She was nervous. Of course she was, she had every right to be. What was at stake was more than just a further investment into her work, but the penalty of what might go wrong when she could not continue further. The effort she’d made for this many years had to count for something- it was too dangerous to let be if she did not. How would she go on, knowing what she knew? Even if all her work destroyed, paperwork and data rendered into nothingness, the steps of how to get there would still remain within her mind. What she had created had to be put to good use lest it be spent towards bitter ends; she knew not of an in-between.

The presentation room was merely an empty lab kept separate and not put to daily use, all available equipment within only brought in so that it might add to the presentation. Nothing here was of consequence lest it be ensured so by the developer, and the developer today just so happened to be herself. That’s fine, she didn’t need much more than a microscope, a box, and the crippled figure of a three-legged rabbit within; a bit macabre when she considered what was likely to happen, but it would do the job once the time came. Her work would do a good enough job at displaying what it could do with little more than simple deployment. I hope.

Twilight Sparkle couldn’t suppress the shudder as she saw the two most important people in her career field entered on into the presentation room, one dressed as she were in a lab coat while the other wore the customary suit and tie one might expect of an executive of his caliber. Again, not surprising; Mr. Abernathy was the most important name when it came to this sector of the country, either holed up in his office speaking to fellow execs or descending from on high to gaze upon the newest breakthroughs the company had to –potentially- offer. Today, he’d been given the invitation by Dr. Vanda to come down and see what one within his region had managed to produce; she just had to make sure that he understood just how valuable the item was that she had to present.

A whole lot of us have been here before. Just describe what it is that you’ve made and answer their questions, don’t try to make it seem like you’ve cured cancer. Vanda’s words had come the day prior, trying to soothe the worrisome woman from descending into her easily-found pit of panic. Give a basic description of its capabilities, answer questions as they come. You’ll never be able to do more than that.

The problem being that her work could potentially cure cancer, if she was given more time to work on it. It could cure any disease, revert any degeneration, all but bring the dead back to life-! Twilight had to not let her fervor get the best of her, force mind to remain calm. She could not be anything but the consummate professional now, especially with zero hour right before her.

“Mr. Abernathy,” Dr. Vanda began, gesturing towards the young woman that stood the far side of a clear box possessing only an amputated rabbit, “This is Miss Twilight Sparkle, part of Bioengineering division. She’s been one of our best and brightest in the realm of cutting edge prosthetics since her arrival five years ago, to include work on the Terraform Mk. II. I’m sure her work will be of great interest to you.”

“Ah, one of our best and brightest, then,” Mr. Abernathy said, greeting the trembling Twilight with an outstretched hand and a disarming lack of hostility. "The Department of Defense has been incredibly grateful for our newest design, just so you know. Considering its release only being last year, I’m surprised to hear one so young having made such contributions.”

Twilight shook his hand- and gave a start as she regarded that friendly smile. Corporate big-wigs were supposed to be greedy, money-loving monsters, not human beings! He was treating her as though she were worth something, even if it was only to amount to an act rather than anything genuine. A quick glance over to Vanda and was gifted with a nod; she should try to keep the rhythm going. “It’s- it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she said tremulously. “I’m- my brother was a benefactor from the Terraform 2, so I was happy to work on its design.”

“Your brother?” Mr. Abernathy gave a start. “Hell’s bells, he didn’t fight in the Iron War, did he?”

“As one of the Army’s Green Berets, actually,” Twilight answered, “which helped influence my work in college. I wanted to build a better prosthetic for men like him; they deserved something that could feel like their real body rather than an extension of it. When adding the fibre-plated gel-”

“The DOD has been grateful for our work since war’s end. If we can continue further, the better,” Mr. Abernathy said warmly; he was ensuring a young and fearful scientist could keep pace and not fall temptation to a million distractions, aware of the task at hand rather than a million that were still waiting. “And now I’m told that you have something far more impressive to offer than a carbon-fiber leg.”

“Y- Yes, sir. At least I hope so.” Twilight needed to see the nerves removed from her body, extracted and put elsewhere so that she could see this presentation done correctly. Goodness, why hadn’t she tried to make use of her own work for this matter- beyond the obvious of it being untested on a human being yet? “If you’ll kindly direct your attention to this box before you…”

Mr. Abernathy’s expression became one of confusion as he took note of the glass box’s contents, the trembling figure of a rabbit with an absent hindpaw, snowy in pelt and the kind that were commonly used for lab testing there for his eyes to take in and little else to be seen. “I assume you are not trying to showcase animal husbandry,” he said drily. “I don’t think Ionis has much use for breeding.”

“No. No! Oh goodness, no, I’m sorry. Let- let me trying- try again,” Twilight said, losing all nerve in the matter of an instant and doing what she could to recover. This was such a terrible start to her presentation, she had to recover now before this massive fumble destroyed her! “I am sorry, if you would be so kind- the microscope, please, would you take a look the contents on the slide?”

A sideways glance at Dr. Vanda, who gave an encouraging nod, and Mr. Abernathy put his eye to the microscope so as to gaze at the contents held within. Small, tiny beings with hardly enough distinction to be seen that could offer more detail than the miniscule legs they seemed to possess. Whatever they were swam about, their miniscule movement enough to see them flitting this way and that, yet not in the random and chaotic rhythm that bacteria seemed to possess. No, these indeed were not fully natural; something about them was distinctly off.

“What exactly am I looking at here?” Mr. Abernathy inquired of Twilight.

She couldn’t suppress the tremor, no matter how much she tried; so much of the world was going to change after she saw the truth be brought to light. “Those, sir,” she began, “are nanites.”

For a moment, Mr. Abernathy seemed to not understand. It was a foreign word to his consciousness, at least to what dealt with his day-in and day-out. But memories of science fiction were not to be fully buried, words spoken of in film and novel now ringing clear as day- and fully connected with the microscopic beings before him. “These…” Mr. Abernathy breathed, “these are machines.”

Twilight took that hoarseness of voice as encouragement. Awe or fear? She knew not, but she had to take advantage of it. “Microscopic robots, hardly any different from the size of any blood cell one might find within the human body. Just as capable of traveling through the bloodstream as anything else might, and capable of whatever we wish it to be. Our codename for the device is, at least for the timebeing, ‘Project Valiant.’”

“Miss Twilight’s work has been done in conjunction with DARPA, sir,” Dr. Vanda offered, ensuring that further weight be added to the mix. “Once we were made aware of their newest updates to micro-USB’s, Miss Twilight stepped in and saw a natural step forward in their research.”

“My god. A robot that small,” Mr. Abernathy proclaimed, occasionally darting down so as to take a look at the work held beneath the intense zoom of the microscope before him. “This creation –Project Valiant- what are you hoping it does?”

Now came the truly terrifying part; she would actually have to explain, in detail, just what sort of brilliantly nightmarish abilities her work now possessed- no, not possessed. What it could become if she were given the time and money she needed. “Well, sir,” Twilight said, “we’re hoping that Project Valiant fully replaces any need for prosthetics permanently. Rather, it would actually develop a synthesized limb that would adapt to an individual human body and be recognized by the human brain as an extension of a limb rather than anything from the outside being grafted on.”

Mr. Abernathy sat there for a moment. Eyes switched between microscope, crippled rabbit, and the scientist who had brought it all together, he wondering perhaps how it all mixed. There was a menagerie of information to take in, perhaps a good deal of it beyond his mind. Twilight didn’t seem to be the arrogant or cruel type; he would have to push further if he wanted to know more, and perhaps only one question at a time.

“You say- it will replace prosthetics,” he murmured. “Gods above, how?”

“Well,” Twilight began, “we created Project Valiant with four simple commands in mind: Target, Delete, Replace, Replicate. The idea is that the nanite would work alongside the brain as a means of creating new cell production. It would begin by targeting dead flesh in a specific area- say, a limb that has been severed. Once focused on a specific region of the human body, it would begin to delete any necrotic or non-reproducing cells in the area that could potentially prevent the body from reconstructing any lost material. And since it would likely have no limb that it could attach to, Project Valiant would then recreate a limb that is designed by the brain’s memory of its lost material, thus replacing and a part of the body that has either been deformed or destroyed by extreme trauma, with self-replication coming into play so as to ensure that any damage that the synthesized limb might experience can be corrected instantaneously. Therefore, it would behave no differently from the body in self-repair.”

Mr. Abernathy was smart enough to know he’d been given a great deal of information in a short span; a potentially world-changing device so small that he couldn’t see it with the naked eye, one that could actually heal disfigurements naturally-! “Could it replicate skin cells, then?” He asked. “Completely adapt to the human body?”

Twilight pulled a face; this would be the first drawback to her work, the first negative. “Not yet. That’s simply too complex for the nanite to accomplish. We can’t get it to replicate DNA even when given the full processing power of a computer,” she answered. “But it can put itself in place of any lost tissue and harden itself into a solidified mass, therefore replicating the properties of any body mass that was lost. So long as the brain responds to it as though it were a normal cell, there would be no rejection by the nervous system to be found- not even irritation when muscle is put against nanite material.”

“So for now, it can work as a new limb. An arm or a leg,” Mr. Abernathy assessed; he tried to speak casually but his expression betrayed the wonder, the excitement that came from such an object. “How quickly would it respond to damage? Say, if a soldier was deployed with one of these machines as part of their medical arsenal?”

“That would depend on the size and body composition of the person in question,” Twilight responded. Turning from her spectator, she moved over to a singular needle that seemed completely devoid of material- yet only to the naked eye. Through a tiny slit in the box did she poke the metal tip through, another hand pressing a glass wall in so that the anxious rabbit might not escape from her point. A scurrying of fur, a quick dart of the syringe into flesh, then done. Sorry, little guy. I don’t know another way. “So long as the blood is pumping, however, it will have an effect. So if you’ll wait a few minutes for the rabbit’s physical composition to respond…”

“This technology,” Mr. Abernathy murmured, “It could- it would all but trivialize modern combat in an instant. You’d have a soldier that was nigh-invincible, especially if he was already injected with the material. Could it be ordered to remain dormant?”

One step at a time, please! The executive’s excitement was apparently, and justifiably so- but he was moving too quickly, getting ahead of Twilight’s presentation and reaching the drawbacks she hadn’t managed to rectify just yet. She needed to sell the positives from this, not just sell the product! “Our basic hopes is that Project Valiant would, in its early stages, make any prosthetic redundant. Rather than an external object being physically attached to the body, the nanites would produce a limb that could respond to the brain’s commands just as a natural limb would: instantaneously, without the necessity for conscious thought, it would even be able to replicate the pain receptors. A fully functional, totally natural body segment,” Twilight continued. “But, with further research, and further developments in micro-USB technology, Project Valiant could also be designed as a fully-functioning medical cure against some of the world’s most deadly diseases. Cancer cells could be deliberately targeted all across the body and deleted; tumors would be attacked without the need for radiation, thus freeing the body from harmful side effects. Even for more trivial diseases, a shorter lifespan of the nanite could be programmed so that it would intercept and destroy non-life-threatening material that cause extreme pain; broken bones could be healed in minutes, rather than weeks or months.”

“This is incredible. Assuming it works, of course, this could put Ionis on the forefront of medical research for the next- century…” Mr. Abernathy’s excited rambling was not given the chance to last for long, his attentions instead turned from the imaginings of his own mind and back to the contents of the plexiglass box which they surrounded. The crippled rabbit that had been injected with almost nothingness was no longer a visual curiosity for their viewing displeasure.

It hobbled away as it felt the first tricklings of movement from the flesh where wound had been. Animal instinct could not quite be overridden even by benign intent, the forays of metal movement from within muscle tissue creeping forth through skin and fur. A thin stream that seemed to move like a river- no, a stone in the flow of water. But it took form, intentional shape, an outline of flesh rather than flesh itself. Infinitesimal fluctuations of movement were joining together in the great outflow, so many moving pieces that to try and focus upon just one was an impossibility beyond imagining. The rabbit was trying to kick away, trying to escape the outpouring its own body was emitting, but still did the great linework move forward, filling in the gaps where nothing had once been. Outline and silhouette were disappearing with the birth of each new creation, metallic cells streaming forth and interlocking; plated material was being made, a hollow form that knew itself and yet the body did not were fusing together, the terrified rabbit leaping away- and leap it now did. Fully limbed, powerful body even without the power of internal muscle within, crashing against plexiglass and frame of its cage, no wound or hindrance to stop its maddened movements now. For gone was its crippled emptiness, the stitches that had come to life where severed limb had once been, now made whole as this rippling, pulsating mass of moving material tried to settle and see itself fully fused so that the inner workings of flesh, muscle, and bone might be renewed next.

Mr. Abernathy gaped. He truly gaped, eyeing this once-trembling and motionless rabbit move about so freely as though this newly sprouted limb had been part of its body since birth. It could leap, run, frolic as much as it wished, all without hindrance. All because of one nanite, one façade of a cell, its body had willingly regrown a limb in only the span of a few minutes.

“And… and if it were implanted into a human body,” he whispered. “A normal human body, what would- what would happen?”

“It’s not possible to give a completely accurate answer,” Twilight said –but even she could not fully keep away her smile- “a human body could regrow a lost limb in less than twelve hours.”

There was nowhere for him to sit, hardly much of a wall for him to lean against. But he found a table, something to rest upon so that he might watched the incensed chaos that was the rabbit who had been given its hindlimb back again and now fought for freedom with its every breath. “My god…”

She knew not that it had ever happened. The movement had been so surreptitious that the barest brushings of fingers against material had been all that it had taken for the microphone to descend into the pocket of her labcoat. So lightweight that she likely wouldn’t even feel its presence even if her fingers were to peruse the contents. But would she even bother? Doubtful. The biggest fish to fry would be before her, not a suspicion she wouldn’t even possess; let her talk freely, be bolstered by the words of a supposed friend and divulge every secret without knowing any better. The more confident she felt, the more Twilight was likely to speak openly and let the inner workings of her work be made known.

The earpiece was thrown to the desk; she’d actually done it, the damned thing had worked! After all that theory and practice and hoping, Twilight had actually managed to get her project to function. It was brilliant, terrifying, absolutely fantastic-

And worth so much money!

Ngao would have to act swiftly. He knew that the longer he waited, the more protections there would be surrounding her research. Probably something that would be moved from this smaller facility to the bigger research center out in the Mesa, a safer presence away from prying eyes. So if he was to help his contractors bridge the gap between them and Ionis, and earn his considerably massive paycheck for doing so, it would have to be soon.

“Let’s see…” Mr. Ngao had ensured to make copies of the entire lab’s work schedule a few days prior. The workbook had been out in the open, practically begging for him to take a look. With Twilight taking a few days off so as to visit with her family, the opportunity would never be more perfect ever again. He had to take advantage.

Umbra Industries, you had better pay well for this, Ngao hissed within his mind. There would danger aplenty when faced with potential charges of corporate espionage.

Author's Note

I've never tried anything like this. But I found myself poring over some rather grotesque material and found myself wondering a few things.
Here's to seeing if I can even manage to create anything interesting after all.

Enjoy, I guess.