Now she and Nova were just puppets who saw the strings.
She turned around to see Nova stooped over a computer council, trembling while contemplating his next move. She couldn’t help but feel sad.
“If this were still my dream…” said Nova, turning to level a submachine gun at Alita, “…I would do anything to protect you.”
“The same goes for me.”
Alita lunged towards him, dodging low and to the right to avoid the armor piercing fusillade. As she met him face to face for a split second, ready to strike the killing blow, her joints suddenly seized as a surge of electricity spread across her nanotech body. The arcs of electricity spat across the room. Just before she blacked out, the geometry of the room started to warp, and the colors before her began to shift towards the red end of the spectrum.
Pinkie Pie gasped in awe at the magical spectacle Twilight was putting one. Twilight strained, summoning up all her power and control, as a channel of neon purple energy erupted from her horn, and cascaded onto the focus crystals. Violet electricity arced across the room as a swirling maelstrom of black and purple energy collected around the foci.
It expanded slowly as Twilight poured more power into it, slowly feeling her way through the membrane of space-time. Her experience with the snap teleport spell was unfortunately proving useless, so she was left to slowly pick her way through the barrier and ultimately follow her gut. She had no idea what she was looking for, but a hunch told her to follow the vibrational resonance through her horn, and the ache in her heart.
A hole opened up in the center of the glowing vortex as it continued to expand, picking up momentum with each passing moment. A few images could be seen across the event horizon. They didn’t seem quite right, way too far away for Twilight’s back yard. Different images snapped through, like frames on a slide show as she continued to follow her gut.
The event horizon was now broad enough for two ponies to pass through abreast and not have to worry about personal space. Twilight now struggled to anchor the gate to the foci while simultaneously trying to tune it to its desired location. It must have been tuned in between reality because it was nothing but a black nothingness beyond the event horizon. She slowly focused it back, following her gut. Suddenly, the frame clicked into place
Instead of Twilight’s back yard, there was instead a drab reinforced concrete room and iron scaffolding, and two strange figures just beyond the event horizon. They seemed to be struggling amidst a lightning storm before unceremoniously tumbling into the basement of Twilight’s library. She panicked, and soon lost control of the spell, which dissipated in a large flash of light, dumping a large amount of rubble that had been torn apart on the other side of the pulsing unstable wormhole.
Pinkie and Twilight stood in stunned silence in the dusty, wrecked basement. Twilight couldn’t believe herself…she’d just abducted two strange aliens from somewhere. Which meant she was an alien abductor…which meant a trip straight to the moon. Or back to magic kindergarten at the very least.
“Twilight, that didn’t look like your backyard.”
Phase 1: You're Not in Kansas Anymore
Hyper Future Pony
Author’s Note: Since the prologue was received a whole lot better than I expected, I’m going to try to move forward faster than I originally planned. Hope you guys enjoy, and as always reviews especially constructive criticism are always appreciated. For those familiar with the BAA source material, I’m going to be integrating some of Alita’s backstory as it was revealed in the Last Order sequel, so obviously there will be some spoilers if you haven’t read it.
Phase 1: You’re Not in Kansas in Anymore
“Wh-where? Where am I?” No one answered her. There was nothing but formless black void surrounding Alita. She was cold and alone again. “Am I dead now?” she asked.
The darkness began to dissolve, and Alita felt herself racing towards something. Whether it was heaven or hell she had no clue. It didn’t really matter at this point; she’d stained her hands with enough blood to last a hundred lifetimes. That was just what she remembered since her rebirth. She’d been a warrior before that, but apart from the a few fleeting memories, and the ingrained combat experience, she had no idea what sort of person she had been.
Well, this was certainly a strange afterlife. She found herself floating in high orbit above a planet. It looked like the images and globes of the Earth that she had seen before, but it was different. A gigantic ring surrounded the planet in low orbit. But wait…it wasn’t orbiting…it was in sync with the planet’s rotation. The two halves of the elliptical ring connected at a node above the center of the North American continent. A shaft from the node descended planetside towards a floating city, and a bustling metropolis below the floating city. Another shaft ascended far into space, well past geosynchronous altitude, and ended at a giant counterweight city.
From the angle she was at, Alita could see another elevator extending from the far side of the ring, its counterweight city peeking just beyond the horizon. She was awestruck by the size of it. She’d spent years living under the floating city of Tiphares, never once really realizing with it was connected to.
The awe quickly turned to terror when she realized she was surrounded by what looked to be giant warships. Their sleek lines, dagger-like angles and the numerous weapon emplacements made it clear: these were well-honed weapons. They were engaged in combat with one another, though the flags that were painted on their hulls were unrecognizable. Who they were or why they were fighting was a mystery. And from that angle, it looked like nothing more than a sad waste of life and resources.
“Maybe that’s what my life looked like to everyone who watched,” she said to herself.
Alita’s dream soon took her aboard one of the ships. In a lot of ways, the interior reminded her of her home in the Scrapyard. The design aesthetics were similar; rugged functionality, with cluttered surfaces filled with important machinery. It was not made to look pretty. Unlike the Scrapyard, though, the ship’s interior looked new. It was missing the cobbled together appearance she was most familiar with, which gave it a strange unfamiliarity that was unsettling.
There was a cyborg waiting in the hold that Alita was exploring. Her slim frame was well armored; drab military gray ceramic plates covered the vital areas of her body. She was braced up against the wall of the hold, her arms crossed her stomach. Her eyes were closed…was she sleeping through this?
Then Alita recognized her face. The same pouty lip, the same slight nose, the same eyes and her characteristic anti-glare eyeblack…that girl could only be one person.
“That’s me! Before I lost my memory!”
“Looks like you’ll be having guests, Twilight! And since I don’t know these guests, they must be knew to Ponyville, and I know everypony in Ponyville! Even ponies that aren’t actually ponies like these weird aliens here. And since I don’t know them, that means I have to throw them a welcoming party!”
The pink party pony prepared to bolt off, but Twilight tackled her. “Whoa there, Pinkie. You’re not going anywhere, not until I make sure these…visitors…are okay. Got it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Twilight let Pinkie go, and decided to cautiously take a closer look at the aliens in her basement. They were dusted with some shattered concrete, but otherwise seemed to be none the worse for wear. Well, except for the one with the smooth black…skin? Was it skin, or was it just a covering?
“This is most peculiar,” said Twilight, shifting into hardcore scientist mode, “As far as I can tell, they seem to be of the same species. If you’ll note, they have the same morphology. They look to be bipedal, with bilateral symmetry. They have five digits on their forelimbs, one of which appears to be opposable. They’ve got hair on their heads, and forward facing eyes suggesting binocular vision. Hmm, nose, mouth, two eyes, two ears. No hair on their bodies though. Like big hairless monkeys. This one here appears to be an amputee. The poor thing is missing an arm and a hoof.”
Twilight started to brush them off, checking for life signs. “Looks like the one in the lab coat is still breathing. But I’m afraid the other one might be…well, might have passed on.”
“No silly, look closer. It’s breathing, just very slowly.”
Twilight doubted it heavily. She just figured the naïve girl was in denial about there being a dead body in the basement. Still, Twilight looked closer, listening carefully. Sure enough, she could hear and feel the air moving in and out of the black clad creature’s nose.
“That’s odd. It’s way too infrequent though, and its chest doesn’t seem to be moving.”
“Speaking of that Twilight, what do you suppose these lumps on its chest are for?” Pinkie put a hoof on one of the lumps, testing its rigidity. “The surface seems hard, but it’s got some give to it.”
“It looks like the surface is some sort of clothing. Maybe armor. Perhaps it was a guard?”
“We should probably get these things to the hospital, and make sure they’re okay.”
“That is remarkably responsible of you, Pinkie.” Twilight levitated the lab-coat wearing monkey with the wild hair, carrying it up the stairs effortlessly.
Pinkie, on the other hand, was struggling to budge the other one. “Jeesh Twilight, this one is really heavy,” she said with her teeth clenched around its collar. “How much does yours weigh?”
“About the same as an average earth pony.”
“Well, this one weighs a ton. Come help me with it.”
Pinkie was right. The other one was really heavy. With her magic drained from the botched wormhole spell, even Twilight struggled to life the hairless monkey with her magic. They ended up taking off its armor from its arm, shoulders, chest and legs to be able to move it easier.
When they arrived at the hospital, Twilight gave her sheepish explanation about why there were strange monkeys unconscious at her house. Groaning at the lavender magician’s continued mishaps, the attending nurse admitted Twilight’s new guests while runners were sent off to find the one hermit doctor in the entire area who had any knowledge of monkey anatomy.
Since she was responsible for their current condition, it took some convincing to get the hospital staff to allow Twilight to remain with the two unconscious aliens. Of course, there was no way of knowing yet whether they were actually from another planet or reality, or if they just happened to be from some distant corner of this planet. “I guess monkey will have to do for now,” she said to herself.
The monkey in the labcoat seemed to have a bit of a concussion, which was treated easily enough by the nurses. They quickly removed his clothing and found a hospital gown meant for a minotaur’s bipedal frame to give him. His maleness was rather obvious under the cloths, and that threatened Twilight’s sense of modesty. These were strange creatures alright.
Her earlier appraisal that he was hairless except for his head proved to be mistaken. The unconscious male monkey had fine hair that was barely visible all over his body, as well as slightly thicker patches on the pelvis, arm pits and chest. Faced with the strangeness of the situation, Twilight forgot her discomfort and went into full blown investigation mode. She started asking the nurse mare questions.
“Huh, so why do you think he has those patches of hair?”
“Honestly, I really don’t—“
“You think they could be for mating purposes?”
“Well, I suppose that—“
“Or maybe they are a badge of rank. He had some strange objects with him. You think he might be a chief of some kind?”
“Look kid, I really—“
“Then again, he had a lab coat. Or at least it looked like one. Maybe he’s a scientist too. Oh, that would be so cool!”
“You shouldn’t get your—“
“Or maybe he’s a scientist and a chief! That’d be so awesome !”
“Don’t jump to—“
“Oh, I can’t wait for him to wake up. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”
“Kid, I’m trying to—“
“What do you think about all of this? I mean, you’re caring for an emissary from another world!”
“THAT’S IT! SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP SO THAT I CAN WORK! HE NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION, NOT YOUR BLABBERING!”
A third voice, quite obviously male jumped into the conversation. “Actually, I am quite alright, thank you.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” replied the nurse, oblivious. “Anyway, as I was saying, he needs medical—“
The nurse pony turned around slowly, almost afraid the see what was behind her. The strange hairless male monkey sat on the edge of the bed, grinning like an imp. His white hair was slicked back, though rather disheveled. He and the nurse stared at each other for a moment in complete silence. The smirking creature slowly leaned closer to the terror struck mare, and uttered a single word: “Boo!”
“AHHHHHHH!” she cried, and bolted for the door.
“What a strange creature,” he remarked.
Twilight cleared her throat to get his attention. “So, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and I believe I accidently abducted you during one of my magical experiments.”
“So you say, dream pony. While I must say your Technicolor world is quite intriguing, to say nothing of the novelty of a talking horse—“
“Pony!”
“Whatever. As I was saying, the idea of talking pony is rather amusing, I am afraid that it is far more likely that I’ve finally cracked under the stress I’ve been under, and am currently in the middle of a psychotic episode.”
“Err…what?”
“Indeed, being a researcher of karmatron dynamics is a terribly stressful job. And a dangerous one. Which leads me to conclude that the other possibility is that I am dead or dying, and what I’m seeing is the fevered processes of a brain being starved of oxygen, or less likely this is some afterlife where I am supposed to deal with my karma.”
“Surely you can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.” He cackled ominously.
“Umm…okay…I’m not quite sure what you’re saying but I’ll just nod my head and agree.”
“It’s an early 20th century joke. One of the classics, from a great movie named Airplane ”
Twilight groaned, placing a hoof on her face in frustration. “You just keep making less and less sense.”
“You are remarkably flexible for an Equid. Well, thank you Miss Sparkle for helping me rule out this being a psychotic episode or the dream of a dying brain. See, if that were the case, then you’d know that joke too, because you’d just be a manifestation from my own brain, so I wouldn’t have to explain it to you.”
“But wouldn’t your brain also know that you knew that, and perhaps try to trick you anyway by pretending to not know?”
“Well, that is a possibility, in such situations my critical judgment faculties would be impaired or absent, preventing me from making that distinction, or discerning that you should have known what I know.”
“Well, as interesting as this is, I can assure you that you’re not dead. You’re in a town called Ponyville in a country called Equestria. You and your friend were accidently brought here by a teleportation spell that misfired, and since I’m afraid I don’t know where you’re from, I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”
“Did you just say magic?”
“Yeah. What’s the deal?”
“Put another one in the psychotic episode category.”
Twilight groaned again. “Look, I’m telling the truth.”
“I believe you believe that. But you’re also talking about magic and parallel universes. I find the former category to be nothing but hokum, and the fact that we’re both speaking English to rule out the latter.”
“We are not speaking English, we’re speaking Pony.”
“It’s my fever dream, not yours pony. Cogito ergo sum assures me of that.”
“I have a name, monkey.”
“Well I suppose from a phylogenetic point of view, the term ‘monkey’ is technically correct to describe the species Homo sapiens , I’m afraid it’s rather imprecise. And I have a name as well.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Call me Desty Nova.”
“Look, as fascinating as fighting with you to recognize that you are still alive and more or less sane, I basically just wanted to apologize for yanking you and your friend into my world?”
“My friend?” Desty Nova finally noticed the unconscious form of his archnemesis laying on the table behind him. That hellion looked so peaceful lying their unconscious. Which meant it was time to run the hell away. “Well, it’s been so nice talking to you Miss Twilight Sparkle, but I’m afraid I must be going now.” Nova shook Twilight’s hoof so briskly she kept shaking for several seconds after he released. “Well, it’s been so nice to meet you, let’s do this again never .” He stormed out of the hospital room, not caring that the hospital gown left him rather exposed.
“Yoko, report to the bridge!”
The image of Alita’s younger self awoke instantaneously, and sprung to life with practiced efficiency. She travelled forward along the long-axis of the ship, floating from handhold to handhold in the microgravity environment.
“That was my name back then,” whispered Alita.
Alita followed the image of her younger self forward. She gathered with a group of other cyborgs on the bridge. Each wore the same anti-glare patches on their cheeks, as though it were a uniform of their group. They all moved with practiced efficiency, like well-honed razors. None of the showed the slightest bit of fear as the ship buffeted from the battle outside.
To call them people would perhaps be a misuse. They’d long since sharpened themselves into living weapons. Their commander addressed them.
“We’ve been detected before we could reach the drop point. There have been casualties. But Operation Maulwurf must be completed as planned. Kammer Frau Yoko!”
Yoko snapped to attention, saluting her commander.
“You will carry out the infiltration. The rest of us will provide a diversion. We will lead their recon pickets away from the transfer orbit to Ketheres Elyion, and begin a suicide attack on the shipyards at Luna 2. We will evacuate in Zubringer pockets, and make the assault individually if necessary. Künstlers, you should detonate your nuclear devices upon infiltration.”
To Alita’s great shock, there wasn’t a single murmur of discontent. They were all going to commit suicide for their cause, and none of them protested. “Is there a war going on? How long…was I in that scrapheap?” Alita asked herself.
From the way the commander addressed his subordinates, they must have been trusted lieutenants. He had the tone of a man who was asking, not ordering. Even his final directive: “You should go dispose of your wounded. May Mars look down upon us in battle.”
The soldiers scattered to carry out their terrible deed. Alita didn’t want to watch, but she had to. Yoko swiftly floated down the corridors, past numerous weapon emplacements and important machinery. She arrived at what looked like a cybernetic medbay. Several badly damaged cyborgs were in there, awaiting repairs that would never come.
The first one had lost his body just below the solar plexus as well as both arms. Loose wires, and burnt serves dangled from the gashes through his body. As Yoko approached, he instantly recognized her mission. “W-wait! I can still fight! Just repair my limbs!” he pleaded.
Cold and impassionate, Yoko approached, swiftly drawing a ceramic combat knife. Just as swiftly, she rammed the blade straight through the damaged cyborg’s forehead. He was out like a light, dripping only a small amount of blood from his forehead as the automatic systems automatically sealed the wound. Given the length of the knife, and the depth of her thrust, the blade must have reached the cerebellum, ending him relatively quickly and painlessly.
Alita grimaced at the sight. She’d killed people before, but never comrades, and never like this.
“What was it we were fighting for again?” another wounded cyborg asked.
“Beltram, are you going to plead for your life as well?” said Yoko, glaring at him.
Beltram started unload his soul. “That last mission…to the Lunar city…their habitat dome was filled with children, hundreds of them. They were all probably refugees. And I blew them up. Tell me, Yoko, was that the struggle we believed in!? The years of training to master the Panzer Kunst!? Was it all for this!?”
“Beltram…”
“Ever since the Terraforming Wars began, things started to go awry. I believed our struggle was to protect our homes and families, and to ensure the freedom and independence of Mars, so I fought on. But now…Yoko, you’re an orphan, why do you fight? For what!?”
She glared at him impassionately. “I…I fight for my homeland.”
“I see…” tears began to well up in his eyes. “But it seems like such a waste for a brilliant fighter like you to go on a suicide mission without even getting a chance to use everything you’ve learned.”
“You talk too much Beltram!”
“Yoko, I’ve always lov—“
As fast as a bolt of lightning, she covered Beltram’s eyes with one hand, and rammed the combat knife through his skullcase. She grimaced, showing a twinge of regret for how things had to be, as she pulled the knife free. “Beltram, you disappoint me! Weakling!”
Alita catapaulted up in the bed, letting out a gasp. It must have startled someone else in the room because she instantly heard a very girly scream, as a purple blur jumped practically to the ceiling. Since anything that skittish wouldn’t be a threat, Alita ignored it. She assessed herself for injuries, and upon finding no new ones, she lay back down on the bed, staring at the brightly colored ceiling. Wherever this was, it was a cheery place.
“Jeesh! You scared the blazes out of me!” said a voice at her bedside.
Alita’s memory of the conclusion of the fight with Nova was hazy. She had just escaped the Ouroboros, had a few seconds of consciousness, and then was out like a light again, into some sort of nightmare/memory. She looked to see who it was that must have rescued her. A smiling purple unicorn with big cheerful eyes was standing at her bedside.
Okay, maybe the dream wasn’t over.
“I’m still dreaming aren’t I?”
“Funny you should say that, because your friend said the exact same thing. So, how are you feeling? Do you have a name?”
Friend? Who the hell could she mean by that. It could wait a moment. “Well, my head is pounding, and I think I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“That’s…unfortunate. You gave us a scare for a while. We didn’t know how to treat you, and for a while we thought you were dead. You’ve got the strangest skin…it’s almost metallic, like a dragon’s scales but softer.”
Alita sat up in the bed, swiveling her legs to dangle over the side to get a better look at the strange equine interloper who wanted to interrogate her. Even though she was effectively naked now that her battle dress uniform and gear had been removed, she was only slightly more anatomically correct than a Barbie doll, so she didn’t pay attention to her modesty.
“Um, did you just say ‘dragon’s scales’?”
“Um, yeah. Why wouldn’t I have? Do they not have dragons where you’re from?”
“Last I checked, they existed only in fairy tales. Then again, we don’t have talking ponies where I’m from either.” Alita looked around at her Technicolor surroundings for a moment. This place was just so cheery, she felt out of place. “Um, so where is here anyway?”
“You’re in a town called Ponyville, in the country of Equestria. My name is Twilight Sparkle. What’s yours?”
“Alita. Nice to meetcha.” Alita held out a hand to Twilight. Twilight cautiously extended a hoof to her. They shook hands/hooves, smiling at each other. “So where is here relative to where I’m from, and how did I get here?”
“I’m afraid I’m kind of responsible for that. I was working on a teleportation spell which seemed to have backfired spectacularly. Instead of the other end opening in my backyard, it opened up right where you and your friend were standing. Which is how you ended up here.”
“A spell?”
Twilight nodded.
Alita got up from the bed, and walked towards the room’s one window with surprising grace for someone with a peg-leg. She opened the shades, and gazed out at the bright sunny day and the lush green fields of Ponyville.
“Um…this looks nothing like Earth…are you saying this is another dimension?”
“Probably. Or at least another planet from yours. You’re taking this a lot better than your friend did.
“You keep talking about my friend…who are you talking about?”
“Oh, he’s a monkey like you, though he’s got normal skin. He’s got a white mane, though it’s pretty disheveled, and a purple dot on his forehead. I think he said his name was ‘Desty Nova’, or something like that. He took off a while ago. He might have gone slightly mad from the shock.”
A pit formed in Alita’s cybernetic gut. If she could have sweat, she would have been sweating bullets at the thought of Desty Nova being even more insane than he already was.
Phase 2: Cyborg Confusion
Hyper Future Pony
Phase 2: Cyborg Confusion
There was one thing that Alita simply couldn’t get enough of. The view out of the hospital window was simply breathtaking. The sights were unlike anything in her dismal world. Trees were a rarity in the Scrapyard; the whole industrial concrete and metal environment seemed to be corrosive to anything that lived. The more innocent it was, the greater the relish it took in snuffing it out. The surrounding countryside was a monotony of endless rolling plains covered with vast industrial farms. Only things useful to the Factory were allowed to survive for over a thousand kilometers around Tiphares.
Coming from such a sterilized environment, the beauty of even a simple place like Ponyville was almost too much for her. The green fields in and around the town were decked with a wonderful variety of flowers in all the colors of the rainbows. Butterflies lazily fluttered around in the warm afternoon air.
The trees were a sight to behold themselves: wonderfully colorful fruit trees, tall and stout oak trees, and even tall pines! All of it was so strange and fantastic. Earth had once held such treasures, as the fragmented remains of human records testified to. But so much of it had been lost that now it seldom lived except in books.
Alita sat on windowsill of her hospital room, her back resting against one side of the frame while she watched the golden sun slowly set. While the room itself was silent, the sounds of the hustle and bustle of Ponyville life filtered its way in. The way the bird song mixed with the cheerful voices of the ponies below was almost like music.
Twilight simply watched from inside the room. She’d never seen someone so transfixed by a sunset before. Which puzzled her greatly.
The gears in her head whirred incessantly, as she thought about just how alien her visitor might be. For all Twilight knew, Alita came from a world without a sun. “Could it be possible? ” she asked herself. It seemed strange to think about, and highly counterintuitive, but she honestly couldn’t rule it out. This was the sort of thinking that made her brain hurt. So much that she almost missed the stream of silent tears running down Alita’s cheeks.
“Is…Is that crying? ” she thought. Twilight moved a little closer, silently sneaking across the lacquered wood floor.
Her eyes hadn’t be betrayed her. Alita was crying.
“Hey, are you alright?”
Alita startled, nearly falling out of the window. Deftly catching her balance, she whipped around to see if there was a threat behind her.
The purple pony could perhaps be a fearsome creature, even if she didn’t look it. But she seemed friendly, even concerned. With a sigh of relief, Alita concluded that the Twilight Sparkle creature was not a threat. “Oh, it’s just you. Don’t scare me like that.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you…sorry,” the sheepish lavender pony replied.
Alita smiled. It was a thin smile, but still a friendly one. There hadn’t been a lot to really, honestly smile about in her life for a while. Most of the happy moments she’d thought she’d found ended up being snatched away moments later.
Her overture seemed to work. Twilight smiled back, her awkwardness melting away. Encouraged, Alita extended an open hand to Twilight, hoping that gesture could cross species and culture gap. It seemed to work, since Twilight inched closer. Alita beckoned her closer, flicking her fingers back to her palm a couple times in succession. The universal “come hither” gesture seemed to work, since Twilight hopped up to sit in the windowsill across from Alita.
“You don’t have to be shy,” said Alita, “I don’t bite…well, at least without good reason, and you seem like a friend anyway.”
Twilight’s ears perked up. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she crossed off “Peaceful first contact with aliens” from her bucket list. “Oh, I’m so glad! I mean, I’ve never seen anypony quite like you, so I had no idea what to expect.”
Alita nodded silently. She was looking out the window at the sunset, occasionally glancing back to Twilight while she talked.
“It’s quite the view, isn’t it?”
Alita nodded again, letting out a wistful sigh.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, and stop me if this sounds stupid, but is there a sun where you’re from? Where is that, by the way?”
What kind of a question was that? Alita stared at Twilight for a moment, cocking an eyebrow in confusion. “Oh, there’s a sun alright. It’s just that I haven’t stopped to appreciate it for a long time. And honestly, this seems like a nice place…certainly a lot nicer then where I am from. I might as well consider this a vacation.”
The stump of Alita’s right arm caught Twilight’s attention with that comment. The state of Alita’s body, and the unnatural look to the wound really drove home her comment. Twilight winced looking at it, and then remembered that it wasn’t polite to state, sheepishly covering her tracks by asking a new question. “So…that’s interesting. It must be quite the view to move you to tears though.”
She was a little bit embarrassed that Twilight noticed, and the blush on her cheeks showed it. “Oh, it wasn’t really that…” she sighed, watching the sun finally dip below the horizon, giving a beautiful red glow to the clouds scattered across the sky. “It’s just that there was a boy I once knew… he would have loved to have seen this view. But he’s gone now.”
Awkward…
Twilight winced. “Oh…I had no idea. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
“Hey, don’t be.” Alita grinned, trying to wipe the sadness from her face. The last thing these people needed was her dumping all of her angst on them. She’d persevered as along as she had by keeping moving forward, and getting back up every time she’d been knocked down. “Besides, I think I’ve done enough moping for a while. So, I’ve got two questions for you, Twilight Sparkle.”
This monkey’s mood whiplash was epic enough to almost give Twilight actual whiplash. “Okay, shoot.”
“First, I am starving: where can we get some chow? Honestly, I could eat hay at this point—which is not part of my species’ usual diet, I’ll let you know. Second, you’ve been staring at my wounds pretty hard: I take it that this isn’t a usual sort of thing around here?”
“You are sharp as a tack, monkey,” said Twilight, embarrassed that she’d been had. “Well, I think we can still get food from the hospital cafeteria. I’ll order us something good if you like. And, yes, it’s not often that someone comes in here as injured as you are. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not constantly writhing in agony.” Twilight’s overactive imagination sprung to life, puzzling over just what it would have taken to take someone apart like that. “Do you mind if you ask what happened to you?”
Alita chuckled. “Oh, I guess…It’s kind of a strange story. I’ll tell you after we’ve gotten some food. Just get what you think is good. My body is built to subsist off just about anything.”
Twilight laughed as well, happy to have her guest warm up to her so well. This Alita was a strange creature, but still quite friendly. “Well, that’s good. I was afraid you’d have strange dietary needs, like eating raw flesh or something hard to accommodate.”
Alita’s mouth hung open slightly, as she raised a finger to interject, but then decided against it. Dropping the omnivore bombshell in a community of herbivorous prey species could probably wait.
Twilight disappeared for a few minutes. She returned levitating two identical trays of food. Oblivious to her new friend’s reaction, she trotted in happy as can be. “So, I got us some hay fries, fresh salad, hummus and corn chips, and some peach pie for desert. I hope you enjoy it.”
Alita sat there, absolutely dumbfounded for a moment.
“Um…how exactly do you do that?”
Twilight nonchalantly set down one of the trays on Alita’s lap. “Do what? Oh, that’s right…he’d already mentioned that you didn’t have magic where you came from. Which, I might add, I find hard to believe. How does anything get done without magic?”
“Machines mostly. Though occasionally there’s some manual labor to be done.” Alita nibbled at the hay fries, trying not to be impolite. It was about as tasty and nutritious as saw dust to her, but she figured she’d at least make the effort.
“The doctors here were pretty baffled by you and your friend.” Alita winced at hearing “friend”.
“Oh really?” Alita replied nonchalantly, trying her best not to be alarmed at the prospect of a war criminal like Desty Nova running amok among this quaint, arcadian world.
“Yeah, none of them have any experience in treating monkeys, so they had to send for Doctor Barns. He’ll probably be here soon to take a look at your injuries; maybe he can help you.”
Welp, looks like that awkward moment was coming. “Yeah…about that…you see, I don’t really—”
The door swung open, interrupting Alita’s confession. A disheveled, middle aged male earth pony limped in. He wasn’t dressed in any professional attire, and his slightly grizzled face seemed to be frozen in a perpetual melancholy.
He approached Alita and studied her for a moment. He flashed an impish grin for a moment, before prodding at her with his cane, and not gently. In spite of his obvious fleeting joy at messing with a patient, there remained a clinical detachment as studied her reactions.
“Ah, you must be Doctor Barns!” said Twilight. “So…do you think you can help him?”
That was plenty to distract Alita from the doctor’s prodding. She glared incredulously at the unicorn, but too taken aback to say anything.
“No, I’m quite happy to say there’s nothing I can do here, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure the bar has already missed me enough as it is.” With a smirk, he turned towards the door.
“Wait, I don’t understand…you’re supposed to be the expert here on the hard cases, and you’re the only one with any experience treating monkeys,” Twilight half shouted. “Why can’t you help?”
“I’m a doctor, not a mechanic.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your friend here is an oversized clockwork toy. Though, and I grudgingly say it, a very finely constructed one. So I suppose I can’t fault you for failing to see the obvious.” Doctor Barns, balanced on his cane, watching for Twilight’s reaction.
“Do you really mean that?”
“Actually, I really don’t. I just thought I’d give this whole politeness thing a go. Oh, you meant whether it’s an automaton…I’m serious as a heart attack on that one.”
Alita left her perch like flash, and in an instant she was towering looming over the scruffy doctor menacingly. “Look pal, I don’t know where you get off on treating people like this, but it’s not happening on my watch.”
Rather than fear, the doctor seemed to be best by ravenous curiosity. Alita wasn’t sure what to make of it as he circled her, examining her intently.
“Now that’s very interesting…so I guess I was wrong in a way. She’s more than a mere windup doll it seems. Maybe a golem, but those are just creatures of legend anymore.”
This was going to be a tough one to explain. Even in her own time, a world half-empty that was pervaded by the scraps of advanced technology of a bygone golden age, at best Alita only dimly understood how her own cybernetic body functioned. Trying to explain cybernetics to these rubes, who seemed to have steam power at best, and tended to rely on magic would just be impossible. Even the doctor, who more or less recognized her for what she was, had clumsily fumbled for an inappropriate metaphor to make sense of it. She was neither a clockwork windup doll nor a golem brought to life by magic, but that seemed to be the only way that anyone in this world could make sense of it.
“Well, Twilight,” said Alita, pausing a moment to rummage around for the right wording to explain things. “Well, this is going to be difficult to explain, but please, bear with me. What the doctor is saying is somewhat right. My body is almost entirely artificial, and the only part of me that is still flesh and blood is my brain. Everything else has been replaced by machine. And where I’m from, there are a whole lot of people like me.”
A heavy silence fell over the room. Dr. Barn looked on with practiced disinterest, but Twilight’s keen analytical mind puzzled and puzzled.
“I…I don’t understand.” Twilight began thinking out loud, pacing back and forth nervously. “So…if he’s shaped like a monkey, but his body has been replaced by machine, how is he still alive?”
“Um, Twilight, I’m not a ‘he’…” Alita tried to interject.
“Shouldn’t his brain require blood to function? And if it requires blood, wouldn’t he require a heart and lungs as well? How can you make those out of gears, levers and pulleys? It just doesn’t make any sense! And how does he move without anything powering him? I thought he said there was no magic where he came from? And somehow he eats and breaths very much like a pony…you can’t make machines like this…you just…just can’t. And if his body was replaced, that means oh dear I think I’ve gone cross-eyed…”
Indeed she had. Twilight soon deflated, wilting to the floor.
Alita hobbled over to Twilight, kneeling down to check on her. “Hey…are you alright?”
Twilight just laid there on her stomach not answering. Finally, Alita patted her head ever so gently, fearful of her own strength. “I said ‘are you alright?’”
Twilight finally acknowledged, looking up at Alita’s face. “How do you work?” she asked meekly.
“I really wish I could tell you, but I really don’t know too well myself. But, if it helps, I guess I could show you what’s underneath my skin.”
Alita opened the release on her chest cavity, grimacing at the inherent morbidity of her project. She was literally spilling her guts for someone who had been a perfect stranger a few hours ago. It was a difficult operation with only one hand, but still manage able. Her chest opened, almost like a zipper, along a seam in the middle of her torso. The two sides of her flexible outer armor parted with minimal difficulty, revealing the sterile internal machinery.
“It’s a lot like the inside of any animal…just less messy I guess.” As she talked, she pointed to the various visible components. “These two cylinders, arrayed symmetrically, are my lungs. They work very much like yours, but they also carry a small reserve of compressed oxygen, so I can function in areas without air for a while. This one between them is my heart. It’s connected to my digester, as well as the lungs. Really, their only purpose is to keep my brain alive.”
Twilight studied the anatomy demonstration silently for a moment. “That really doesn’t tell me how you work…but thanks for trying.” She smiled with palpable relief. “So what’s that one?” she asked, pointing her hoof at a compact, well armored sphere in her lower torso.
“Well, that’s probably the hardest one to explain…that’s my fusion reactor.”
Twilight’s smile twisted with confusion.
“Ah yeah…well, it takes Helium-3, and through inertial confinement, causes a nuclear fusion reaction to occur. The Helium-3 combines with deuterium to produce electricity, which powers my body.”
“I am pretty sure those were words, or at least they sound like words, but I literally didn’t understand anything that just came out of your mouth.”
Alita shrugged, before closing her chest cavity and helping Twilight back to her feet.
Alita walked back towards her favored perch in the window, but Twilight waited, watching her walk with rapt curiosity. It was amazing how she could walk so effortlessly on just two legs. Bipeds were pretty rare in Equestria, and Twilight hadn’t really noticed until now just how complex of a balancing act it had to be.
Alita’s legs were quite long compared to her upper body, and while her feet were larger than a pony’s hooves, they seemed inadequate to balance such a high center of gravity. But as she looked closer, Twilight started to see just how it worked. It was almost too faint to notice, but what looked like muscles and tendons beneath Alita’s artificial skin were constantly adjusting, ever so slightly shifting her weight and always keeping her center of gravity over and in between her feet, whether she was standing or walking.
As Alita walked, she seemed to roll from the heel of her feet to her toes, shifting each leg forward like a pendulum. This was a lot different from the plodding gait that Spike walked at. And for some strange reason, Alita’s hips swung from side to side a bit, in time with the pace of her steps.
“Are you enjoying the view?”
“Yes, actually it’s quite interesting.”
A giggle followed. After a short bout of confusion, Twilight realized the trap she walked into. “Nonononono…not anything like that! It’s just, well…you walk funny.”
Alita giggled again. “You really are high strung, Twilight. Don’t worry, I was just teasing you. It’s just that I don’t get checked out a lot by other girls. Especially aliens.”
“Wait a minute…you’re a girl?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that for a while now.”
Alita resumed eating her meal. It was difficult doing it with only one hand, but the hummus and corn chips were delectable. She munched loudly on them while watching Twilight try to extricate herself from the embarrassment.
There could only be one conclusion reached from this. It was time to abruptly change the subject and never speak of this again. “Well, what a coincidence, I’m a girl too…So you’re like a robot, right?”
“Not a robot, a cyborg. My brain is still human.”
“Are humans like a type of monkey?
“I guess you could say that. So, why’d you think I was male?”
Alita’s catlike grin was perhaps more unsettling than dwelling on the embarrassment. “Well, it’s just that you don’t seem…well, very feminine compared to us. You’re not smaller or more delicately built than your friend was. And your voice doesn’t sound very feminine…too husky and serious.”
There was an awkward silence for almost a minute.
“I always knew I was a tomboy, but I didn’t think it was this bad. So, I guess this will be your first lesson about humans, Twilight.” Alita set down her plate on the window sill, and motioned towards her body. “My body is artificial, but it is designed to look normal in shape. I’m actually quite feminine in shape. Hell, it even has breasts, though they’re absolutely useless!”
To underscore her point, Alita poked at the supple mounds on her chest. “These aren’t going to be much good for nursing babies.”
“Breasts? You mean like…mammary glands? Teats? The things a mother feeds her infant with?”
“What else would they be?”
“Give me a break, how was I supposed to know? For all I knew they were a flotation device!”
