Gemini Ties

Spark put his hand on his chin, rubbing it a little as he paced around the living area. Voltage tapped her hoof on the floor as she sat in her computer chair and didn’t even bother turning on the computer. The work was done for the day and they hadn’t heard word from Pearl or Death Metal. They hadn’t been able to reassure Leafly that her life wasn’t in ruins because the only job she could ever love was down the drain. They knew that something was going on in that town that was directly trying to attack them, yet there was nothing they could seemingly do about it.

“Damnit! All of this waiting is going to make me chafe!” Voltage finally said, her face going into her palms. “There must be something we can do. We need to fight! That bastard has a lot of money, but he doesn’t have his guard up everywhere. He has to have something that we can jab. There must be some way that we can give him a black eye!”

Voltage got up from her seat and punched the air with a hardened fist, grunting hard. “What the hell are we gonna do?!”

“I don’t know, Volt. Seems we’ve already done all we can. I mean Night Moon seemed pretty happy with what we did for him. We got that part all nice and sewn up.”

“But that was Death Metal who did the grunt work, we were just the clean up crew! If you think about it, all we have done is interrogate a burglar, which Pearl ended up getting the information from. Pop was the one who stopped the burglar in the first place! We’ve done nothing but react to crap that the fat cat himself has been doing toward us! We’re barely holding on!” Voltage put her forehead onto the wall, her horn balancing her head as she leaned on it at an obtuse angle. “Now our friends are losing their jobs and the ones counting on us the most are the ones out there fighting.”

Spark wrapped his arms around Voltage from behind and she leaned her head back onto his shoulder. The two of them stayed there for a moment, enjoying one another’s touch and cuddling from Spark’s front to Voltage’s back. She rubbed her hand down toward his crotch and felt his crotch. He wasn’t really hard, but he was a little stiff. She sighed, rubbing her hand through his jeans and trying to get him more erect. As she did, she remembered how far they had come since that day. The day when they got their cutie marks for electricians. It was also the day when they started to realize what they meant to one another. They explored each other’s bodies and brought such happiness to one another. Things were so much simpler then.

She dipped her head down and sighed, feeling that he was hard. However he wasn’t at that peak that he normally could reach. Of all things this could affect, it had to affect their lovelife. Such a time was unbearable, such a horrible feeling that things could change for the worse and never get better again. If everything came crashing down around them, Voltage knew that she could count on her brother to be there right beside her. If she lost him, she didn’t know if she could live with herself.

Voltage turned to him, burying her face into his chest, her horn’s shaft rubbing against his collarbone. The mere thought of losing him cut right to the core of her being. She never wanted to think of such a thing ever again.

“Oh, Spark.” Her voice cracked a little bit as she said his name. He held her ever so close and rubbed her back, looking down at her red and blue hair. She hadn’t been keeping it as she normally did, it looked more ragged than usual, but that only made her more beautiful in his eyes. Hell, anything she did made her more beautiful to him.

“Hehe, it’s a bit of a shame we can’t fight that bastard with electrician skills.” Voltage said out of nowhere, not even remembering where that train of thought had come from. She chuckled a little bit, but then she felt Spark back away from her, his eyes wide. “Spark? What’s wrong?”

He just stood there, staring off into space, his lips pursed. His head tilted to the side and it took a moment to figure out that he was now in a deep train of thought.

“Spaaarrrrk… What are you thinking?” Voltage couldn’t hide the concern in her voice as she started to glare at him.

Then her eyes grew wide as she saw a very devious, devilish grin cross his face. The biggest ideas of all ideas in the dreamland of ideas where ideas were born just gave him a big huge whopper of an idea. “Where’s Pop?” He finally asked.

“Ummmm, I think she’s helping Star Burst close the store?” Voltage thought for a moment, then checked her phone seeing that it was indeed a little bit after she closed.

“Bring her here.” He started to laugh deeply and his hands began to rub together.

La Fleur de Cheval was one of the most acclaimed restaurants in all of Ranchtown. The reviews it got gave it an almost immaculate rating in every critic’s report and it had a stellar record in terms of service. To any pony not in the know this would seem too good to be true. Truth be told, it was too good to be true. The tacked on and paid off reviews were those who were under a certain rich pony’s payroll and the health rating was obviously a product of a certain green pegasus.

However, it was still the go-to restaurant for all of the high class society in Ranchtown. What they lacked in actual quality, they made up for in snooty talk, tossing their leftover food into dog kennels instead of helping feed the homeless and lining the pockets of rich snobs using the sweat of their drone waiters who were overworked, understaffed and underpaid.

It was a full house that Saturday night, the record player in the corner played a pleasant melody and there was a light bit of chatter throughout the restaurant. In the center of the restaurant, with all of its chandeliers and tables in neat formation throughout the main dining area, there stood a stage with a curtain all around it. This stage was normally where a live string quartet would play, or a harpist. These performances took place on Friday nights or on holidays and other special occasions.

From the center of the stage, there came a burst of energy that caused the big, foldy red curtains to sway forward and back just a bit. This caught the attention of many of the attendants, but when the curtains calmed back down, they simply figured that there was going to be a performance tonight. This set the crowd in a bit of a stir as they waited with bated breath for any sort of announcement.

Customers were asking waiters when the show would begin and waiters were shrugging their shoulders, saying they would ask their manager. One of the waiters actually ran up to the stage and was about to pull the curtain open until he heard a male voice stop him.

“Hey! No peeking, this is a special production. Can you pull up the curtains?” The voice asked him and he looked over at the wall with the curtain controls.

“Uh, yeah.” He said, the older stallion was obviously not one of the higher management ponies as he didn’t have much in the ways of authority exuding from his personality.

“Well go switch it up, the show’s ready to start.”

“Oh, alright. Fillies and Gentlecolts! May I have your attention?” He spoke at a volume all of them could hear, they settled down and turned their eyes to the waiter. “We have an unexpected show for you tonight! Please watch and enjoy.” He scurried over to the wall switch and turned it up.

The crowd began to clap at a low volume. As the curtain rose up to the ceiling, there were two purple ponies on stage, one with red hair, one with blue hair. The mare with red hair stood on one side of the stage with a large screen TV behind her, while the stallion with the blue hair stood on the other side of the stage in front of another TV that stood back to back with the other one.

Both of them wore solid black suits, much like mimes. As music began to play from the speakers of the TV’s, they began something of a symbolic dance. Both of them mirrored their movements perfectly as they bowed and took one long side step across the stage. Their choreography was absolutely perfect as they did an ever slow dance across the stage to the other side, stepping opposite each other like an unconnected ring around the rosies. They leaned to and fro looking at one another in the eyes.

The crowd did their Oooo’s and aaahhh’s at the two twins on stage as they danced. Though, it was quite strange that they were doing it in front of two opposite facing TV’s. Still, modern interpretive dance was beginning its comeback and there were many in the crowd that truly appreciated such grace under such unorthodox methods.

The twins finally finished their beautiful, graceful dance as Spark picked Voltage up by her sides and began twirling her in the air as she stayed stiff as an ironing board. As they twirled, the crowd gave such a marvellous response in applause. Voltage slipped down behind him and the two twins bowed opposite one another from back to back in perfect sync.

The crowd began to clap even louder as the two of them started running toward the exit then. As they neared the door, they looked back at the crowd with huge exaggerated smiles on their faces and their jazz hands shaking at their sides. That was when both of them slipped two remote controls from their sleeves into their hands and pressed them toward the two TV’s on the stage.

As the twins ran out of the restaurant, the TV’s switched to the CAMERA setting. Both of them showed two different surveillance cameras on either side. The surveillance cameras captured the kitchen throughout its whole chef staff. The crowd murmured to themselves as they watched, puzzled at what was happening.

That was when one of the chefs dropped an entire daisy finger sandwich on the floor, picked it up, and then put it back on the cutting board. This drew a horrid gasp of horror from the crowd, only to have the camera shift to the soup maker who snuck a sip from the ladle he was using to mix it and then dunk it back into mixing it.

Another horrible protest came from the crowd, who immediately stopped eating, one of them even spat out the soup he was eating.

The camera angle changed once again to show two chefs who were talking and laughing as one of them stuck his finger into the ice cream in a serving bowl and lick it off of his finger.

“Get the manager in here this instant!” One of the patrons shouted and there was much agreement. Soon the entire crowd began calling for the entire chef staff’s blood! That was until the angle changed once again and there was a very large rat crawling across the floor toward a fallen piece of gouda. There were screams of mares throughout and the chanting for the manager’s head on a platter became ravenous!

Mares passed out, waiters took off their uniform and ditched as fast as they could before there was a riot. A patron put his hand on his mouth and ran for the bathroom. The unrest only grew as the patrons stormed the kitchen, screaming at the chefs about hygiene, work ethics and how they were two seconds away from calling the board of health about this. There was even a leader of an animal rights group who wanted to make sure the rat was not being mistreated.

Electric Spark, Sweet Voltage and Pop Candy watched and laughed from the Gemini Ties van a few blocks down the street, hidden away in an alley just far enough to where they could still get a signal to all of the cameras. Pop used her magic to turn their skin and hair back to their original form.

“Wow, Pop, how did you get the camera angles so damn perfect?” Spark asked, marvelling at the ponies threatening the chefs, telling them that they’ll never work in Ranchtown again.

“Please, you should have given me something harder to do. I must say, I will miss that rat though. I even called him Peanut Brittle and almost made a little cage for him.”

“Ah, he’ll be fine, that one lady found him and got him out of there.” Voltage said as she turned off the screens, that job was a clear success.

“But what about all of that equipment?” Pop asked as she watched Spark get in the driver’s seat.

“Pffftt that old junk? They’re doing us a favor keeping it. Not that they’ll be around much longer.” Before he could turn the key to start the ignition, his phone started going haywire. It was getting notification after message notification and buzzing like crazy! “Whoa whoa whoa, what the hell is this?”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and started tapping on the screen, pulling up the messages as they came in. His head tilted to the side as he looked, and as he did, his eyes began to bulge out and his mouth dropped.

“Spark, what--” Voltage started to ask but was interrupted as Spark shouted.

“HOLY SHIIIIIII----”

The third movie was finally done and both bodyguards were closing their eyes, only to open them back up with a gasp. Staying awake was getting to be a problem for the both of them. Pearl, on the other hand, had out a huge bowl of popcorn and was finally finishing it down to the kernels.

“That was great! Let’s watch the sequel!” This caused shocked faces from both Moose and Rocco. “Fluffy Pony Funtime the Movie 3!”

Both of them put their hands on their faces and rubbed. They weren’t managing to stay awake and if they sat through one single minute more of that floofy pony crap they were going to shoot someone. They were at their wits end! It was almost midnight and they had to stay awake to look after Pearl until their shift came to an end, which wasn’t until five in the morning!

Pearl knew all of this. Her father ran a tight shift and was unforgiving when it came to the mortal worker aspect of a job. She got up from the couch and Rocco got up from his chair.

“No, Miss Pearl, I can change the mov-” Surprisingly, she put her finger on his lips.

“Sshhhh.” She smiled at him with half open eyes. She bent back a little as her body faced the TV and her head was turned to him. This gave him the absolute perfect view of her cleavage, which was vast. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

As soon as she said this, the buttons on the front of her pajama top were stretched way too far, and all five of them shot straight off of her and onto the floor. She made an exaggerated gasp at this, putting both of her hands on her cheeks.

“Oh my! I loved this top.” She turned around toward both of them as they gazed at her with wide eyes. She opened her top to expose both of her DD cup breasts. Her nipples were pointed as the sudden air flow on her naked tits gave her gooseflesh like crazy. Their expressions were absolutely poetic. They gazed at her with gaping maws and Moose sat up straighter in his seat.

“Would you big, strong stallions want to escort me to my room and help me pick out some new pajamas?” She asked in a timid voice as she started walking toward her room and started to pull down her pajama pants as she did. “These pajama pants just won’t match anything else and a lady needs to keep her image, you know?” Her ass was perfectly exposed as she slowly walked with her pants down to her knees.

One of the well dressed bodyguards looked to the other and after a moment of silent consideration, he shrugged. They smiled at one another and as they turned to her as she stood with her ass fully facing them. The glass ceiling sunroof was kicked straight in. As glass shattered and showered onto both of them it was Death Metal who landed directly in front of them on one knee and her head downward. Both bodyguards were cascaded with broken shards of glass as they fell to the ground from the sudden barrage.

Pearl was scared half to death, startled as she hit the ground behind her, her pants sliding down to her ankles and her breasts still fully exposed. Death Metal stood up and saw Pearl laying on the ground. Her eyes widened as she looked at her state. Pajama shirt buttons torn off, her pants seemingly forced down around her ankles, thrown to the floor?!

Her eyes widened at Pearl and she turned straight around as the two bodyguards got to their feet. Her furious energy built as both of her fists clenched with a pressure that could turn coal into diamonds!

It was a quiet night in a quiet neighborhood outside. The crickets chirped and the streetlights turned on and off as they detected movement from one thing or another. All of the silence was suddenly interrupted as a very large stallion flew straight through the front window of that house and landed with several red blemishes on his face that would soon turn into swelling bruises.

Death Metal took down the other bodyguard, grabbed the tie around his neck and started beating him in the face as she shouted a kia with each punch.

“Wait! Wait! Death! Stop!” Pearl grabbed her wrist. “They didn’t come after me! I was trying to seduce them!”

“Wait, you were what?” Death Metal looked back at her with a puzzled look.

“Yeah, seduce them so I could try to escape!” Pearl explained. “I mean, what else was I going to do while I waited for you? I left you that message of the address he would send me to, I didn’t know how you were going to get here. Not to mention he’s not that bad looking.”

Death Metal turned back to look at the guard and tilted her head. “Meh.”

“Either way, they have a car, we just need the keys.” Pearl said and Death Metal held out her hand. The bodyguard promptly put the keys in her hand. “And my phone.” Death Metal held her hand closer to his face.

“H-h-he has it.” He very weakly pointed to the bodyguard that was now lying in a yard full of glass and grass.

“Oh, okay, come on, let’s go.” Pearl said as they both got up and ran out the door. Suddenly Pearl forgot her shirt was fully open and was hit by the wintery chilled wind. “Fuck it’s cold!” She held her arms around the front of her torso and grabbed her phone from the other guard. As she ran to the car she started checking all of her messages. “Good gravy, I don’t have my phone for one day and already my notifications hit critical mass. I hate being famous.”

“Yeah, cry me a river, get in, I’ll drive.” Death Metal said and opened the door.

They got into the car and Death Metal took off hard, zooming down the street and turning. The more Pearl scrolled through her messages, the more grim her expression became. She found that he got a bunch of missed calls from the twins, but she also found that someone else was messaging them both.

She quickly dialed Spark’s phone and held it up to her ear. Thankfully, he got it on the first ring.

“Pearl! Where have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you all day!” Voltage answered on the other line, making Pearl roll her eyes.

“Yeah, you think my little talk with my Dad went well? I knew something like this would happen, but don’t worry, Death Metal came and got me.” Pearl looked over at Death with a dreamy smile and she glanced back at her with a quizzical expression. “But that doesn’t matter, I just got a whole slew of messages from our new friend.”

“Spark got those messages too! What the hell is that thing?” Voltage asked.

“I don’t know, but they’re even keeping her in the dark on the matter. Apparently the one running the project is Blacklight, an old… acquaintance of mine.”

“Uh huh, and how many times did you fuck him?”

“Not the issue here, Voltage! She says that whatever it is, it’s in the warehouses about five blocks away from your shop. The picture she sent of the garage has a number that ends with what looks like a partial five and a three.” Pearl said as she put Voltage on speakerphone so she could look at the picture again. “This is about the best we got. We’re gonna need help finding it if we want to make it in time.”

“Are you kidding me!? I’ve been to those garages, they all look the same! You want us to search them all based on this vague little picture?”

“That’s why I said get some help! Call whoever you know involved and tell them we need help searching that storage system in the warehouse district! If what Minty said is right, we’ve got maybe an hour or two before it goes off! Death and I will try to get there are fast as we can, but I don’t know when we’ll make it.”

“Shit.” Voltage quickly hung up the phone and started dialing again. She held up the phone to her ear and waited for the ringing to stop. After two, she finally got an answer. “Star Burst? Yeah, it’s Voltage, I need you and Night Moon to help us with something important. We need everyone we can get to help, if we don’t hurry, we may lose the shop for good.” She waited for a moment. “Don’t ask how I knew you were with Night Moon! Just hurry!”

This part of town was not so well lit at all. There was maybe one streetlight every other block and the moon was not very visible through the clouds. It hadn’t snowed that day, but it was supposed to at some point. They parked the van and looked at the old rickety storage facility. The gate wasn’t even much of a gate. It had a padlock on it, but Spark simply pulled out some diagonal cutters from his jumpsuit and cut the chain-link no problem. The metal was rusted and brittle. He turned to Voltage and pulled it open for her.

“We’ll fix it later.” He said and she nodded, scurrying through along with Pop. They stood there and looked at all of the rows of storage units on the property. This was one of the most prosperous storage places in Ranchtown, but that didn’t mean anything when the majority of the population started going to the other side of town. Productivity in the city went straight up and this storage facility went straight down because they just couldn’t keep up. The factories and mills started shutting down and this warehouse district became barren.

The search was on then. They had two numbers and a picture of the unit itself. However, the patterns of where the paint was chipping off and the dirt on the front of the facility would have been unique. They light their horns to get some light and rushed to the units one after the other. Five and three, those were the numbers they were looking for. They had to make absolutely sure that it was the right one.

“Spark! Volt!” They heard Leafly’s voice as she flew in from above, followed by Hammer. The two bat ponies looked quite tired from the strain of flying so fast, but their resolve did not look dampened.

“Hey guys! Come on, we need to search these storage units!” Spark shouted, looking at another one with the last two numbers, but it didn’t look anything like the right one.

“Alright, we’ll travel by roof.” Hammer said and Leafly nodded.

“Wait! I just remembered!” Pop exclaimed, taking Spark’s phone. He gave her a puzzled expression as she looked at the image and concentrated, staring at it.

Spark was about to say something, but Voltage put her hand on his chest, shaking her head.

Soon, her horn and eyes began to glow. Pop began to pulse with power as she gazed into the picture, through the picture. As she did this, a third eye opened on her forehead below her horn. Then she saw it. The image grew into real life and she saw exactly where it was. Her direction became perfect and her vision was absolute.

Then in a flash it all vanished, her magical third eye closed and she opened her two normal ones.

“It’s this way!” Pop started bolting for the other side of the storage units.

“Wow, we weren’t even close.” Voltage said as all of them started running. After passing up just a few rows, there it was. The garage door was shut, the only way to open it was a code entered on the keypad.

“Alright, I’ll handle this one.” Spark said as his horn shined a bright light and he shot a heat beam straight at the door. The heat beam hit, but it bounced straight off of the door and shot almost straight at him and Leafly as she stood behind him. It went behind them and burned a hole through a parallel garage door.

“What?” Pop shined her horn a bit and she felt very blocked. “A magic ward! And it’s a powerful one too.”

“A noble effort, I must admit. I don’t know how you found out our location, but I will tell you that your candy lover will have no effect on this shield we have here.” A voice came on an intercom from above them. None of them could place the voice, in fact they were pretty sure they had never heard his voice before. “She may be powerful, but even one with her abilities can’t break a seal that has been prepared long beforehand.”

Spark looked over at Pop, whose horn was still glowing as she gazed at the shield around the door. She grimaced, looked at Spark and shook her head.

“Yes, now that magic has failed you, what will you do now?” The arrogant voice called back over the intercom in that horrible snarky tone.

They all thought for a second. There had to be some way to get into that damn door! Their time was running out very quickly, they knew this. Everything was hinging on this. They didn’t even know what that machine could do, for all they knew it could vaporize everything in Gemini Ties. Everything the twins had struggled for, worked their fingers to the bones for was about to be wiped away in a matter of seconds. Voltage tried to think as hard as she could, Spark was cringing. Even if he brought his tools, figuring out that keypad could take way too long and there was no telling what sort of trap they rigged it with.

Before Stiff Hammer could resort to simply banging it open with a hammer in his tool belt, all of them turned their heads as they heard tires peeling from the front gate and a crash. All of them witnessed an SUV crossing the rows of storage buildings before they apparently spotted them and rolled backward, turning into the row. The black sport utility vehicle drove up toward them and angled itself to the building behind them. It turned wide as it faced the garage door. The window rolled down on the driver’s side.

“MOVE!” Death Metal shouted. As they complied, she began to peel the tires hardcore! The engine gained up gusto as tire smoke began to bellow from either side of the front tires. She set it into high gear and the SUV bolted into the garage door, smashing it completely in. The door crashed in and everyone around it walked up to the SUV.

“What the fuck was that?” Voltage stared intensely at the vehicle as both front doors opened and the white and pink ponies stepped out.

“Pearl!” Leafly shouted, running up to her and hugging her as the earth pony stumbled.

“Oh, wow, what a rush!” Pearl said. She was now wearing Death Metal’s black jacket with the numerous band patches, while Death Metal herself simply wore a black t-shirt, acting like the cold didn’t bother her while she was shivering in her boots. All of them turned their heads as coughing was heard from inside the garage. Not only that, but they could hear the whirring of some kind of strange engine.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” The well dressed purple furred unicorn coughed harder as the tire smoke filled the garage. “You could have killed us.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t!” Spark’s horn brightened up once again.

“Ha! You can waste your time if you want. Our little metal friend over there is charging up as we speak!” He motioned toward the now solid metal sphere in the back. The dull light from the top of the garage was now a blinking mess, but it showed the machine quite clearly as it was the size of a small tree house, almost reaching to the very top of the garage. It was surrounded by workers who sported tools in their hands, one with a crowbar, one with a large open end wrench that was longer than his arm, Tricep was behind him, holding up a huge flathead screwdriver. There were six workers in all, some of them wearing welding masks and they all stood around the machine to protect it. “By all means, have at them. You’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before it fires automatically.”

“This is insane!” Voltage shouted, holding up her fists toward them as her own eyes and horn began to glow with magical energy. “This has gone way too far! Don’t you understand you’re working for a maniac!?”

“Back off, Blacklight! It’s over! I’ve already got all the proof I need to put you and my father away. He may use his money to get out of jail but with everything I have to bury him with, he will lose the company lock, stock and barrel!” Pearl stepped forward, though she had to admit that the tight pajama pants didn’t make her look very menacing.

“Nah, it looks like you asshats are gonna have to give up.” Tricep said, flexing his gigantic pectoral muscles. “We may not look like much but we’ll put yez in the hospital quick!”

“You wanna put money on that?” Death Metal said as she popped her knuckles hard.

Pop was simply waiting for the word go. She had to outline the scene as close as she could, one single wrong move around that machine and she could set it off, or worse, make it explode. She had no idea what it even was, but it looked very highly complicated. She also noticed that the noise it was making was starting to get more high pitched.

“Whatever mess there is, there’s always a way to clean it up. Even if it costs more ponies their jobs. I don’t care in the least.” Blacklight chuckled. “Go ahead! Take us on, I’m no slouch in my magical ability and these gentlemen were not just hired for their mechanical prowess. Even if you’re able to take us all down, you have no idea what we have just built.”

“It’s an E.M.P.” Both Voltage and Spark said in sync, making Blacklight take a step back.

“Wait, what? How did you--- Ah, no matter. You’ll never get through my men! This E.M.P. won’t just shut off your power, oh no, it’s magically imbued. It will fry everything electrical in that area, making certain that it will never work again! Good luck in the months coming where you can’t use any---”

He was interrupted as Fable Prose landed behind all of them outside of the garage behind the wrecked SUV. His wings flapped once before he landed and they folded back behind him. He surveyed the situation and was able to put the pieces together pretty quickly. He was followed by Star Burst, who was sporting a very large side pack. Beside her, from the sky came Night Moon who landed, keeping his wings expanded for a long moment before folding them back behind himself.

Then there came the sound of someone gasping, panting from around the corner. Winter arrived, running until he came to the scene and stopped.

“Alright… I’m here!” He breathed hard and leaned with his hand on the broken S.U.V. His other hand went down to his knee as he leaned forward and coughed. “Dear Celestia you guys fly fast.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and off of his horn.

“You good, bro?” Fable asked.

“Yeah, yeah I’m good.” He looked into the garage and bounced a little bit with his arms in a fighting pose. “I’m ready.”

Now the workers were outnumbered by a great deal. They looked at all of the ponies around them making serious faces at them. All of them looked rather pissed off, actually. At a moment’s notice they were ready to take them right down and pummel their faces.

“Alright, you know what? I’m out.” Tricep said as he dropped the screwdriver. “This is stupid.”

“What?! You can’t quit! Not now!” Blacklight looked at him.

“Yeah I’m out too.” One of the workers said. “I gotta get home to the wife and daughter.” He dropped his wrench to the ground.

After that all of the workers just up and left the garage, politely walking through the motley crew. As they walked out they were already talking about going to get some early morning breakfast at the Wheatery.

“Come on!” Voltage shouted, running toward the machine, followed closely by Spark.

“NO!” Blacklight shouted as he charged up his horn with a dark purple energy. However, they all heard a match light as Star Burst lit a very large sparkler stick. She caught Blacklight’s attention as the sparkler burned a red color, then a green color and she rushed at him with it wielded like a weapon.

“HAAAAAAYAAAAA!!!!” She struck him with it on his fancy tie and jacket, and they began to burn. Blacklight started to panic, patting the fire down.

“No! My suit! NO! Put it out!” He started screaming.

Pop Candy held her hands apart from one another out in front and as she powered up her horn, water began to form between her hands. A huge blast of highly pressurized water smashed into Blacklight as it slammed him against the wall, breaking the sheetrock into the insulation and into the stone column on the inside of it. He fell down, coughing up water and fading out into unconsciousness.

The twins went to work on the machine. They couldn’t find any panels to open up, no screws to unscrew, the whole thing was welded shut. They had to improvise.

Spark shined his unicorn horn and zapped a small burning beam into the sphere’s outer layer. He reached down, picked up the crowbar that the workers had dropped and wedged it into the edge he had made. His muscles bulged out of his black long sleeved shirt as he forced it downward and opened it up to expose the innards.

There were many welded and soldered wires. Voltage came up beside him with all of the useful tools she could get her hands on and scattered them on the floor at their feet as there were no tables nearby.

“Alright, there’s the actuator, there’s the plunger, there’s the grounding point. This one connects the data link.” Voltage’s brain worked as fast as it possibly could. Both of them checked the time on the charge. It was at ninety eight percent and only three minutes away from being fully charged.

They traced every wire’s destination. They all had a point and they were all very well put together.

“Can’t we just push it over or something?” Winter asked and Pearl shook her head.

“It’s a long ranged weapon, it’ll fry the same area no matter where it is.” Pearl had gotten done reading the messages that she was sent on the machine. It was a gigantic mess and she could do nothing about it. She felt helpless. So helpless that she grabbed Death Metal’s hand and pulled her close. The shorter, white pony leaned onto her and wrapped an arm around her waist. All of them watched the twins work, as the two electricians silently talked to each other to keep communication open.

“Ah, I found it, right here.” Spark said as he clipped a lanyard wire with his cutters and opened up the panel underneath it to expose all of the bare wires. As amazing as this machine was, there were certain corners they cut to save time. With the outside welded shut, they seemingly glued it together on the inside. They looked at all of the wires, which were all colored blue. Whoever did this was meticulous. The point of having different colored wires was so you knew where they went from point to point. Whoever designed this was insane! Still, they narrowed down every wire, every lead and origin and mapped it out in their brains.

“One minute!” Voltage told herself, sweating bullets at that point.

“I know I know!” Spark growled, his frustration mounting as he just needed to find the main power or the ignition wire or something important like that. Anything to stop it from charging, or stop it from firing; something! Anything! The igniter couldn’t go off if there was no charge, but even if it charged, it couldn’t fire without the igniter. Then there was the C.P.U. at the very bottom of the panel leading off into a different direction than most.

A C.P.U., this was the part that used its information for what it was supposed to do, what it was programmed for. It connected to the main data link. The E.M.P. was hooked up to a laptop. If they shut off the laptop it could think that its charge was complete and it could fire, but that was not what the C.P.U. was. It was hooked up to the laptop but it couldn’t work without the laptop! The risk was too great, but they were out of time!

“Ten seconds!” Voltage was in tears. They streamed down her face. Panic began to take over. All of the times they fell in love over and over again. The bits they earned to get that shop. The sweat and the blood, it was all going to end! The clock reached zero. As it began to power up--

“NO!!!”

Spark clipped the C.P.U. wire. The C.P.U. lost power and the charge went back down to ninety percent, then to eighty percent, then to fifty percent.

There was a moment of silence. The machine powered down as the engine inside of it began to simmer down. The silence lasted for just a few more moments as the engine came to a dull roaring halt.

“YEEESSS!!!” Leafly shouted, causing all of them to cheer and come up to the twins. They patted them on the back and gave them hugs and kisses. It was a cause to celebrate and boy, would they ever celebrate.

The word was out. It took no time at all for official statements to be made. Those who worked under the tyrannical rule of Obscenely Rich started to come out of the wood works. When one of his leading “unofficial helpers” brought her data to the proper authorities, it was over. With such massive physical evidence like a custom made weapon of mass destruction turned over to the police, there was literally nothing he could say to get out of that situation. Ranchtown officials under his payroll immediately cut ties and all of the other officials that hungered for his blood popped their knuckles and went to work on the charges brought against him.

The press had their field day, the senators and mayor of Ranchtown were immediately brought into the fray to bring the hammer down on all of Rich Co. Leading board members such as Blacklight were immediately arrested and it was made quite clear that Obscenely Rich was soon to follow once capital hill sharpened their pitchforks and lit their torches.

It was only a matter of time before they broke down his door, but Obscenely Rich bought himself a little bit of peace and quiet before that happened. This was interrupted as his door opened. With Miss Butterscotch not showing up to work, he really wasn’t surprised. He figured the Royal Guard had found a way to enact his arrest without one of the twenty warrants they were drawing up. However, Pearl Necklace walked into his office. Despite their victory, she looked at him with a grave expression and stood in his office with a somber stare.

“Why so glum, child? Isn’t this what you want--”

“No, Dad! No it is not what I wanted! This is about the very last thing I wanted!” Any other day and he would have started with the looks and the berating tone of voice. This day he sat in his chair, closed his eyes and began to nod.

“I know.” Obscenely Rich opened his eyes once again to look at her.

“What, that’s it? You know? After everything that’s happened, that’s all you have to say? You do know they are going so far as to call you a terrorist, right? It’s on the list of charges.”

He sat, seeming unhindered, apathetic in his expression. It was blank. Though, there was a certain something about it that Pearl didn’t recognize. There was a certain glow about him that she’d never seen in her life. In fact, as she looked a little closer, squinting her eyes, it almost looked like he was… happy?

“I’m so proud of you.” Her face went slack and her lips pursed as her mouth dipped down toward her chin. Check mark yet another thing she never heard him say, nor ever thought he would say. “You followed what you believed in, kept fighting no matter what the cost and even took me down in the process. You beat me at my own game. Rich Co’s stocks are kapoot. Right now I’ll be lucky if I make it out of this with two million bits to rub together. However, you went off and started your own company and are being hailed as the hero who put an end to her own father for what is good and right. I must say, you are truly my daughter.”

The surprises came at her one after the other throughout his entire speech. He got up from his desk and walked around it to her. He stood a great deal taller than her and looked down toward his little girl. He really was smiling, he looked so much like he did when she was a small filly. There, in his close quarters, he put his hand on her upper back and pulled her into his chest. He wrapped both arms around her as her eyes began to stream tears.

She cried into his chest, holding both of her hands to his back tightly. She cried so very hard. The sobs rumbling his chest. They stayed there like that for a good long while before he checked his watch and sighed.

“I’ve got to go now.” Rich said as he let her go, leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You be a good girl, okay?”

She sniffed, tears still coming from the bottom of her eyes. “But Daddy…”

“I love you more than life itself. Don’t worry about me.” He stood up straight and turned toward the open door of his office. There were about seven hundred ponies outside of Rich Co’s headquarters, several of them with handcuffs waiting for the word go. As he strolled off to meet them, Pearl waved to him. The tears did not stop.

RTN Network news came on just two days after the whole event, starting their morning broadcast with an older looking, brown furred, black haired earth pony as he stacked his papers. Beside him was a lovely blue unicorn with a bright blond mane and sparkling, crystal blue eyes.

“Good Morning, I’m Flash Feed,”

“And I’m Cheer Step.” The unicorn mare nodded to the camera as it focused on her. “Our top story this morning, business tycoon and multibillionaire Obscenely Rich has been charged with multiple crimes from a new class action lawsuit being held against him. The Founder and CEO of Rich Co. allegedly used extremely unscrupulous tactics in order to change a shift in business affairs in his favor.

“These charges included not only fraudulent use of bits in order to commit conspiracy, but even bribing public officials, blackmailing his own employees to do unlawful orders and a laundry list of other claims. Shareholders are now going after Mr. Rich for a stifling twenty million bits in overall stocks and several other affiliates of Rich Co. will be demanding more in damages.”

The camera cut over to Flash Feed as he flipped the first page to the side of the news counter. “In a surprise venture into the business world of Ranchtown, Pearl Necklace, the daughter of Obscenely Rich and owner of several businesses herself, is going to be holding the chairmen of Rich Co. responsible for standing by while her father ran the company, and I quote, ‘Like his own crime syndicate.’ In another astounding move, Ms. Necklace has reopened several businesses that were shut down in the unlawful, hostile takeover. Well over a hundred of his former employees have come out stating that he not only threatened their jobs if they did not commit these malicious acts, but their families as well.”

The feed cut over to Minty Fresh in front of the courthouse with several reporters holding their microphones toward her. “I was forced to give faulty claims of health violations not only in the past weeks, but also many times in the past years of service under his watchful eye. I have already made a full statement and given several hidden documents to the higher authorities.”

The news anchor Cheer Step came back onto the TV screen. “Obscenely Rich will face trial next week and we will be keeping you posted as the news unfolds. In other news, the top ‘Perfect Hoof Magazine’ model Silvia Windmane will be moving to Ranchtown in what she calls a new beginning with a new fashion line--”

Venue turned off the TV as he walked by with a drink for Pearl as he set the bright blue liquid in a tall glass in front of her. She smiled and nodded as he did. The Cloud Stone was set right back up. As soon as Pearl bought the rights to the place, she gave the entire staff their jobs back and made sure that they were able to keep up work, even after a couple of days of being shut down. She turned over to Minty Fresh who had a martini in front of her with which she was nursing. Her hair was a little frazzled after such a long, trying day of talking to the police, the D.A., the Business Bureau and several other officials that she didn’t care to think about.

“Well, you lived up to your end.” Pearl said as she took a sip of her drink, munching on a piece of ice from it. “I suppose you’ve earned the right to delete this.” She held up her phone which had the video of her being bent over a table with two studly stallions readying her for a good ureteral thrashing.

“Oh, I don’t know how much I’ve earned in those regards.” Minty took the phone and pressed a few buttons on it. “I’ve already said my apologies to about every corporate official in the tristate area. If I keep my job after this week, it will be something of a miracle.” She smiled and handed the phone back to Pearl.

The pink pony looked at the phone to see that the video was still there, in fact Minty had added herself to Pearl’s contacts and sent it to herself. Pearl’s eyes widened and she looked over at the smiling pegasus who drank the rest of her martini, pulled out the toothpick and ate the green olive on it.

“So no hard feelings?” Minty said, looking back at Pearl and to the other pony behind her who was enjoying a nice large glass of red wine.

“After tonight, there shouldn’t be any hard feelings all around.” Vineyard said from the other side of Pearl, interrupting her as she was about to speak, causing her roll her eyes.

Minty smiled at this and got out of her seat. “Well, I love to stay and chat, but I have a lot of other questions to answer tomorrow. I need to wake up pretty early.” She smiled as she got her purse from the back of the seat and strapped it over her shoulder. “Not to mention, I’m doing a health inspection over at that Frozen Pop’s Frozen Treats store.”

Pearl tilted her head a little and furrowed her brow. “My store? Why? Aren’t you on some sort of suspension until all of this mess is cleared up?”

“Yup!” Minty giggled as she started to walk away. Vineyard’s and Pearl’s eyes followed her as she left. The pink pony laughed a little bit, then turned her attention to Vineyard.

As the purple pegasus set her glass back on the bar, she filled out yet another slip of paper with many zeroes on it. “And here is the final installment for the rest of the stockholdings. That should be just about everything, stragglers aside. That pretty much marks the end of Rich Co. as a whole.”

The two of them smiled and raised their glasses, tapping them together.

“I’ll drink to that.” Pearl said as the two of them took long drinks of their alcoholic beverages. They set their glasses back on the table and enjoyed the nice buzz they had from such strong concoctions. “But something is still kind of bugging me.”

“What’s that?” Vineyard did a slow churning, mixing movement with her wineglass.

“After all of this, Leafly said that she didn’t want her flower shop back. After this lawsuit goes through, she’ll more than likely be able to buy two whole shops in claims of damages alone. She loved that shop with all of her heart!”

“Yes, she did.” Vineyard said, sighing. “However, she chose a different route. A route to me, that is.”

“What? You hired her?” Pearl blinked at this, a bit flabbergasted.

“Of course. She’s a greenthumb. I can always use one with her skills on in my winery. I can’t imagine all of the delicious flavors she will create in our time together. She signed the papers this morning, she starts tomorrow.” Vineyard winked at Pearl. “I hope you don’t mind, such a skilled florist is hard to come by without pouring bits into their over inflated egos. Though, since our companies are going to be so close in the coming years, I didn’t think you would mind too much.”

“I suppose our companies can have something of an affiliation, such a wonderful deed you did there, I loved Leafly’s plants.” She grinned, really happy for the bat pony to have such a well paying job on a beautiful farm.

“However, my benevolence comes at a price. I would like a favor from you.”

“Well, I guess, you did back up every single claim I had to my father’s holdings. I suppose I could owe you one favor. What’s that?”

“You see, in all of the craziness of paperwork, somehow my loan to Gemini Ties for their friend’s new candy store was fully paid off. This makes me quite sad.” Vineyard blushed, the wine was doing its work, as was the wonderful memories she was indulging in that moment.

“What do you mean?” Pearl raised an eyebrow, quite puzzled.

“In our future business ventures, you’ll need to come visit me personally.” The grin on her face was exquisite in that moment. “And you’ll need to bring Spark with you.”

Their room’s lights were all turned off, there was only a little line of daylight shining in through a very thin gap between their curtains. They took the day off and told anyone who wanted anything repaired to call their answering machine on their landline. The place was completely empty. Pop was tending her store, Leafly was dancing with her brother at his house, celebrating all of the excitements of getting a new job and helping to save Ranchtown, and business went on as it usually did.

The room was dark, but they could still see one another perfectly. Voltage sat atop Spark in a cowgirl position as she pistoned his enormous, hard dick in and out of her ass. She sweated so hard on top of him but she did not care, neither of them did. She moaned as he pushed against her butthole with such gusto. The very idea that he was putting that much energy into this turned her on more than any other pony ever could. They fucked one another and only stopped to hold back the coming orgasm and they kissed. Their tongues rubbed together furiously as his hands squeezed her tits and his fingers pinched her very hard nipples to the point where it almost hurt. Almost.

Their humping continued, this time his pelvis beat her ass with a spanking sound, causing her ass cheeks to almost glow with how red they were getting. The ripples he sent through her body from her ass caused her to scream with absolute delight! She loved feeling his studly cock in her ass, especially when her pussy was already so well fucked and puffy red.

After just a moment, he finally pushed her backward, causing her to yelp with surprise as she fell back on the sheets and he sat up to mount her in missionary. They were face to face as his cock plunged into her ass over and over again. Their lips met and she gave off such loud, muffled moans against his mouth and tongue. She licked all over his mouth as her hands grabbed the back of his mane and rubbed him with absolute desire in every stroke.

He cringed then, all of the holding in his cum was starting to come back to haunt him real quick. Voltage saw the look on his face and she looked back at him with pleading eyes.

“Yes! Give it to me, Spark! Oh! Fuck my ass harder and give me every ounce of that cum! Fill me up!” She moaned before meeting his lips with hers once again and his breathing started to strain hard! Before she could say anything else, she felt his cock twitch in her asshole and unleash a slew of hot stringy cum inside of her. She came as well. The orgasms from him pounding her ass were some of the most amazing climaxes she ever felt.

He pushed his cock hard into her ass once more, slapping her already tender ass once again, sending another wave of pleasure through her already raging orgasm. She groaned, giving his lips one little lick as she reached down to his balls and gripped them with a very light touch. As she fondled his tender balls, she looked him in the eyes. He leaned his forehead to hers, crossing their horns in such symbolic love that they knew could never be broken.

She nuzzled him with a smile on her face, giving him little kisses as he returned them. Their hands explored each other’s bodies and his cock still rested inside of her, keeping its validity even after another intense wave of semen had rushed out of it. They’d been at this for hours. An hour in, she had finally raised her hands in surrender, when her pussy was just entirely too sore to continue.

He had been a little bummed about this, but that was when she offered him her asshole. Then came another barrage of fuckings. It was like they were discovering their love all over again. They found the joy of renewed lust and peaked attraction as if it were the very first time.

All of those wonderful memories came back to them as they turned over on their sides and gazed into one another’s eyes. It seemed like only yesterday they were hiding their love from their parents and secretly wandering off to hidden places in the house to hold one another. Yet it seemed so long ago that they had accidentally broken Pop into their servitude. Time was funny that way.

“Well…” Voltage finally spoke, having calmed her breathing down. “We haven’t fucked like that since we lived with mom and dad.”

“That day they went to that buckball game and---”

“And got stuck in traffic, yeah.” They both laughed at this and leaned into one another. After a few more kisses, she settled back into his muscular arms. “Well, I was thinking, did we really want to do this for the rest of our lives? I mean, I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it seems like we could explore other things too.”

“Yeah, I kind of had the same thought when that bomb thing was going to go off and fry all of our stuff. It seemed like it was going to be the end of the world, but was it really?”

They laid in silence for a moment. She looked at him, then her eyes darted around the room, looking at random things as they thought.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Yeah, I would have died.” She nodded. “Still, we can find some other things to do in the meantime. This job is amazing and it’s everything we ever wanted, but I was thinking of expanding a little bit.”

“Well, I mean, Vineyard did ask if I wanted to open up five more Gemini Ties in Ranchtown and Ponyville.” Spark looked off to the side.

“And you said no?” Voltage asked, not especially surprised that he nodded. “Why?”

“Well, like you said, this job is awesome and it’s everything we ever wanted. If we were to branch out with all new stores in Canterlot and Las Pegasus, I mean, we’d probably end up like the stiffs in business suits, filling out papers, firing people and ironing our suits at work while we sip tea or something.”

“You have no idea what business ponies do, do you?”

“Not a clue. Either way, though. This is all we worked for. Not some other shops that probably couldn’t do what we do in the time that we do it. Still, I mean, we’re pretty much taken care of for years in terms of money now. Anytime we need something, we can just ask Pearl or Vineyard or whoever. Not that we’ve ever needed anything really serious before.” Spark started to kiss on her cheek, down to her jawline. She tilted her head, smiling as she gave him more room to kiss on.

“Mmmmm, yeah but I would like a new gaming computer. Think of the possibilities of that kind of setup.” She giggled and batted his cheek as he gave her neck a soft bite, tickling her. “Pouring millions of bits all into one single supercomputer that can play nine games all at once while also watching porn and action movies.” After a while she lost her train of thought, she figured she was just really tired.

“Gotta have dreams, I guess.” He smiled back at her and they had a good laugh at this. They settled back down and she wrapped her arms over his shoulders. These were the days that they lived for. They so seldom had time to spend the day lying in bed together. This time they didn’t have the radio playing tunes. This time it was all just darkness and cuddling with the occasional fuck.

“So… I guess it’s too early to ask again. But where do we go from here?” Spark kept his arms tight around her and his eyes shut.

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Maybe the day after that. We never returned that sybian to that nice lady, did we?” Voltage said, also having her eyes closed.

“Oh… no. No we did not.” Both of their eyes opened up at that point. The thought made Voltage’s pussy ache even harder than it already did. It ached, but in a good way.

“Well, looks like we have a plan for the future. That’s good to have, isn’t it?” Spark chuckled.

Her nose met his as they looked at one another. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They kissed.