Sprocket

By . eris .

• April 10, 2013




Age: 20

Gender: Female

Species: Unicorn

Appearance: She’s a lithe little pony, a bit shorter than most, with a flyaway red-and-orange streaked mane. Her coat is a paler shade of orange, and she’s often spattered in oil and grease. There’s an earring in her left ear, but other than that she wears no jewelry. Her mane is usually drawn back in a loose ponytail, to keep it out of her eyes as she’s working. Sprocket’s muscular back legs are often used to kick apart car doors, so don’t get on her bad side. For such a little pony, she can pack a nasty kick with those back babies.

Cutie Mark: Sprocket received her cutie mark one lazy afternoon after her father had closed up the machine shop for the afternoon. Left alone and bored, Sprocket began taking apart several of her father’s old inventions and spreading them out over the kitchen table. An hour later, covered from horn to hoof in oil, Sprocket had created a rather intriguing invention which could fly, and chopped potatoes. It had been the best hour of her life, and eagerly brought it over to her father to show it off. He had been enraged that she took apart his inventions, and promptly spanked her for being a bad filly .<br /><br />Hurt and confused, Sprocket had disappeared under the porch for an hour, poking at the ground with her hoof and wishing she had a wrench to play with. When she finally dried her tears and got up to go back inside, she noticed the bright crossed-wrench-and-screwdriver on her flanks. Delighted, Sprocket ran to go show her father and was greeted with a noncommittal grunt. Her cutie mark was reveled at school, but Sprocket, still unable to earn her father’s affection, disregarded it blandly. <br />

Personality: She inherited her mother’s gold eyes and her father’s whiplash temper. Sprocket can’t debate very well, since her vocabulary is pretty low and she never spent much time around other ponies her own age, but she’ll argue fiercely with anypony who tries. Frustrated with her lack of debating skills, her hot temper usually flares up and she can never see past an argument. Burning bridges is pretty common for her, and she’s too prideful to go apologize. Because of this, she has virtually no friends and claims she doesn’t want any. <br /><br />When she’s inventing, she’s practically a different pony. The temper fades away to controlled intensity, and anypony who’s ever seen her invent something knows that buried beneath the temper and uncouthness is a highly intelligent inventor. Several colts have been attracted to the unwavering concentration and all the cool gadgets she invented, but they found themselves ignored or point-blank insulted. Still, she’s brilliant in her own way, and can take almost any machine apart and put it back together again in nothing flat. She’s fascinated with all things engineering, and can figure out how something works in moments. <br /><br />While she may not be educated, she’s quite intelligent, and if she could ever bend her pride enough to go to a university, she might excel under the right environment. But sadly, she’ll never get to that point, and takes it as an insult to anyone who suggests such a thing.<br /><br />She can be crude, and does enjoy a good raunchy joke, and her language is less than spectacular. There’s no double talk or lies with her – she’s crudely honest, in her own way.

Backstory: Her mother died when she was quite young. Sprocket has very few memories of her mother, although her father didn’t take the death quite so easily. Bitter and scarred, her father suddenly found himself the sole guardian of a sassy little filly who he couldn’t control. Instead of introverting into himself, he exploded at the slightest mishap, created a volatile and submissive daughter. He didn’t know that she became a bully at school, taking out her frustration and anger on other fillies her own age. He punished her for anything she did wrong, but instead of instilling a sense of perfectionism in her, Sprocket became just as rough and rebellious as the father who raised her. <br /><br />Her father, Ratchet, has been working on the ultimate invention for years, ever since he was a colt. Just like his daughter, he’s brilliant beneath the layers of uneducated poverty, and he’s still working on an invention that can channel all the magic in Equestria and create a sealable bubble around it, creating a stable environment which would enable life to flourish at a balanced rate. No more famines or diseases. But he still hasn’t gotten it off the ground, and often blames Sprocket for his distraction.<br /><br />Easy to say Sprocket didn’t have a happy childhood. <br /><br />Once she grew up into a teenager, they started getting into real fights – physical ones. It would start over inventions, or dinner, or anything really, but the fact remained that both Ratchet and Sprocket were too similar to live under the same roof. Both of them were too proud to reconcile, and one night, after a particularly scarring fight, Sprocket took a sledgehammer to her father’s nearly-finished invention. <br /><br />She ran away after that, and has never heard from her father again.