Danger Bee/Vladislava

By captainborgue

• January 25, 2016

Age: 28

Gender: Female

Species: Unicorn

Appearance: Danger Bee has a black pelt with yellow splotches on her haunches and yellow bands on her front left leg just above the hoof, in a fading gradient until her elbow joint where the black fades in. Her right foreleg is robotic, as is the left side of her face and left ear, starting at the muzzle and continuing back to the base of her neck. There are other patches of cybernetic implants along her back and abdomen as well, giving the impression of a zigzag pattern across most of her body. Initially, Bee tried to cover the implants with a synthetic polymer skin to appear more ponylike, but in a fit of semi-rampancy she removed all of the coverings for her installed cybernetic parts.

Cutie Mark: A stylized bumbleebee that appears to be on fire with green flames. Bee believes it illustrates her passion for arthropods, while the VLADISLAVA construct insists it reflects the inherent inferiority of organic life.

Personality: Danger Bee was always a bit quirky- she spent a lot of time engrossed in things that were, well, gross to other ponies. Bugs, worms, molds, that sort of thing. Insects were a passion for her starting at a very young age, and her father was more than happy to encourage this inquisitive nature. <br /><br />Partially because he was of the inquisitive, scientifically minded variety himself, and partially because he was a robotics expert who had been trying to build tiny robots linked by a single AI construct, similar to ants or honeybees, in an effort to solve the specialization problem- robots tended to be really good at a specific task, but not so much at activities outside that rigid design. A swarm of small robots, acting in concert as directed by a linked AI, would be able to adapt to a variety of situations. He named this AI construct VLADISLAVA, after a Terran name.<br /><br />When the accident made it clear that Danger Bee would not survive without cybernetic enhancement, her father determined that creating an AI construct from scratch would take too long. The various functions that were required to keep Bee alive were complex, and would take weeks to build and code a construct from scratch that could handle that workload. But VLADISLAVA was essentially complete, and designed to control multiple elements at once and multitask to handle a variety of duties. He decided to install VLADISLAVA into his own daughter, after hastily adding vocal processes and speech patterns to the program, so that Bee would be able to communicate with it and in so doing have conscious control.<br /><br />Since then, Danger Bee has had a mixed personality- with the bug-loving pony and the AI construct alternating control sporadically. Bee is mostly in charge, but in moments of high stress or emotional outbursts, the VLADISLAVA construct can take over. While not typically dangerous, it can be rather confusing at times, especially given the construct's lack of social graces and complete devotion to the task at hand. This makes Bee appear to be utterly obsessive.

Backstory: Danger Bee was born in Stalliongrad, which prior to the tech boom was something of an industrial backwater. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father never quite got past the loss. With the new technological revolution, he poured himself into the pursuit, which left Bee to get by on her own a lot. There were always insect colonies in her father's workshop, so Bee spent a lot of time with bugs.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this tendency towards neglect only increased as time wore on. One day, not long before Bee's 18th birthday, she was feeding the Siafu colony when she lost her balance and fell in. Siafu, also known as Driver Ants, were a highly predatory species, and attacked Bee. By the time her father returned, what he saw was more than a little horrifying. <br /><br />Amazingly, Bee was still alive, although in terrible physical condition. Timely intervention and the installation of cybernetics kept her alive, but she did not regain consciousness. Desperate to find something to save her, her father installed the experimental hive-mind emulating AI construct he had been developing, code named VLADISLAVA, or VLAD for short.<br /><br />It worked- to a point. Bee woke up two weeks later, but it wasn't only Bee- VLAD was there too. And while Bee was fond of insects and crawly things, VLAD retained the hive control over swarm bots- or to better illustrate the dichotomy, robot crawlies.