Guardian Angels

Chapter 4

I had Joystick back on my side. That is, after I helped him with this "Iron Will" character. I was still unsure what threat this guy really played, considering he'd been dark for years. Joystick told me he'd help me with HakNet if I helped him find Iron Will. Joystick had been searching for almost a year now, what makes him think I could find him? There must be something he wasn't telling me. It seemed that was the case with everpony.

So I had a to do list now:

1) Help Joystick find Iron Will

2) Have Joystick and Jack help me get HakNet complete access to CTos.

3) Find HakNet's details on Daniel, depending on if they have them.

4) If HakNet doesn't have Daniel's records, then find another way.

Plus, at any moment, Daniel could poke his head in and say "Hello!" If he does, I plan on returning the "Hello" with a "Goodbye!" In the mean time, I needed to find someplace to start on this Iron Will guy. If what Joystick told me was true, then I was going to have a hell of a time finding this guy. His records all say he had a training program. The only problem is that the program was a little less than a hundred years back. Either Minotaurs could live a really long time, or this was a different one using the same name. Either way, I had to assume this guy could be anybody. Well, any Minotaur.

I went where I did every time I needed to find somebody. The bank. Everybody had an account, and accounts had information. It was always a great place to start. I walked into the Manehattan bank, memories flowing back. This was where Daniel found out who I was. We were stealing the money from an offshore account from a fixer in the suburbs. I guess he thought that if he put his money far away enough from him that it would be safe. Unfortunately for him, I came along and stole some of it.

My first thought after the event was that the fixer we were stealing from was hacking us back. After we tracked him down, we quickly learned he didn't even know we stole from him. So this "Daniel" is somepony completely different. Jack helped me search all his relatives and friends, none of them were the hacker. After about a year of searching, Daniel pops up and gave me that umbrella. Just when I was starting to think I was forgotten about too. How foolish I was to let my guard down like that.

A stallion walking through the doorway bumped into me, "Hey!" he shouted, "Get out of the way! You're blocking the doorway!"

I snapped out of my reverie and trotted to the side of the room, leaning against the wall. Wondering what made him so grumpy, I opened my profiler app and scanned him.

It came up with this:

$%&*#@!(%)#@_#$@$*)(@

!@#$%^&*()#@

Age: 666

Occupation: Professional Pro

Income: $69

"What the actual fu-"

"Hey Alex!" Joystick blurted.

I nearly dropped my phone as I tried to keep from pissing myself.

I regained my composure, turned around, and smacked Joystick right in the face. "What in the hay was that!"

Joystick rubbed his sore cheek, "I was just saying hello..."

"Well you nearly made me crap myself! Look, if we plan something, then show up on time! When I say 9PM, I mean 9PM!"

"Oh you know me, Alex! I'm always-"

I interrupted, "Fashionably late, yadda yadda. Look, let's just see if we can trace this guy."

"Sheesh, what's gotten under your skin?" Joystick asked.

"Well I was on the news wielding a gun, a crazed psychopath is hot on my tail and could attack me at any minute, and the only person who might be able to help me find him needs me to help her find a way into the CTos. Then, on top of that, I needed you to help me with that, but first you want me to find a one hundred year old minotaur! Any other questions?"

Joystick rubbed his chin and formed a psychotic grin, "Hmm.........nah."

I facehoofed, "You're going to make this as difficult as possible, aren't you?"

Joystick smiled, "I always do!"

"Whatever," I droned, "Let's just get on with this."

"Okay!" Joystick perked up, "So what's the plan?"

I facehoofed, "I'm just here to help! You're supposed to come up with the plan!"

Joystick smiled innocently, "But I thought you said that the bank was a good place to start? So I thought that meant you were calling the shots."

I raised my hoof and opened my mouth to object, but he was right. I kind of did say this would be a place to start, and after I found out where to go from here, that'd mean I'd still be leading the way. By giving one simple suggestion, I'd dug myself a hole into a position of leadership. God dangit, Joystick didn't even play a hoof in that one.

Then I recalled what I saw, "Hey, Joystick, do you know anything about this?" I showed him the profiler data on my phone.

Joystick's light and playful attitude suddenly became very dark and scared, "When did you profile this information?"

Now I was worried, "Just a few minutes ago? This guy bumped into me and trotted- Hey!" Joystick had begun to search me, "What are you doing!?"

Joystick reached under my coat and pulled out an object about the size of an apple. It had a red blinking light on it.

"Oh shit." I said

Joystick ran for the door, "EVERYPONY GET DOWN!"

Instantly, everybody dropped down to the floor. Joystick finished his mad dash for the doorway, and chucked the object that I now realized was a small bomb, out the glass pane of the door. The object bounced a few times and landed on the sidewalk.

"RUN!" Joystick screamed, "GET AWAY FROM THAT!"

Everypony outside either looked at Joystick in bewilderment, or ran for cover. The ones who hesitated, paid the price. The bomb detonated, exploding and sending about four ponies flying. The glass window panes on the bank blew in, and ponies in teh street started a mass panic. The bank interior was a mess, ponies sprawled out screaming, glass all over the floor, and not to mention the number of police calls I was being notified of. I looked and noticed that two ponies called the police the moment that Joystick yelled to get down. Jesus, if I didn't know any better, I'd think they had the cops on speed dial!

Then I swapped to the CTos map...and noticed circles. They were scanning already. This was not going well.

I tried to disconnect from the servers, but I got a friendly reminder that Dan had control of my phone. I was going to get caught, and sentenced to life in prison, or worse, they were gonna kill me! Maybe if I was lucky, they'd decide that I should go the way those four ponies did, in an explosion. They'd blow me up! Twice if they had to! Could they even do that? Blow me up twice?

My mind was in panic, I was panicking. I needed to slow down and gather my thoughts on the task at hand. First thing, stop the scan from locating me. If it did that, then I was screwed. The only problem was, that I couldn't do that. Maybe if I could just shut the scanning device down then I'd be good to go. Yeah, and maybe I could buy some ice cream while I was at it. How on earth could I do that.

They had already traced me to about 80%. In a few more seconds, my life of freedom would be over. The HDF would hunt me to the ends of Equestria if they had to.

Then I received a Hail Mary.

My phone notified me of an email, set to "Extremely Urgent" priority. The subject line was, "A way out." I looked at Joystick, he was frantically disconnecting from the CTos servers, saving his own skin. Not knowing what else to do, I opened the email to find one link labeled, "Click Me."

I clicked the link, and then everything went black.