Achievement Unlocked: Putting the Fire in Fireteam
Technically, the transmat effect was used to disguise loading screens that would have kicked a pony right out of the full-dive VR experience that Eternity 2 offered. It was a flash of deliberately disorienting lights and color along with a full-body feeling like digital fuzz, like the static left on an old monitor creeping over your whole body and washing everything out in white noise.
Sunny Glow shivered as she materialized onboard a ship, the floor gently rocking under her hooves, the temperature dropping ten degrees and her breath fogging the air in front of her face. It wasn’t real, but to the kirin, it might as well have been. The heavy weight of the visor and around her head was gone, replaced by her deck with the comfortable weight of her armor.
“Glad to see you could make it,” her host said. “I thought we’d have to do the raid without you. Solo-queueing for competitive Crucible was getting so dull.”
Fleur stepped out of the shadows, tossing her head and throwing a wink to a fourth wall Sunny Flare couldn’t see. The unicorn was a head taller than Sunny, her white armor curved and smooth and perfectly clean in the way that said she considered fashion to be the real endgame.
“Don’t worry about it,” the last member of the fireteam said. “I only just got here too.”
Tempest was almost as big as Fleur, but where Fleur was all almost-ethereal elegance, Tempest was brutal effectiveness. A cloak concealed her patchwork armor but couldn’t hide the anti-armor rifle hanging at her side, the weapon almost as big as she was and probably weighing as much as Sunny did.
“Sorry, it was a long day at work,” Sunny said. “Trust me, I’m looking forward to blowing something up.” She walked up to the table in the middle of the room, the circular surface one big holographic display. It was much nicer than her private dropship. Fleur spent more on cosmetics than Sunny did on the rent, so they’d agreed to always meet up on her ride. The one time they’d decided to change things up and go with Tempest’s ship, it had been like riding down from orbit inside a running steam engine.
“Fleur, since it’s your ship, why don’t you give the briefing?” Tempest suggested. “I gotta knock a couple bugs out of my connection. Just promise me you won’t try and sell a freaking pillow to your viewers.”
“She’s streaming?” Sunny asked. “Of course she’s streaming. Why would I even ask?”
“Please don’t say anything that’d get me demonetized,” Fleur whispered. “But good news! This stream isn’t being sponsored by HerPillow. That contract was only for three sessions.”
“Thank Celestia for small favors,” Tempest groaned.
“They weren’t that bad,” Sunny said. “Fleur did hook us up with free samples.”
“The pillows were decent I guess,” Tempest admitted. “It was the stipulation she mention them every fifteen minutes that killed me.”
Fleur looked thoughtful. “You really sound stressed out, Fizzy.”
“Don’t you start with that! Tempest, not Fizzy.”
“Ponies who are under a lot of stress really need to talk to somepony who can help. Did you know that there’s a SolNet site called Trotspace where you can talk to trained professionals? They’ll help you find exactly the pony you need to talk to about these kinds of issues, like having a bad day or making weird faces… or getting up and walking over like you’re going to strangle me!”
“Maybe I should do the briefing?” Sunny suggested. “You two look like you’re busy.”
“Use my offer code ‘deListed’ to get a month free!” Fleur said, running away from Tempest. “You could really use it, Fizzy!”
“I’ll just… I’ll do the briefing then,” Sunny sighed. “I’m the only adult on the entire server, apparently. If anypony is actually watching, because I have no idea how Fleur has this set up, we’re going to do a Celestia’s Run of the new raid, Scourge of the Empire. That means if any of us die we wipe and have to restart from the beginning.”
Tempest slowed to a halt, unable to catch up to Fleur. She leaned against the table, panting for breath.
“Don’t!” Sunny warned. “You’re going to--”
She groaned as a ball of light popped up and started bobbing around.
“King Sombra was after much more than just stealing and abusing the Crystal Heart,” the orb said. “His gaze has turned to the Empire’s most prized possession, the vault containing the crystallized form of Princess Amore. His Taken have--”
“Skip!” Tempest yelled, and the orb went quiet. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine,” Sunny sighed. “We’ve just already heard the flavor text from DataSpike like a hundred times this week in practice.”
“Is she already done trying to kill me?” Fleur asked.
Tempest rolled her eyes. “It’s not even a PVP zone. I couldn’t kill you if I wanted.”
“Maybe next time I’ll let you catch me and see what you do,” Fleur whispered, licking her lips. Tempest’s cheeks turned bright red.
Sunny coughed. “So, um. Same plan as usual?”
“It works, doesn’t it?” Tempest asked.
“For a really generous definition of ‘works’,” Sunny said. “You just sort of run screaming at the enemy.”
“And you do the mission objectives and Fleur steals my kills,” Tempest agreed, nodding. “We’ve managed flawless runs on every other raid.”
“It’s why we’re such a good team!” Fleur said. “Though I do wish you’d follow my suggestion of matching outfits. You don’t even wear the cosmetics I gifted you!”
“It was a maid outfit,” Tempest growled. She winced. “Gah! One second. I have to take care of something in the real world.” Her character froze in place, not even breathing.
“It would have been cute,” Fleur countered. “If you two would cooperate I’d be beating MothFlutter’s stream numbers.”
“You’re never gonna beat her,” Sunny said. “She’s the best.”
“You just wait,” Fleur said. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Okay! I finally got that bullet out!” Tempest said, suddenly coming alive again. “That feels much better.” She slammed a hoof down on the console. “Transmat in five!”
“Did you say bullet?” Sunny asked. Before Tempest could answer, the ship vanished in the pixelated flare of transmat.
In Eternity 2, the Crystal Empire wasn’t quite the post-war economic miracle it was in real life. Dark crystals sprouted like weeds under Sunny’s hooves as they rematerialized on top of a low building overlooking the first raid area.
“I’ll head to the map and start telling you where to go,” Fleur said. A half-dozen blades floated out of the sheaths at her side, orbiting around her. “Try to keep Fizzy out of trouble.”
“Is that even possible?” Sunny snorted.
Fleur leaned in close, her breath warm on Sunny’s cheek. “If you do a good job, I’ll show you something fun~”
“...fun?” Sunny asked, her voice a little squeaky.
“Oh, I know what the mares like~” Fleur promised before bounding away, using her floating blades as a platform to jump in the air.
“She really does like to show off,” Tempest said. She swung her weapon around. It was too big to be called a rifle. Too big, too heavy, something that should have been attached to a tripod and manned by three ponies. It was more like a cannon with a bayonet welded to the end.
“Don’t just run off,” Sunny cautioned. “We have to take out the Taken Berserkers in a certain order, and… and you’re already leaving.” She sighed and watched Tempest land on the street with the kind of three-hooved stance that looked cool but would absolutely destroy your knees if you tried it in real life.
Sunny’s horn flared and she pulled her own weapon free, a light blaster that could dump its entire magazine in about two seconds if she held down the trigger. Not that it was her character’s only trick. A wire launched from the harness wrapped around her body, a grappling hook sinking into the virtual concrete and pulling taut. Sunny jumped, swinging and launching another line to the side, curving around a corner to try and catch up to Tempest.
“Go left,” Fleur said over the team comm.
“You’re at the map already?” Sunny asked.
“Almost. I saw where you were going. Trust me, head left.”
“The berserkers spawn in the other direction,” Sunny said. “We’ve done this raid a dozen times, Fleur. I’m supposed to cover Tempest!” She’d almost caught up to the mare. The alleyway opened up ahead, and even from here Sunny could see Sombra’s Taken milling around, coats turned black by his shadow magic.
“Yes, but I happen to know a secret~ You trust me, don’t you?”
“This had better not be for some kind of meme!” Sunny warned, firing a few rounds in the general direction of the enemies Tempest was charging. It got their attention long enough for Tempest to hit them from the side instead of the back, and then Sunny lost sight of them, detaching her grappling cables and hitting the ground running.
“Second right, then go through the green door,” Fleur instructed.
“It’s locked!” Sunny yelled, jiggling the handle.
“Whoops, sorry, forgot about this. Usually, you have to do this minigame thing with different symbols, but the code actually doesn’t change between resets…” Fleur hummed a few notes to herself and the door popped open on its own. “There.”
“Did you just hack the door?” Sunny asked. “I don’t want to get banned.”
“Don’t worry so much! One of the very nice ponies in my stream’s chat sent me the code. Shoutout to PieGal! Thank you so much for the info!”
Sunny shook her head and kicked the door open. What was inside took her breath away.
“No way,” she whispered.
“I told you before,” Fleur said. “I know what the mares like~”
Tempest braced herself and jumped, landing on the crow-colored pegasus Taken that had been charging her and kicking off, sending it into the dirt and herself high enough to nearly avoid the crackling sphere of black magic the Taken berserker had thrown. It was so warped with dark magic that it was impossible to tell what tribe it had originally been, and you’d have to read the lore obsessively to find out it was actually several ponies fused together, something Tempest would never admit she did obsessively when she had free time.
She played the game to relax. Sometimes that meant hiding away in the codex archives. Sometimes it meant seeking nirvana through violence. It was the latter today.
Tempest fired her cannon in mid-air, the shell hitting the berserker with the distinct metallic hammer of doing buck-all damage and the recoil throwing her back. She landed on a fire escape and rolled, popping back to her hooves.
“Are you two even playing?” Tempest demanded. “You’re supposed to be covering me, Sunny! Where are you?”
“On your left,” Sunny replied.
The street to Tempest’s left was blocked by a barricade. It was supposed to turn the area into an arena for fighting the berserker. The piled-up boxes and debris exploded and something massive slammed through the gap.
“Is that a tank?” Tempest breathed.
“It’s a tank!” Fleur confirmed, excited. “You two are so lucky I actually watch those easter egg videos.”
“Let’s see if this works as well as you said,” Sunny said, her voice echoing through the tank’s external speakers. The turret turned to train on the berserker, and the shot was like thunder, so strong Tempest could feel the shockwave.
The berserkers were supposed to be immune to damage unless you fought them in the right, randomized order. The tank shell didn’t care about immunity, and unlike Tempest’s gun it hit the berserker hard enough to send it back to whatever virtual tartarus it came from.
“One down!” Fleur said. “Very nice, my lovelies. I’ll make my way towards you now that we don’t need the map.”
“Now things are getting fun,” Tempest said. She jumped down to land on top of the tank, riding on the turret. “I could really use some overwhelming firepower after the day I had.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Sunny said. She turned the tank and started down the next street, Tempest taking a few shots at the Taken lurking in the shadows between the buildings.
“I got shot,” Tempest said.
“W-what?!” Sunny sputtered. “You need to go to the hospital, not play a game!”
“As if,” Tempest snorted and sat down. “I’m fine. It only hit me in the chrome. I’ll get it fixed after my paycheck clears for the horseapples I got put through today.” She tapped the hatch. “Berserker at your eleven.”
“You’re a cyborg?” Sunny asked, swinging the turret left and blowing the monster away without even slowing down.
“That’s right, I’m even a bad-ass in real life,” Tempest said. “I got into a fight as a filly. With an autonomous forklift. And it wasn’t a fight as much as it was an accident. Anyway I’m fine now and my therapist needs to stop worrying about trauma. What about you?”
“I just use a full-dive helmet,” Sunny said. “They don’t really make standard augments for my kind.”
“Your kind?” Tempest paused. “Wait, are you actually a kirin? It’s not just an avatar? Crazy. I thought you just bought a skin on the cash shop like Fleur.”
“Sorry. I know it’s a little weird. A lot of ponies get scared off. You know. Worried I'll burn down their house, which is a little ironic, really...”
“No, no, it’s cool,” Tempest coughed. “Actually, it’s really cool. I never met one before.”
“I don’t usually tell ponies, but... I trust you girls,” Sunny said.
“Are you two flirting without me?” Fleur asked from above, hopping down from the rooftops, skipping from one magical platform to the next and building her own stairway down to the tank. Tempest grabbed her hoof to help her onboard. “Also, for the record? I used the paid cosmetics to make my avatar look as much like me as possible.”
Tempest looked at the slim unicorn. “Uh-huh,” she said, incredibly skeptical of that claim.
“It’s true! I just wish I could show you my designer augments. I had them done by the best boutique in Canterlot - totally custom work, every part hoof-fitted and shaped. If you’d like, I could introduce you.”
“How do they hold up under fire?” Tempest asked.
“Or on fire,” Sunny added. “It’s a pretty serious concern for me.”
“I’ll send you a coupon code for a free design consultancy,” Fleur said. “You won’t regret it. She’s a bit underground at the moment but all the best artists are, aren’t they?”
“Hey, does anypony know where the last berserker is?” Sunny asked. “It’s, uh, it’s not here.” She halted the tank. The boss arena wasn’t exactly empty - there were a few low-level enemies wandering in the maze of chest-high cover, but no giant screaming monstrosity.
“If somepony was still at the map they could tell us,” Tempest said.
“It couldn’t have gone far,” Fleur said. “It has to be- oop!”
The tank pitched up. Sunny tried to back away, but the treads just spun in midair, the tank entirely off the ground.
“I told you it wasn’t far away!” Fleur yelled, jumping away.
“Hey, these tanks explode when they take damage, right?” Tempest asked. “Sunny, bail out. I got an idea. As long as Fleur is here we might as well make it awesome, right?”
Sunny pulled open the hatch. Tempest helped her out, then pointed her rifle straight down into the cabin.
“You’re not,” Sunny said, immediately seeing Tempest’s plan.
Tempest winked and Sunny jumped clear, swinging on a grapple line and rolling behind some of the cover.
The berserker roared. Tempest braced herself and grinned madly.
“Smile, you son of a--”
The rapport of her rifle cut off whatever insult she was about to use. The recoil threw Tempest back away from the tank just as it exploded in a fireball, collapsing down on top of the Taken berserker and finishing it off.
“That was amazing!” Fleur yelled down from the roof.
“It was stupid,” Sunny said. “Pretty cool, though.”
“That was the last one,” Tempest said. She shook dust and debris off her cloak. “All the other Taken are dissolving.”
“And we’re getting more viewers. Well, I’m getting more viewers, but you’re here too!” Fleur grinned. “Come on! The next stage is even better!”
“Welcome to Casa Crystal, the most famous racetrack in the world!” Fleur said, spinning to let her viewers get a look at the stunning visuals, the track carved out of the crystal and glittering like an icy luge run. “The developers actually spent a month in the Crystal Empire taking pictures and sketches of the track to make sure they were able to recreate it correctly.”
“It’s pretty accurate,” Tempest said. Fleur turned to focus on her, crouching a little to frame her against the setting sun in the background. She really wished Tempest would take her up on her offer to redesign her character. She was using all default settings and it looked almost deliberately dull.
“Have you been to the real thing?” Sunny asked. Fleur took a step back to get both of them in the shot.
“Once, for a job.” Tempest pointed to the stands. “I was sitting over there. This almost looks more authentic with all the trash and debris everywhere. The actual track is kept so clean it’s unreal.”
“I want to go there someday, but I get anxious around-- Fleur, what in the world are you doing?”
Fleur paused. She was lying on the ground, slowly sliding closer. “Getting a high-angle shot?” She explained. “It’s very difficult to get it lined up. I think I’d need to actually clip through the floor.”
“Or you could show off your airbike,” Tempest said, picking Fleur up by the scruff of the neck. “Stop trying to look under my armor, pervert.”
“I wasn’t trying to get a shot of that!” Fleur huffed. “I’d get my stream suspended for that kind of content! One time I was on my webcam and trying to show off my legs and the next thing you know, I'm offline! I had to appeal to the site admins and tell them it wasn't stripping to remove your limbs on-camera.”
“So this round is just sort of a change of pace,” Sunny said, trying to change the subject and definitely not thinking about what anypony wasn’t wearing under their armor. “We take our airbikes and do most of a lap of Casa Crystal. It’s sort of a time trial. If we go too slowly, the gate at the end closes and we all die.”
“Not that it’ll be a problem,” Fleur said. She gestured grandly, and her airbike appeared in a flare of transmat effects. It was long and elegant, like a limousine crossed with a jet engine, teardrop shaped antigravity pods trailing off into long tails, all of it in smooth white and pink armor. Sunny could smell that distinct factory floor scent only a new vehicle had.
“What, no special Hearth’s Warming Eve version?” Tempest joked.
“Out of season?” Fleur scoffed. “Let me guess, you’ve got the default bike.”
Tempest smirked. Her ride appeared next to her, an unpainted brick of a machine that was exactly as elegant as its rider.
Fleur shook her head and sighed. “Sunny, you have good taste, please tell me you brought something a little better.”
“Better than that?” Sunny asked. “I’d have to go out of my way to make it worse.”
Her horn lit up, and her airbike appeared at her side, a bright orange-red streamlined shape trimmed with flashing lights. It wasn’t quite as exclusive as Fleur’s, but it was certainly eye-catching.
“A flashy paint job gives you no tactical advantage,” Tempest said, with a huff. “I thought you’d at least have something practical.”
“Says the pony who took the scope off her rifle so she could mount a bayonet,” Fleur giggled.
“It’s a game,” Sunny said. “I do like to have at least a little fun. Besides, it reminds me of the one part of my job I really like.”
“You better not be one of the Royal Guard,” Tempest groaned. “It would ruin my reputation, especially with however many ponies are watching Fleur shake her flank at the camera, and don’t pretend you’re not doing it.”
“I only do that on the private server,” Fleur countered.
“That’s a yes, not a no,” Tempest reminded her. She hopped on her bike, the engine roaring when she gripped the handlebars. “First one to the end buys the drinks when we get back!”
Sunny hopped on her bike, hooves hitting the stirrups and kicking to launch herself off, the bike sliding onto the race track. Above them, the lights changed from blue to yellow, signaling that the timer had activated.
She pulled to the right, sliding out of the way as spikes erupted from the floor.
“The real thing didn’t have traps!” Tempest yelled, her voice carrying despite the rush of wind.
“I can never remember where all of them are!” Sunny shouted back. The track cracked in front of them, a ravine opening up with only a narrow path across it. “Where’s Fleur? Did she get stuck on something?”
A high-pitched turbine engine screamed above them, and Fleur’s bike shot across the abyss, using a bump in the road like a ramp. She waved to Sunny and flipped her bike over in midair, doing two full rotations before landing on a smooth patch of trap-free track on the far side.
“She’s making me look bad,” Tempest groaned.
“I was watching speedruns of this section and I just had to try some of the strategies,” Fleur explained, her voice echoing over the comms. “It’s much faster to use this route!”
“Did you even practice it?” Sunny asked.
“It wouldn’t be as fun without a little risk!” Fleur said. “Speaking of which, some of our adoring fans are arriving!”
Black portals erupted in the air to the sides of the track, vomiting out Sombra’s Taken. Six black airbikes trailing thick smoke swerved down towards Sunny and Tempest.
Sunny looked back and fired in their general direction, bolts of magical power bouncing off the bikes like a swarm of angry glowing bees, even the small gap between them enough to rob the shots of any real stopping power.
“You know you can’t hit anything at that range,” Tempest said. “All you’re doing is annoying them!”
“Part of the game is about putting on a good show!” Fleur shouted. She stood up on her bike, getting out of the seat and standing on the handlebars, throttle fixed at maximum. Her bike slid sideways and hit a section of sloped crystal, tipping back and jumping, landing between two of the Taken. Fleur’s floating blades flashed to either side, jamming in the delicate engines and blowing them apart, the Taken crashing and dissolving into smoke.
Sunny slowed her bike, gliding until she was parallel to one of the Taken airbikes. She took careful aim and launched her grapple, the hook going wide. The Taken flinched, then laughed at her apparent miss. The laugh cut short when the second airbike, the one she’d been aiming at, crashed into the first and both of them exploded into shrapnel and ashes.
“What’s wrong Tempest?” Sunny asked. “Are you just going to let us do all the work?”
Tempest snorted with annoyance and fired blindly backwards, hitting nothing and struggling to keep her bike steady, the recoil making it jump to one side like it had been kicked by an earth pony with a grudge.
“Maybe if somepony hadn’t removed the scope on their rifle they’d hit something,” Sunny teased.
“I’ll show you--” Tempest got up out of her seat, bracing herself and facing backwards, aiming down her gun’s iron sights. One of the last two Taken surged forwards, and Tempest fired. The shell hit the airbike straight-on, drilling a visible hole all the way through it before it exploded.
The recoil from shot, taken at a high angle with Tempest standing up, made the airbike pitch forward. The front cowling clipped the track and dug in, flinging Tempest into the air. This was an especially great surprise to Tempest, who wasn’t planning on being catapulted anywhere today.
“Tempest!” Sunny yelled, worried that she was about to splatter all over the track.
“Tempest!” Fleur groaned, worried that she was about to fail her flawless no-death run.
Tempest’s bike exploded, as things tended to do in Eternity 2.
Sunny slammed on her booster and spun to the side. Tempest landed hard on the back half of her bike, her bike dipping and scraping along the track with the shock.
“Thanks!” Tempest shouted. She snapped off another shot, and it went wide, the bike swerving side to side. “Keep it steady!”
“I am keeping it steady!” Sunny yelled.
“You need to finish it off, girls!” Fleur said. She did a headstand on her bike. “We’re almost at the end of the track!”
“I got it,” Tempest mumbled, holding the gun tight against her shoulder, knees bending to absorb the bouncing motion of the airbike over the rough terrain. “Keep it steady…” she mumbled, trying to line it up. The Taken airbike drifted to the side.
Tempest took the shot, her rifle round clipping the armored bike and hitting the pilot on the other side, throwing the possessed pony free before the driverless bike flipped over and crashed into the wall.
“I told you I--”
“Hang on!” Sunny interrupted, instinctively reaching a hoof back to grab Tempest.
They hit the ramp at the end of the track and sailed into the arctic air.
“I really hate this part,” Tempest mumbled, looking down at the lake below them.
Sunny dragged Tempest out of the ice-cold water, Tempest dragged her gun, and no one was having a great time.
“I just don’t see why they couldn’t have taken a few liberties with temperature,” Tempest gasped, shivering uncontrollably. “Every time we do this I feel like I’m going to get frostbite.”
“It is unpleasant, isn’t it?” Fleur asked. She hummed to herself and tapped a few buttons. Her armor shifted color and she was instantly dry.
“Did you just waste a respec token on a costume change?” Sunny asked.
Fleur smirked. “You’re shivering and drenched. I’m not. I wouldn’t call it a waste.”
“I can’t believe how much you spend on cosmetics,” Tempest mumbled.
“I’m a sponsored partner. I get a lot of free premium currency,” Fleur explained. “Hey, you know what would be great? We could all meet up! That would be a great special stream!”
“I don’t know,” Tempest said. “I live in a sort of bad part of town.”
“Same,” Sunny agreed. “I actually live outside the city wall.”
“Really?” Tempest blinked in surprise.
“It’s just easier,” Sunny said. “I’m a kirin. When I’m on the job I’ve got a uniform and ponies can’t tell, but I don’t wanna deal with that every day at home. I have an apartment in one of those giant apartment blocks and even though I’ve got like a thousand neighbors I don’t think I’ve even talked to more than ten of them.”
“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” Tempest agreed. “I live in East Block 14.”
Sunny gasped. “I live in East Block 13! We’re across the street from each other!”
“Oh wow!” Fleur grinned. “That’s so perfect! You two can pick somewhere you know and I can meet you there! It’ll be our first fireteam meetup! Actually, I’ll pick a place. I’m polling the ponies on my stream about the best places to eat.”
“Come on, we’re almost at the boss, can’t you drop the multitasking a little?” Sunny sighed. “We need to focus if we’re going to get through this without any of us dying.”
“Don’t worry so much,” Fleur said, waving a hoof and looking somewhere Sunny and Tempest couldn’t see. “I’m always multitasking. Before you two got online I was doing remote tech support and competitive crucible at the same time.”
“You work in tech support?” Tempest snorted. “I didn’t think you were a nerd.”
On the far side of the ice-choked lake was another small section of city, walled off with barricades like the arenas the berserkers had been in. A massive machine crouched in the center of the block of buildings, ruined spires of steel and glass that had half-collapsed against each other to form a roof overhead, flickering streetlights giving the area an eerie ambience.
“Well, tech support is a little bit of a euphemism,” Fleur admitted. “I might have been doing a pentest. But, ah, an unofficial pentest where you’re hired by a third party.”
“You mean you were hacking somepony,” Sunny corrected.
“Hacking is such a dirty term,” Fleur said. “I prefer to think of it as an unannounced red team remote engagement in support of onsite actors.”
“Yeah that’s corp-speak for hacking,” Sunny said. “I can’t believe you’d do that!”
“It wasn’t anything dangerous,” Fleur huffed. “It should have been an easy job, just a milk run. I was going to disable security so they could go in and get some hard drives. I took down every bit of security between the door and the server room and what does the jerk do? They go in the wrong door! I only took down part of the system to avoid tripping tamper alarms - while getting a killstreak in PVP, mind you - and they have the gall to claim I didn’t do my job. They completely stiffed me on payment!”
“Wait a minute,” Tempest said, stepping up to Fleur and narrowing her eyes. “The Fetlock and Martin run? The one for the Storm King?”
“Fetlock and Martin?” Sunny asked. She could feel a migraine starting. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You don’t work there, do you?” Tempest asked, suddenly worried and turning her attention away from Fleur. “...You’re not a cop, right? You have to tell me if you're a cop. It's a law. I think.”
“No,” Sunny said. “I work for the fire department. And I had to respond to a massive fire today, at Fetlock and Martin, because somepony decided to add arson to their breaking and entering!”
“I needed to cover my escape because somepony didn’t disable the alarms!” Tempest yelled. “Probably because they were too busy trying to get kills in Eternity!”
“I did disable the fire alarms,” Fleur admitted, quietly.
“That would be why the fire got so bad before anypony called it in,” Sunny groaned. “We didn’t even get paid for responding to it because Fetlock and Martin are calling it an alarm fault! I worked hours of overtime for nothing!”
“At least nopony got hurt,” Fleur suggested.
“I got hurt. I got shot!” Tempest said. “Because the security teams knew I was coming because you disabled the alarms on the wrong doors!”
“It’s very rude of you to put the blame on me when I told you very clearly to go in on the building’s east side,” Fleur said.
“You said west!”
“I did not say-- hold on, maybe I did say west. Somepony on the chat found the logs.” Fleur blushed. “I might have been slightly distracted, okay, I admit that. Can’t we just admit we all did something wrong and let bygones be bygones?”
“What did I do wrong?” Sunny demanded.
“Getting caught up in details is a really petty thing,” Fleur sighed. “What we should really be focused on is-- oop!”
She squeaked, and a huge metal hoof slammed down like it was swatting a fly. Sparks flew, and Fleur’s hooves dug into the ground, all six of her floating blades forming a shield and just barely holding the massive machine back from crushing her.
“Oh right, we were about to start a boss fight,” Sunny said. “I almost forgot, what with you two admitting to being criminals.”
“A little help?” Fleur asked, clearly straining.
Tempest snapped off a high shot almost without looking, and the metal beast roared, stumbling back with the radar dish on its left side sparking and twitching like a wounded limb.
“It’s not crime,” Tempest said. “Okay, it’s slightly crime. But only barely! Corporations deserve it, and the money for those hard drives was really, really good!”
The boss’s face opened up like a set of huge jaws, exposing a glowing magical eye, trailing black smoke and flame with the dark sorcery animating the construct. A turret popped up and started firing magical bolts in sweeping patterns, not really aiming at anything yet.
“Do you know how much trouble I’d be in if my bosses knew I was associating with criminals?” Sunny asked. She shot a grapple line past the monster and let it carry her along, passing close enough to the turret to blow it up with a burst of fully-automatic fire and stop the magical force beam slicing across the arena.
“Speaking of which, you two aren’t going to believe this but I’ve just passed MothFlutter’s all-time record! There are thousands of ponies watching us live!” Fleur flicked a knife into the monster’s exposed eye.
The dark magic mecha screamed, tossing its head like a wounded animal, jaws snapping shut to protect the wounded core.
“...does anypony else not like the idea that we’ve been talking about crime while ponies are listening?” Tempest asked.
“You’re the ones who’ve been talking about crime. I’m a public servant,” Sunny said. “Watch out, Tempest, it’s going for you!”
“I see it,” Tempest said. The monster charged blindly towards her, unable to see her with the radar dish broken and the eye covered. She ran to the side at the last moment and let it run past, slamming into the wall.
While it was stunned, she fired at one of its feet point-blank, and the armor shattered, the monster roaring and limping back to collapse against the wall in a heap.
“...you don’t think my sponsors will get mad, do you?” Fleur whispered.
“I think if you’re number one they’ll give you some leeway,” Tempest assured her.
The collapsed boss monster opened the jaws over its eye, the burning orb glaring at the fireteam. Ports opened on its back.
“You got this one, Sunny!” Tempest yelled. “It’s doing the rocket barrage this time!”
“I see it!” Sunny called out, getting in front of the group. It was basically impossible to shoot down the rockets with a precision weapon like Tempest’s rifle, and Fleur’s blades were too short-ranged.
A wall of rockets met a wall of bullets, and the rockets exploded before reaching them.
“Pile in before it can recover!” Tempest yelled, charging through the wall of fire.
“She’s not,” Sunny groaned.
“See? It’s definitely not my fault she used the wrong door. She doesn’t listen.” Fleur hopped over the burning debris with a mid-air assist from her blades.
Sunny swung past, detaching her grapple and letting the momentum carry her. She reached the boss at the same time as Tempest and Fleur. A storm of bullets, a bayonet, and a half-dozen blades hit the exposed eye at the same time, and it managed to look almost surprised before it exploded into black mist.
The huge machine tried to stand up.
“Back up, back up!” Sunny said.
“Don’t worry, it’s already dead,” Fleur said. Smoke erupted from the thing’s joints, and it managed one shuddering step before one leg blew off at the hip and it keeled over, slamming into the ground and going still.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Tempest said. “You two are just lucky I was here to get us past the second attack phase.”
“You’d both be paste if I wasn’t here,” Sunny countered. “Unless you want to try using your bayonet on missiles, because I’d love to see you attempt that.”
“Now, now, no fighting,” Fleur said. “We just completed a three-mare flawless run of the newest and hardest raid in the game! We’re the best! Everypony, if you like what you saw, like and subscribe to my channel!”
“Yeah, and remind her to pay attention if she’s doing red hat… security, whatever you called it.” Tempest shrugged. “Because if she’d picked the right door I’d have gotten paid. And then I could have paid her.”
“Red teaming,” Fleur corrected. “I’ll give you a discount for next time, okay? I said I was sorry!”
“You never actually said you were sorry,” Tempest said.
“Also, anypony listening, please don’t do arson, because it makes a huge mess and puts hard-working honest ponies at risk, especially when somepony else disables the alarms and those honest ponies work a full day and overtime with no pay.” Sunny said.
“You know,” Fleur said. “If you two need money because you need, oh, I don’t know, repairs to expensive augments, or because you missed out on a lot of overtime… There’s a pony that was asking me about a job.”
“A job,” Sunny said, flatly.
“It would be easy, and you could make a lot of money really quickly,” Fleur promised. “I wouldn’t have even mentioned it, but we work so well together and none of us got the payday we were hoping for today.”
“We’re not talking about it online,” Tempest said.
“We were going to meet up anyway, right?” Fleur grinned.
“Really? After the fire? And getting you shot?” Sunny asked.
“Good point,” Tempest rubbed her chin. “Fleur, you’re buying dinner. And no streaming.”
“That’s so mean, cutting my viewers out of it,” Fleur pouted. “But I might be willing to pick up the tab as long as Sunny comes too.”
Sunny took a step back. “Woah, woah, I’m a firefighter! I can’t just…” She looked into Fleur’s eyes and hesitated.
“I’ll buy you a drink,” Tempest said. “I owe you an apology for the fire. And, you know, it might be nice to meet up anyway…” She blushed a little.
“Fine!” Sunny groaned. “I’ll come.”
“It’s a date!” Fleur giggled, pulling them into a hug. “You two are okay with ramen, right? I’ve been meaning to do a review of this one place…”
Author's Note
So as some people might know, I've been working on a cyberpunk fic for a long time. Well, I say working, other people say 'collapsed into depression and staring at a blank page for hours'. When someone decided to commission a fic set in a cyberpunk world, it was well in my wheelhouse.
Expect Eternity 2 to return, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Sunny Glow, Tempest Shadow, and Fleur de Lis attempt to use their skills outside of a video game in the future.
