CyberPone

Chapters

//Stairway To Heaven
//The Pretender
//Hocus Pocus
{Foreword} /run CyberPone_v1.exe
Ȩ̵̡̨̢̧̧̧̛̛̖̟͉̺̗͇̭̬͕͓̪̗̪͇̳̺͚͍̯̫̯̗̭̦̲̠̭̫̳̥̯̼̯̙̜̘͇͙̩̣̝̫͎͈̟͖͉̬̺̝͕̖̟̤̗͔͍͖̝͕̤̘̯̖̯͓͖͔̩͓̳̬̝̱̤͙̹̺̙̖̰̏́̂̍̌͑̈́͑̌̎̔̌́̆͐̄̊̍̂́͛̏͂̅̽̇̈́̋̄̊̇͒͘̚̚͜͜͜͠͠͝͝ͅͅͅͅͅŖ̷̨̡̨̡̢̡̛̞̤̯̪̭̥̥̣̹̥̗̤̣̪̹̦̠̮̻̲̲͓͙̳̺͖̗͉̭͔̹͍̱̟̦̻̰̺͚̣̹̠͓͕͓̗̭̯̥̙̻̞̦̗͚͖̩̪̣̜͕͓̫͓̘̬̳̼̘̬̤̠̜̻͙̗̝̞̦̱͕̪̱̹́̓́͆̅̓̓̎̇́̋̍͌͘͘̚͜͝͝ͅͅͅ

//Stairway To Heaven

“You think the whole world has gone mad? Uh-uh yeah, it’s always been like this. I think you don’t get out much.”

Fair warning. This is going to be much weirder than usual; even for me.

Removing the cigarette from my mouth with crimson magic, I blew a ring of smoke into the air as I leaned back into the driver's seat and cracked my back. I grabbed my necklace, a shard, and brought it to the front of my face with a longing glance. Not everything was how it seemed.

A young grey diamond dog hopped into the backseat from the street. He leaned forward and, with his massive metal arm, turned the radio on. He tuned it to annoyingly loud hip hop. The pale blue unicorn mare next to me, with a mane that was an explosion of ultraviolet colors, let out a groan.

“What?!” The diamond dog asked while fixing his skull headcap bandanna.

“Turn that shit off, Hardcase.” She rolled her blue glowing eyes, reaching for the radio knob.

Hardcase grabbed her grey sleeveless denim jacket’s shoulder before she could touch the knob, “You just don’t know good music, niña.”

“You can’t even understand the words they’re singing! It’s just a bunch of autotune bullshit like the corpos produce.” She flailed her hooves in the air.

“Settle down, Hexie.” I turned to her, taking another hit from my cig.

Hardcase gave a hearty laugh, “At least you understand good music, hombre!”

“Nah,” I tapped the burnt end of my cigarette on the window of the car, its ashes falling to the pavement below. “Your taste in music is shit.”

“You city folk think you know everything.”

I laughed. “Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. Who really gives a shit though? Yo Hexie, switch the radio to something better.”

“Gladly!” The mare turned the knob, passing through the countless radio channels playing different styles of music, talking about the latest corporate news and other things. She paused at a few stations, giving each one a listen for a few seconds, before finding one she enjoyed.

The radiopony’s silkily deep voice squeaked through the old speakers, “Welcome back to 94.9 The Underground! This is your Love Doctor speaking directly to you, the beautiful people of Detrot. ‘It’s another great day for a big score, so get out there.’ That’s what my pops used to say. Now for a little news. Recently, there have been reports of gang violence between the Jets and the Techno-Scorpions escalating up in Evergreen. Apparently, not only are they pumping holes everywhere, but they’re also stealing fucking porches. How do you steal a whole goddamn porch?! Luna fuck me, we can’t have shit in Detrot, dawg! Hopefully DCP will be able put an end to the violence before I have to go there myself to beat some sense into those kids! In other news, SomaTech’s CEO is coming to visit our little city to reveal a new cyberware that’ll be available to the public soon for only a small shitton of bits. How kind of her. But that’s enough from me. Now it’s time DJ-Pon3 dropped the beat on the man with their latest hit, Techno Lullaby.”

Electronic beats filled the car. Both Hex and I bopped our heads to the beat as DJ-Pon3 sang out their anger over the mic. Hardcase crossed his cybernetic arms.

“So you complain about autotune, but you listen to this! Also didn’t she die like 30 years ago?”

“That was never confirmed, so shut the fuck up! DJ is actively fighting the corporations. What are your artists doing?” Hexadecimal retorted playfully.

The diamond dog leaned back into his seat and grumbled something inaudible. It’s always the nomad-types trying to make a name for themselves. I flicked my cig out the window and stared out to the bright neon colored heart of Detrot, the city of dreams or so they say. It was nothing more than a cesspool of poverty, corporate greed and, of course, technological marvel. I was born and most likely would die here, but I would be damned if I would go down without a fight.

My thoughts were disrupted by a message that appeared in my vision. My hud asked for an input in orange coloring to connect to a user named Crash Bug. Using only my thoughts, I connected to the caller. In the top left of my sight a square appeared with the metallic face of a zebra. Her eyes glowed a soft green along with the lines of light that went down her face.

“What’s up, Bug?” I asked.

“The SomaTech transport truck is only a few blocks from you now. Get ready,” she said bluntly.

I turned to my crew while opening the sunroof. “Get ready to dance, kids. The target will be here soon.”

Hardcase cracked his neck, “Gotta love SomaTech. Their products are always top of the line.”

“I’ll never use their shit; not even for scrap parts.” I scowled at his reflection in the mirror.

The diamond dog climbed onto the top of the car through the now open sunroof, “Whatever pays the bills, choom.”

Hexie levitated a double barrel break action tech shotgun from the back seat, loading in two shells. She pressed and held the first part of the two-step trigger. Blue and white electricity pulsed from the trigger guard and up to the front of the weapon through wires and passed inside multiple moving black boxes fixed on the barrel. Hexie playfully stuck her tongue out at me as a pixel mask projected in front of her face. It appeared as a half mask of a snarling kirin. Sighing at the sight, she giggled and leaned out the passenger window with the shotgun. I floated my own custom PDW out of the backseat, loading a fresh magazine in and started to rev the engine. It roared with excitement.

The song on the radio finished and the Love Doctor spoke again, “It’s time for classic hour! Here’s My Backyard with FreeBird!”

“Now this is music,” I said quietly to myself. Easy going guitar chords played as we waited for the vehicle. I turned up the music, not removing my eyes from the road in front of us.

A dark grey truck turned the corner right on our street. Just as it was about to pass us, I shifted into drive, tires squealing, and t-boned the truck into a nearby building. My car’s metal grill guard smashed into the front passenger door, crushing the pony sitting there. His robotic screams were quickly silenced by a blast from Hexie’s shotgun. Their head was instantly deleted, leaving only small black burn marks on the chair’s headrest. Hardcase was flung forcefully from the roof of the car and punched his cybernetic paw through the windshield, ripping out the zebra driver and tossing him away like an old banana peel. The body bounced across the pavement like a skipping stone until the zebra hit a light post with a very loud crack.

I opened my car door and exited my vehicle. I looked at my crew, all smiling. This was the score we needed. I approached the back passenger door and tugged it open with my crimson magic. A whimper came from inside the truck as the door swung open. The grey pegasus inside, in a well pressed suit, cowered in fear at my glowing orange scowl. He was hugging a small sliver case.

“Pleeasse...don’t hurt me,” he whined from behind the case.

I quickly scanned the case he held with my eyes. From the information on my HUD it was our target, but was locked biometrically. I leveled my firearm to the corpo’s forehead.

“You can either open the case warm or cold. It doesn’t matter to me.”

The stallion lowered the case and pressed a hoof to a scanner located on top of it. We locked eyes and silence grew around us as the case began to open.

The pegasus’s eyes filled with fear, “I know y-you.”

My eyes burst into flames, “Mr. Blackout.”

“C-Candle Wick, let’s not revert to our animalistic instincts. We can talk about it, r-right?”

They took everything from me, including my name. Candle Wick, my official name from my days of being just another guard for SomaTech. I served for them for years until I was thrown away like trash by the pegasus before me. There was some sort of poetic symbolism here, but I really couldn’t give less of a shit.

I let out a long sigh, “My name is Afterburner.”

I pulled the trigger, exploding his grey matter all over the back seat of the truck. Blackout’s upper torso slid from the window and fell to the floor below with a meaty residue left on its path down. I spun the steel case and was greeted by a single black and green chip shard. I grabbed the chip with my magic and returned to my car where Hexie was waiting with Hardcase.

“You done blow’n the corpo?” the punk unicorn asked playfully.

I didn’t even humor her with a response. Only the grinding of my teeth as my flames cooled off. I jumped in the car and floated the shard to Hexie.

“Hexadecimal, check the data on the chip,” I said, starting the car.

The vehicle roared with a cheery response as I put her into gear, driving away from the scene, speeding off to our rendezvous point with the ‘customer’. Crash Bug never gave us any more information than that. I find it best not to ask for any more information than I need. No strings equals no problems in the long run.

Hexie scanned the shard with her eyes before deeming it safe to plug it into her head behind her ear. It entered smoothly with a small click into the shard port. Her eyes flicking about as she sifted through the information.

“Yo Afterburner, looks like they’re tracking the chip,” she said as her eyes flicked again in her technomagical trance.

“We can’t head to the meeting point like this. Can you disable it?”

She paused for a moment, “Yeah, just give me some time.”

I nodded and turned to Hardcase, who was just vibing in the back, “Hey just in case we get a tail, please don't just shoot out my back window. I paid a lot for that.”

“Fine, choom.” Hardcase rolled his eyes.

I kept driving roughly towards our objective, keeping my eyes peeled for the Five-O or SomaTech. While pulling up to stop at a red light I spotted a solid silver car stop just across from us. With a quick scan of the vehicle, anyone could tell it was corpo. It was armored to the teeth. No glass windows; the cameras all around its exterior gave the driver inside the visual information needed to drive.

‘Well fuck me,’ I thought to myself. ‘Looks like I’ll need to give my ride a new paint job when all this is over.’

I rocked my hoof back and forth on the gas pedal, letting the engine growl. As the square light over the intersection flicked to green I picked my hoof off the brake, shifted back into first gear and blazed forward, leaving burnt rubber behind me like a lover’s kiss. The silver car hit a u-turn and followed. I bobbed and weaved around the vehicles in front of me while shifting into higher gears, trying to put more distance between us, but whoever the driver was, they were good. As they edged closer to my car, I pushed on the brakes, shifted into fifth gear and whipped the steering wheel to the left, drifting to a side street. As I pulled the wheel back to the right to stabilize the vehicle, Hardcase padded me on the shoulder rapidly.

“We got a problem, choom. The car is still hot on our tail,” He said as a bright crimson shot ripped through the middle of the car’s back window. “And they’re deploying drones now!”

I glanced at the left side mirror and, before I could get a good look at the drone’s reflection, the mirror was blasted off the side of my car. I leaned my head out the window and glared at a pair of wyvern-looking, medium-sized, black and glowing green flying assault drones. I’d always hated Hunters. They were armed with state-of-the-art laser weaponry at the drone’s tail, which were pointed towards us. The Hunters were surrounded by six other smaller ball drones.

“They got a damn Rigger in the car!” I yelled to my crew.

I leaned back into my seat and continued to burn rubber down the road while trying to dodge the hail of lasers shooting at us. Along the way we picked up two other vehicles, both black vans with ponies and zebras shooting from their open side doors. Hardcase was doing his best to return fire as I continued drifting down streets and dancing around other cars on the road. Folks in the streets trying to hide from the chaos were being cut down by stray bullets and lasers from the corpos.

‘Damn rats!’

I hit a huge drift coming into a roundabout which caused our diamond dog to be slammed to one side of the car.

“Can you drive smoother? I don’t have a snowball's chance in Tartarus of hitting shit like this!” Hardcase yelled at me.

“Sure, I’ll just let ’em hit us more.” While shifting into higher gears, I looked worriedly at Hexie. “How’s breaking the tracker going?”

Her focused glare softened, “Tracker is zero’d.”

“Prime,” I laughed. “Hardcase, I got a present in the back under the seats for the corpos. You mind delivering it?”

“Now, that’s a hot piece of iron right there!” The diamond dog replied, practically squealing with joy.

In my rearview, I watched my companion place the barrel of the light machine gun out what was left of the back window, and pull back the charging handle. The LMG spat out hot brass cases all over the backseats as Hardcase gave deep lead insertions to organic and inorganic beings alike. The diamond dog sounded like a filly on Hearth’s Warming getting the present they begged all year for.

One of the vans and a few drones behind us exploded into impressive multi-colored fireballs as my speedometer read 135mph and climbing. Hardcase screamed in pain from the back. Hexie looked back and then to me, “Well, looks like you need to get us out of here quick. Think you can handle that, Hot-Rod?”

“That a question?”

I scanned the road ahead, thousands of lines of code and data processed around my vision, searching for the fast route for escape and to our meeting spot. A small loading bar completed at the top of my screen telling me the problem was solved. Orange arrows appeared on the road in front of me that my HUD told me to follow. I didn’t object, chasing down the digital path as it turned and bended before me. After a few minutes of blissful driving the path led me to a bridge, slowly being brought up for a boat approaching from one side of the river.

Hardcase leaned on my chair still grasping his wound, “Just making sure you're not going to do what I think you are going to do, because choom that’s not a great idea.”

“Have I ever let you down before?” I paused. “Actually don’t answer that. Just trust me.”

I gave the road everything I had, lane splitting towards the rising platform at top speed. My passengers braced themselves on whatever they could. My car rocketed up the platform, catching air, leaving everyone in the vehicle breathless for a moment before our wheels returned to ground. We bounced a little off the ground as we zoomed off, escaping the SomeTech rats and drones.

I let out the breath I was holding and called up Crash Bug on the HUD. The video of the zebra appeared again in my vision.

“Inform the customers we’ve acquired the chip and we’ll be arriving at the set location shortly.”

Bug nodded and ended the link.

“Another happy ending, eh Afterburner?” Hexadecimal snickered.

I rolled my eyes. Hardcase reached forward and switched the radio channel back to hip hop as the last song finally ended. Hexie was opening her mouth to object, but stopped after a quick glance at me. Hardcase smiled as we zoomed off to the meeting.

*** *** ***

“Remember to always smile! But that should be simple stuff for the master of negotiations himself,” Hexie said from the video link in the corner of my orange heads-up display with a large grin.

I let out a laugh, “Yeah, and I’m a goddamn onion, too. I’ll see you after the meeting.”

“Bye, bye for now, Smoky!”

The call ended. Hardcase and I approached the meeting location: an old abandoned Ford auto factory. Once we were the pinnacle of progress in manufacturing and production, but now we’re nothing more than the sad husk of a once great living breathing giant called Detrot. It was surrounded by massive high density housing and bathed in the bright neon lights from advertisement scream screens. The production factory stood as a decaying symbol of what we could’ve become. The sight made me shy away my gaze.

Hardcase put a paw on my shoulder and gave me a nervous look, “So remind me again why you don’t ever ask more questions about the job, other than the cuts and the target?”

“Because Fixers love that. They’re paying us for everything but the lip, so better for ‘good working folk’ like us to zip,” I used my hooves to make air quotations as I spoke. “It also just pays a shitton more to simply shut the fuck up, ya know?”

He nodded, “I think so, choom. But we don’t even know what our customer looks like! That’s my issue.”

“Well let’s get in there and meet them then, if you’re so eager to see their appearance,” I said while walking towards an open garage door on the side of the grey brick building.

I heard Hardcase’s quiet displeasure in the situation as he followed me.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

I entered the large mechanical production line area through the garage door and as the diamond dog came in behind me, I motioned him to shut the door. We sank into darkness only for a brief few seconds before the overhead lights flickered to life. Their cool steel blue light lit up us, the old cars that had never been finished, and a group of black cybernetically enhanced creatures in the room.

I heard about these folks a few times before. Unreformed changelings. Back when I was in school learning about Equestria’s history, they talked about the divide of the changelings over their rulers. Those who didn’t reform into colorful bugs were said to be as black as their soul. The colorful ones could be found almost in every city, but were kept under close eye after the unreformed ones’s help in the assassination of the princesses. According to corporate history, all unreformed changelings were jailed or killed after the Corpo War but, often with the history we’re taught as I found out, they lied.

Each changeling in the room was equipped with rifles except the one in the middle, who approached us.

“Afterburner? I can only assume based on the description Crash Bug gave us,” He said with a refined tone.

“That would be me, who’s ask’n?”

“Where are my manners?” He bowed. “I’m Cornicle, leader of the Family.”

I looked at the changelings around him who were whispering and staring at me. Cornicle noticed my glares at his kind and stood up tall.

“I’m sorry about them, it’s just…,” he paused, lifting a hoof. “We’ve never seen a living kirin before. We were of the understanding that your kind was massacred when the corporations brought their war to your lands. If you don’t mind me asking, how many of you—“

“Do you want the chip or not?” My right eye twitched as I cut him off.

My burst of aggression almost caused Cornicle to stumble. He regained his composure and smiled, “But of course. Let’s move on to business.”

I floated the chip’s small blue container to him in a crimson magical grip. Cornicle removed the shard from the case and plugged it into one of the slots behind his ear. His yellow eyes flickered with blue as he scanned the device. He smiled and turned off the program.

“Perfect. You have no idea what this means to me and my kind. We thank you and your crew.”

Hardcase, who stood practically silent this entire conversation, rolled his eyes and said curtly, “What could be that important on a shard like that?”

I turned to the mutt, feeling my internal flame begin to heat up. Cornicle spoke before I could give the dog the punishment for asking unnecessary questions.

“Simple, it’s a prison that holds the engram of our beloved queen,” the changeling said bluntly.

We stood in shock at the answer, our mouths wide open. Hardcase and I shared a glance before our eyes returned to Cornicle.

“Once again, we thank you,” his eyes glowed blue once again. “You should be receiving your payment briefly.”

The lower corner of my vision confirmed the transfer of fifty thousand bits into my personal account. I thought about the situation we were thrown into. We stole a maximum security prisoner from SomaTech… and everything was going well. I...I didn’t know how to feel about it.

A connection to Hexadecimal appeared in the corner of my HUD. Only voice, not a video link, came though.

“I don’t suppose you were expecting more guests. Patching visuals through your sight now.”

A small video feed appeared in my vision. Multiple hooded figures armed with high tech firearms were silently hacking the lock on the front door of the building. All had a small logo on the back of their clothes: a navy blue circle with a golden obtuse triangle breaking out of it. I knew that symbol. SomaTech had arrived. After the door was successfully opened, the lead character activated a device on their left shoulder. It looked like a mechanical arm with four smaller rotating pieces around the part not connected to the pony. The device leaned into the doorframe, charged up with the small dim red light in the middle growing brighter each second, before it released a crimson grid forward. It encased the room ahead of them till eventually I saw it reach the assembly room passing over everyone inside. It was a scan.

“What was that?” Cornicle asked anxiously looking around the room; he looked ready to jump at the slight sound. His mood and tone had completely shifted, “I thought the best weren’t ever followed!”

“Well,” I gave my most charismatic grin to the changeling, my fangs on full display. “Even experts make mistakes from time to time. Hey, big guy! Let’s show these corpo rats how to tango!”

Hardcase laughed, steam releasing from the exhaust holes located in his shoulders as he cracked his metal knuckles. “Let’s.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply for a few seconds, then exhaled before opening my eyes. It only took a single thought for my cybernetics to activate. The robotic spine plates on the back of my leather jacket jacked themselves into my back. I stumbled forward a bit as my nerves screamed at me due to the impalement. I grit my teeth to hold back my groan. The changelings looked on in horror as my eyes grew a brighter orange than before.

“We’ll deal with the party crashers. Would you be so kind to turn off the lights?” I said in a vain attempt to imitate the changeling’s accent.

The group behind Cornicle giggled at my mockery. He shot a glare at both me and his crew, who immediately recomposed themselves at his glance.

“They’re almost at your south door,” Hexie said through the connection.

I gestured to Hardcase to follow me to the sides of the doorway. We waited quietly for it to open as the lights were turned off in the room, plunging us once again into a void of darkness. The metal sliding door squeaked as the first corpo entered the garage, guns aimed forward from their torso. She stood only a few inches from my face. I could hear her breathing as she stopped and signaled to the group behind him. Slowly her eyes glowed up yellow as she looked around the room.

“Subjects are not visible,” she stated firmly through her half mask. “Scanning the room for life with Horus.”

Horus, I could only assume that was what the device on her shoulder was, came back to life with the small dim red glow as earlier. The eye scanned the room from left to right slowly before stopping on the second pass.

“We have movement located near the center of the room. Proceeding with recovery of the Ark shard.”

The mare edged slowly into the room. The rest of her party, of what looked like ten figures, followed. All cloaked with Horus active devices on their shoulders. The last one entered the room and I looked in Hardcase's direction and winked. I couldn’t see it but I knew he smiled.

The diamond dog grabbed the neck of the pony, their neck cracking loudly before being thrown towards the rest of the corpos. They turned around to open fire on Hardcase, but were met with a flying corpse to the face instead. The body knocked a few of the rats onto the floor while the ones left standing were now searching for my furry friend.

I reached for my gun but found nothing.

‘Celestia fuck!’

I had left my PDW with Hexie in the Ford that was five blocks away in some random pony’s garage.

‘Time for the old fashioned way, I guess…’

I extended my front metal hooves, which opened up and pushed out large, razor-sharp blades from my forehooves. With little effort, I stabbed the mantis-like blades into the wall and began to climb to the beams that hung from the ceiling. An elegant weapon from a more civilized era as some would say. I reached the roof in no time and hopped onto one of the beams, sauntering towards the space above the corpos. They’d never see me coming.

I dropped down from my hiding spot and stopped my fall by ripping my blades through the torso of a corpo below. With the hostile’s lungs filling with blood slowly drowning him, I pulled a blade out and swung it at the closest target. The poor soul tensed up just before his head was sliced off by the blade's sharp edge.

“Subjects found!” The leader said, unloading a hail of super charged lead towards me.

My cybernetic outer spine activated at my command. Cool black liquid was injected directly into my spine; a tingling sensation shot down it. The world appeared to slow down all around, except for me. I dodged out of the path of the bullets and quickly opened the neck of the corpo. I proceeded to finish off all of the rest hostiles in the room walking up to each to slit their throats with extreme precision. Their bodies still appeared full of life appearing frozen in time. My heart dropped when looking for the final target; they had vanished.

I began looking frantically for the little corpo rat. Then suddenly the short hairs on the back of my neck rose. I violently whipped around and thrusted my blade forward, catching the pony’s mask. It fell to the ground as their light tan face was revealed and blue blood fell from the wound I gave them. The stallion jumped back and cleaned the blood with a hoof.

“Your report did say you had access to a Celeritas spine.” He looked at the bodies of SomaTech members floating around him as he began to pace to his right. “It would seem I was the only one who came equipped to handle such a problem.”

I quickly scraped my blades on each other. I began pacing to the right; we started to circle one another. I stared at his blue blood on my blades, then to him. “You’re not alive are you?”

“Hello, I am Live Wire, prototype model. Number cRP800 from SomaTech. You are my mission, and I always complete my mission,” the pony responded in a monotone voice.

“Of course they send a fucking prototype after me. Not even the common decency to give me a completely tested plastic toy!” I smiled at Live Wire. “You know, I’ve never had the chance to talk with someone like you; a real submissive slave. Hell, sound like a pony, you look like a pony, you even act like a pony, but what are you really?”

He laughed as his forehooves opened up, revealing mantis blades of his own, “I’m a machine designed to complete a task. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I sighed loudly.

“Did I disappoint you, ex-Lt. Wick?”

I shook my head and then lunged at Live Wire. We clashed with sparks flying off our weapons; neither one of us gained an edge. Back and forth our blades went. I would cut his torso, he would cut my leg. He moved perfectly systematically against my aggression. Whenever I missed a strike, I was immediately punished with multiple cuts to the face and body. When he to miss, I would swing into the opening only to realize too late that he was faking it. The android couldn’t mess up. Only when I began using my crismon magic to asset the trajectory of my jabs, making them appear random, did I start landing more hits on his body.

The fight went on like a deadly tango until a notification popped up in my vision. I was running out of juice. Live Wire noticed my visible anguish and took a wide swing at me with both blades. I jumped back from my opponent.

His brown eyes flickered briefly blue, “I see you're close to exhausting your supply of Black Lace. Submit to my request and my aggressions will cease immediately.”

‘Fuck’n AI.’ I thought to myself. He was right about one thing, though: I was tired and breathing heavily. I quickly scanned the area for another way out. Live Wire continued to approach me.

“Fuck! Fine, what do you want with me?” I said with a heavy heart while retracting my mantis blades back into my forehooves.

“I’m glad you agreed.” His own blades folded away. “Now all I need to do is jack into you and this is all over.”

“I’m sorry what?”

Live Wire brushed some dust off his cloak and smiled, “Please don’t resist, again.”

He walked up to me and pulled a small cord out of his forehoof. Just as he was about to connect it to a port behind my ear, I lunged on top of him and pinned him to the ground. Live Wire tried to resist by thrashing under my weight, but to no avail. Quickly, I grabbed my own cord from the underside of my forehoof and jacked into a port behind his ear.

The bodies around me finally fell to the floor as I uploaded a short virus directly into Live Wire to disable his cyberware by short circuiting them. To the normal pony it would leave them completely immovable due to the dead weight of the cybernetics. For something like Live Wire, it caused them to black out.

“Guess they’re still working out the kinks,” I told myself in between heavy breathes.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the virus caused spasticity before his eyes fell dim. Hardcase briskly walked over to me.

“We got ’em all, right choom?” he asked.

“Goddesses I hope so. My joints are sore as shit.” Through my link to Live Wire, I connected Hexadecimal into his system. “Hexie, you mind tapping the lines to answer our friend’s question?”

I heard a giggle on the other side of the call, “Sure thing.”

The mare went silent for a few seconds.

“Aaaand we are in.” Another pause occurred. “Hey Afterburner, you have a back up plan right?”

“I’m working on that part,” I replied.

Hardcase face palmed, “Ay caramba.”

“I said I was working on it!”

“Well think faster,” Hexie scolded. “They have the building surrounded.”

“Keep us posted,” I turned to the darkness. “Cornicle, we’re trapped in here thanks to some fucking corpo rats. Any ideas?”

The changeling appeared out of the darkness. He brought a hoof to his chin and pondered over the question.

“We could assist each other and shoot our way out.” His eyes flickered blue. “It’s risky but it will work out in our favor.”

“Afterburner,” Hexie said. “I’m patching you into their comms. I'll see you and Hardcase after all this… right?”

“What gave you the idea that we wouldn’t make it? Come on, Hex. We’re better than that,” I reassured my friend.

She sighed, “I’ll be expecting you, then.”

The connection ended and I removed my link from the port of the android, which returned quickly into my hoof. With a small click, I was transferred over to the chaotic voice communications of SomaTech’s best. Orders were being screamed. Questions asked repeatedly. No one knew what happened to the recon team. Then a single voice overpowered all the discord.

“Shut the fuck up! We are entering the building with overwhelming force,” the feminine voice assured. “Open up the garage with small explosives, then—“

She was interupted by a robotic genderless voice, “The mission is mine now, skinsuit.”

“Under whose o-orders?!”

A short laugh followed, “Black Friday herself gave me control of this situation. Now I’ll head in and clean up the problem you’ve made.”

“Well, we have a problem,” I told everyone in the room.

“SomaTech assaulting us again?”

“Yes,” I replied blankly.

“How many?” Cornicle asked nervously.

“One.”

Everyone in the room fell silent. Hardcase looked at me, puzzled.

“You’re joking.”

I pointed to the garage doors, “I’m not.”

An ear piercing metallic screech resonated from the area. The garage door was cleanly ripped off; greedy blue neon lights filled the once darkened area. All the changelings aimed their firearms at the opening, waiting for any type of movement. Only the continuous sound of squeaking hydraulic joints was audible. Tension filled the room, drowning everyone inside.

“That noise,” one of the changelings whispered, scanning the room. “It’s close.”

“It feels like it’s all around us,” another one stated.

The sound of metal hooves stomping hammered our eardrums. At this point only Hardcase and Cornicle were watching the opening where the garage door used to hang. Everyone else was searching frantically for the source of the noise. Then the sound stopped. The deafening silence overpowered even the rapid breathing in the dim blue room. Cornicle pointed to one of his crew to check out the area near the garage door.

Sweat rolled down the side of his brow as the changeling slowly pulled himself towards the door. With each step he began shaking until we all felt his mind snap. He screamed, “Come on you fucking corpo tool! Show yourself!”

His voice echoed, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. It ran through the front of the manufacturing factory with seemingly no response. The changeling gave the group a prideful smile and walked confidently back towards us. He glared at me with disappointment.

“I thought Kirins were supposed to be intelligent. I guess your kind is better at lying,” He laughed.

All of the bones in his body exploded only a few feet away from me. A massive, deep navy blue colored, pony-like creature landed on top of the changeling. The dust on the floor encased them in a shroud. Its pair of pure white pupil-less eyes glowed from within. Gas escaped from parts on the creature as metal moved within the cloud. I stepped back and looked up at the demise that looked back. The shadow leaped towards the ceiling, back into the darkness, followed by the bullet trails of the folks standing around me.

I tried my best to control my breathing as I stared at the mess of the body that belonged to that changeling. Hardcase grabbed me and turned my view to his. “We have to get out of here, choom!”

He pulled me into a sprint towards the single door of the building leading to the front. Bullets were still being fired all around us as the Family tried their best to locate and kill the creature that had been let loose in the factory room. Blood curdling screams began. I couldn’t hold myself from looking back at where the slaughter was occurring and felt my color fade at what I saw.

It was a pony. No, it was something more. Its massive frame towered over its opponents, demanding fear. The face it wore was from a navy blue pony, much like the color of the metal that made up its body. Its organic eyes had been replaced by optic plate cyberware. Thick wires connected and wrapped around the inner shell of the body. It fired bullets from the center of hooves that decimated the fleshly targets it hit. What stood there ripping and tearing through changelings was no longer something one could consider pony. It was an upgraded pony.

I witnessed Cornicle and a few other changelings fade into the darkness, almost vanishing from existence. I turned away from the canarage of blood and broken bodies and ran in step with Hardcase. But the cybernetic monster was faster, leaping over us and blocking the doorway. We slid to a halt only a few feet in front of it. I froze. For once in my life, I didn’t know what to do.

The creature grinned and pointed at me. “I remember you, cunt.”

My shaking was stopped by Hardcase’s paw on my shoulder. I didn’t know I was shaking.

“Afterburner,” he looked at me with determination. “I got this.”

He sprinted at the beast on all four; picking up incredible speed. The diamond dog then leaped at the face of the cybernetic pony, winding up his metallic fist for a punch. The creature gave a deep robotic laugh before sticking his hoof out to catch Hardcase. He couldn’t move out of the way fast enough, landing face first into the center of the pony’s hoof. Four grey clamps popped out from the sides of his hoof and inserted them deep into the dog’s skull. He screamed as his body spasmed at the pain.

“Help me, Afterbur--” His voice was cut off by the sound of a gunshot that exploded his head like a balloon. Blood and grey matter splattered everywhere, including onto my face. Hardcase’s body was tossed away like a broken toy.

I felt my heart race as my internal flame grew. My body grew black as rage filled my soul. I snipped at his taunting.

“Weak, foolish meatbag,” The cyborg continued to laugh. “Primitive like everyone else.”

Heat engulfed my skin and mane as my blades extended out of my forehooves. I growled at the chunk of talking metal before me. They looked on in amusement.

“Hardcase,” I got out of my throat in between breaths. “You killed him.”

“I’m glad your eyesight hasn’t failed you yet, Wick”

I grit my teeth and lunged at them, “Fuck you!”

My blades cut the sides of his organic face, drawing red blood. He punched my torso, sending me flying back at dangerous speeds. I slammed my mantis blades into the floor to slow my body down. Sparks flew and metal screeched as I stopped. I galloped as fast as my hooves would carry me at the creature. He brought up his right hoof and fired multiple rounds at me that I dodged with the assistance of my Celeritas spine. The bullets tore chucks of concrete from the floor as I closed the distance between the pony. No, not the pony. I closed the distance between me and it.

A click sounded from the cyborg’s hoof. They looked down at their cyberware in anger, then rushed at me. I quickly ducked under the swing of the massive steel behemoth as I attempted to stab them in the chest. My right blade went through the plating and deep into their core. It didn’t faze the cyborg. They brought their hoof down hard, destroying my right forehoof. I stared in shock at the mess of wires, metal and gears. The cybernetic pony wrapped their right hoof around my neck; securing me in a tight grasp with their metal clamps. I tried cutting through the metal of the appendage. My left hoof blade was quickly ripped off in the middle of the action by the cyborg’s free hoof. A smile crossed the metallic monster’s face.

“Candle Wick, the little Kirin that could.” They ran their free hoof down my cybernetic spine. “What a prize.”

Their left hoof clamps wrapped around my metal spine and ripped it free from my back and jacket. I felt tired and my vision grew dimmer. The cyborg snapped the bloody piece of cyberware in half with ease. They raised me into the air, then slammed me down on the concrete below. My head bashed off of the floor. I tried to bring my right hoof up to my head, only to be reminded of my failure. Pulling my body around the best I could, I turned to witness the cyborg reloading their hoofcannon. They quickly flexed their foreleg and a small click was heard, then they pointed the barrel, found in the middle of their hoof, at me. Glee was roughly the emotion on the pony’s face.

“Meltdown,” a feminine voice called out from behind them.

Meltdown seemed to shake and they put their hoof down. Live Wire approached from behind the cyborg, but he was completely porcelain, no longer his light tan color. He put a hoof on Meltdown, who scoffed, turning away from the android.

Live Wire, his normal voice returning, looked at me. “You better hope he doesn’t die during this process. For your sake.”

“Whatever, tincan.”

He walked up to me and jacked into the port behind my ear. My HUD went crazy with multiple notifications and invasion warnings filling my vision. At this point, I didn’t have the strength to act. A loading bar quickly filled as thousands of lines of code flew up the sides of my screen. Various keywords stood out to me and my body grew heavier. Live Wire’s coat slowly returned to its original color with a wave of light tan washing over the white. He looked at me, puzzled.

“I fail to understand why Black Friday wanted this one with his level of deviance,” Live Wire stated to Meltdown while pulling his cord from my side port.

“Who cares?” Meltdown grunted as he walked away.

Live Wire looked down at me, placing a hoof on the side of my head. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

As the pony walked away my vision began to glitch. Saturation faded from colors. I’d lost all feeling in my cyberware. The darkness that hung at the edge of my eyes started to take center stage. My HUD informed me that multiple internal organ systems and cybernetics were on the verge of failure. I was told that shutdown was imminent. I tried to lift my head, but with the strength I had left all I could do was roll it to the side. To stare at the crumbled up headless corpse of Hardcase until I closed my eyes and fell below the seam into a lake of darkness as I heard of the voice of Hexadecimal call out.

*** *** ***

“3̸̛̦̒̈͘à̸͉̝̏͝l̴̺̫̙̲̂͘͝(̸̝͎̘̬͗n̵̪͉͎̍͆ͅo̴̧̱̩͙̎̓̕ẻ̴̦͝.

Life and death is a seesaw; light and dark. The more we search for a way to prolong our time, the more we mess with the natural order of existence. History has never been kind to figures that try to play god. Without balance, the natural order is left in disarray. Without dark there can’t be light and without light there can’t be dark.”

A voice rang out into my ears. I opened my eyes to nothing but darkness. I tried to run but found no ground on which to stand. My own voice was gone as I tried to scream. Only that voice and the sound of a ringing hiss was audible. Was this death?

It couldn’t have been death because I’m still here, only with my thoughts to keep me company. I had to be alive. I felt alive. I felt… home.

My hooves were placed firmly on solid ground. My body was back but not the one I was with. No cybernetics anywhere on me; just organic me.

‘But what about Hexie? What happened?’ It was the only thing I could think about.

I got my answer. A glass shard floated to me from the darkness. It moved on its own without magic. I peered at the reflection it held.

Hexie was driving my car. I rested in the passenger seat beside her. It was the first time I’d ever seen her genuinely terrified. Hexie mumbled to herself as she sped down the road.

“Come on… Move, move!!” She screamed at the road ahead.

I saw Hardcase’s body lying in the backseat. Hexie turned to me.

“Don’t die on me! You still have to keep your promise to me. The corpos are still here. Your job is not done, yet.”

The shard faded from my hoof, returning to the void it came from. I was left alone again. I looked around, not really for anything in particular. Everything was the same except for a light blue beam in the distance. Had that always been there?

I stepped towards it. When I blinked I found myself at the base of a large ornate door. Symbols of suns, crescent moons, books and more filled its dark wooden finish. A seemingly endless glass window stood above it, shattered. I pushed on the door, but it held its ground.

“You don’t know what that thing will do!”

That mysterious voice rang out again. I turned around to nothing. I tried the door again. It grew easier but its massive weight still prevented me from opening it. I felt my rage building.

“It’ll be alright now, Afterburner,” Hexie echoed in the void. “Quick Fix will make you as good as new!”

“Celestia! What happened to him?! Put him on the table. I need to start on him now,” another female voice, that I could only assume was Quick Fix, said.

This time I tried to open the door with everything I had. The door opened with ease, which led into a long brightly lit hallway with a spiral room. Cautiously, I trotted down its length. Objects were placed on each side of me below floating glass shards. Of the different items a few caught my eye. The first was a typewriter with a manuscript being written inside; a title centered on the middle of the page was visible: ‘Resurfaced by Wave Walker’. A small silver name plate right below the object read: Wave Walker. Another was a small crown made from black stone. Even with its rough appearance it remained simply beautiful. Its name plate read: Bad Luck. As I continued down the corridor only one more drew my attention; a purple pulsing orb trapped inside a glass pyramid. The name on below it was scratched off. Only a single letter was legible: A.

I moved past each of the displays until I reached the circle room. In the center was a crystal that appeared to have grown out of the floor. It gave off a soft light blue glow. The floor was a beautiful everchanging mandola. The walls of the room were really one large mirror. I walked around the area clockwise and looked at my reflection. It mimicked my movement as I put a hoof to the glass. It smiled, turning into a Nirik with a burst of colorful flames.

“What’s the matter? You look surprised to see your reflection.”

I stumbled backwards. He, I mean, I… laughed at myself. I quickly turned away and focused on the crystal. I peered inside and heard a conversation between two beings. The mysterious voice from before and a new one.

“What is your wish?” they demanded.

“I wish for…” The voice began then paused. I heard their footsteps grow nearer. Then a pair of mismatched eyes, one crystal blue and the other green, stared back at me through the crystal. The stallion didn’t look shocked like I was. He remained calm. I looked down at where the nameplate should have been. There wasn’t a name but instead a title: The Fool.

“I wish for 3̸̛̦̒̈͘à̸͉̝̏͝l̴̺̫̙̲̂͘͝(̸̝͎̘̬͗n̵̪͉͎̍͆ͅo̴̧̱̩͙̎̓̕ẻ̴̦͝,” he stated firmly.

I looked back at the image in the crystal to find the other side began to crack and fall apart; cut off the voice mid-sentence. I closed my eyes and took a breath. I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t real, but some part of me knew that wasn’t true. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t alive. I was something in between. The void here was a place, but where?

My reflection reached out and pulled me into the mirror against my will. We freefalled together back into darkness. I smiled at myself and together we stated a realization. “This isn't a lake; It’s an ocean.”

*** *** ***

“I don’t think he’s coming back, darling. Do you know if he has any living relatives?”

“No,” Hexie responded. “He never talked about his family.”

My body violently convulsed; the straps connected to the table were the only things preventing me from being thrown from the table. I coughed rapidly for a short amount of time then took a deep breath. I felt like I had been drowning.

Hexie ran over and embraced me, causing me to blush, “Hot Rod, you’re alive!”

“Why,” I paused, “wouldn’t I be?”

Hexie just stared at me until Quick Fix approached me to remove me from the straps, “Because you flatlined.”

“I… what?”

Quick Fix shook her head, “I can’t explain it. Your return just dethroned all known logic.”

I sat up to put my head into my hooves. I paused, looking at my new right forehoof; a black cybernetic. I gazed over every connected line and edge.

The medical mare noticed my empty stare, “Sorry we couldn’t find one in your color, but we only had a few Kirin-made cyberwares.”

I heard her, but I wasn’t really listening. I turned to Hexie. “Where did you send Hardcase?”

“I brought him home to his family,” the punk mare responded quietly.

I nodded sympathetically.

“The hoof isn’t the only part we had to add to you,” Quick Fix cut through the silence, pulling the mirror down with her wing. “Take a look.”

I nervously looked at my reflection. No longer did I have a pair of grey eyes. My right iris was split into two colors. Now the top’s hazel was clashing with the segregated bottom grey and… it was organic. I hadn’t had natural eyes since I was very young. Turning my head to the right, I noticed the new collection of black metal that ran from my shoulder to my ear. It all came together to a cybernetic piece in the center of my left ear.

The shadow of my reflection turned its head back to face me. The shadow whispered into my ear, “Why did you choose to be Chosen?”

I turned around to find nothing behind me. Both mare’s looked concerned at my state, but I couldn’t understand why. Returning my gaze back to the mirror revealed nothing more. No more shadow; just my reflection.

“Are you ready to begin your tango,” the voice spoke again, “like many before you?”

“What do you mean?” I responded out loud.

The color on Hexie's face seemed to fade, “Are you okay?”

“You don’t have to speak out for me to hear you,” the shadow spoke.

“I-I’m fine.” I tried my best to cover my darkening blush as my reflection continued to smile gleefully at my dismay.

I thought about what I was going to say to him, or I guess me? He told me many things I wouldn’t understand. But how could I? This was the edge of understanding, the border of the known. But yet, some part of me knew that he spoke the truth. That he was something more. It was my turn to tango, but it’s a dance that requires two. So, who was my partner?

//The Pretender

“It takes heart to fight for something that so many consider a lost cause.”

I let out a groan as I sat up a little in the passenger seat of my car, grabbing with my magic a small yellow and teal medical injector, labeled “Buck Back!” in big black lettering, from the glove compartment. Without hesitation, I inserted the needle into my upper chest. A minty fresh feeling washed over me as I tossed the empty device out the car window. The radio was dead quiet; a rare thing for us. Hexadecimal was at the wheel, silently waiting for the stoplight to turn green, her eyes hazy.

“Hexie.”

She turned away from me trying her best to avert my gaze.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Hexadecimal didn’t respond, choosing to leave the vehicle in an awkward quiet. I pulled a box of Las Pegasus cigarettes out of my inner jacket pocket with my crimson magic and placed one in my mouth. While returning the box back into my torn and bloody jacket, I flicked my right hoof, setting it ablaze to light the end of my cigarette. Only after a few puffs did Hexie finally speak.

“It’s just…” she stuttered, holding back tears while pressing on the gas as the stoplight turned green. “I want to change what I said to him yesterday. I wish I could’ve at least said goodbye.”

Staring at the skyline’s morning glow, I took another hit from my cig. “Me too.”

The horizon changed from elegant, neon-lit high rises to rough, high density housing as we crossed from Burnt Oak Heights into Delray. Delray was just northeast of the core of the city, and was home for many, including Hexadecimal. Cops rarely covered the area thanks to the Fixers, so if anyone ever needed something, they could find it here.

Hexie took us down the first exit ramp off the freeway, bringing us into the heart of the district. Three children were playing with a patchwork ball, blissfully ignorant of the shithole they were born in. The fillies gleefully hopped passed by a small group of ponies and zebras drinking on the staircase. These older folks whistled and hooted at every female that went by, who all gave audible sounds of disgust as they walked away.

“His mom invited us to his funeral.” Hexie tried her best not to tremble on each word. “Said we’re always welcome there. That we’re pretty much family.”

I couldn’t respond. The memories of Hardcase’s death were too fresh. They ate at my every fiber. I couldn’t hold back the wave of tears. I could’ve done something. No! I should’ve done something! Instead I just stood by and watched. I couldn’t act then, but I was acting now. We would get revenge.

Hexadecimal drove through multiple stoplights, roundabouts and side streets before stopping at the front of an old rundown vinyl record shop called Electric Fetus. A small, white store with a single window that featured records, cassettes and instruments, ranging from an electric blue guitar to a black pearl drum set. Despite the old tech outside, it’s the best music shop in all of Equestria.

Hexie parked in an open spot in front of the store and shut off the vehicle, tossing me the keys. I jumped out of the car and smiled at the glowing neon red and blue open sign. To me, this was home. Hexadecimal locked the car and followed me towards the shop. A small gold bell happily rang as we entered the Electric Fetus. Instantly, we were hit by a multitude of sounds. The song playing over the building’s speakers was drowned out by customers testing out instruments and the folks trying to speak over the noise.

I leaned over the front counter and waved my hoof to get the attention of the female griffon, wearing a black midriff shirt from a band called the Old Gods of Equestria, at the other end. She strutted over to me.

“How can I help you?” she asked in a monotone voice.

“Do you know where Sweet Melody is?”

She pointed towards the back of the room, “She’s helping a young customer in the back.”

Together, Hexie and I moved our way through the folks towards the store manager. As we approached the back of the room, we spotted Melody, a small zebra covered in piercings, wearing a purple headband and multiple necklaces ranging from studs to beads. The young black-coated stallion she was helping was testing out a red electric guitar, playing different riffs and chords. The zebra seemed to be enjoying the music he was playing. It was only when the stallion started to play an A minor triad over another A minor triad did Sweet Melody grab the guitar from his hooves.

“Not in my store. Get out!” she told the stallion.

He grunted and mumbled curses under his breath as he proceeded to leave the store, walking right by me. Sweet Melody put the red electric guitar back on the wall and finally noticed me.

“Afterburner.” She stared at the back of my bloody, torn jacket and new black cybernetics while giggling. “Looking as dashing as ever.”

We embraced and I held out my keys with my magic. “It’s been a day and my ride is kinda torn. You mind having your folks look at it?”

“What did you do to it this time?” She sounded like a mother scolding her child as she pulled away, taking the silver car keys with her.

“Nothing much,” I gave a small grin while running a hoof through my mane. “Just pushed her to the limit. That’s all.”

She laughed again. “Like you always do? So are you gonna pay me this time or should I put it on your tab?”

“I got the bits. I’ll pay you for the parts.”

“Good.” Sweet Melody turned to Hexadecimal and embraced her with a huge smile on her face. “Hexie, it’s been too long! How are you?”

“Better now that I’m in your hooves,” the punk mare answered with a gleefully tone.

I rolled my eyes and tried my best to suppress my cringe. ‘Get a motel,’ I thought.

The zebra pulled away and looked around confused. “Where’s Hardcase?”

Both Hexie and I looked away from our friend’s gaze. Melody’s smile faded as she bowed her head for a second and said a prayer to the Goddesses.
“What happened?”

Hexadecimal began reciting the events of prior day. With each word she spoke was drowned out by a loud hiss of a ringing bell that filled my ears. I blankly watched as the zebra’s face expressions went from shock to anger to horror. I couldn’t hear the words Melody spoke but I didn’t have too. She buried her misty eyes in her hooves just as Hexie finished. The punk unicorn wrapped her own hooves around the short zebra in a vain attempt to comfort her.

After the noise finally stopped, I lifted up her chin with my magic and while looking directly into the zebra mare’s techno--green eyes, I asked, “Melody, do you know if Crash Bug is in today?”

“Yeah, why?”

“We’re heading underground,” I gestured for Hexie to follow me as I started walking to the back storage room of the Electric Fetus. “I need to have a talk with your sister.”

“I guess I’ll talk to you later, babe,” Hexadecimal said to Sweet Melody.

Pushing through the grey swinging doors into the back storage room, I turned left before going down a long set of stairs to the basement of the music shop. The edges of the stairs were lit with soft neon pinkish-red lights, leading up to a grand foyer filled with red velvet couches and a few drink and firearm dispenser machines built into the walls. Ponies, zebras, griffons, dragons, a few colorful changelings, and diamond dogs were chatting in the area, some sitting on the couches while some stood, but all had different visible cybernetics. Ahead of the group was a set of thick steel silver doors with a purple changeling in a black and silver suit and tie that guarded them. Above him was a pale blue sign with a pink outlining border mimicking the art style of street graffiti that read: The Underground.

Everyone stared at me and Hexie as we walked up to the bouncer. He put out a hoof to block us from proceeding. I tried to just walk past him, but he pushed me back and gruffed, “Who do you think you are?”

“It’s been a long day,” I let out with a long sigh. “Tell Crash Bug that Alakdan and Hexadecimal are here to see her.”

“Like I’m just gonna listen to you.” He laughed.

My HUD flickered to life as I quickly sent a message to Crash Bug. In seconds, the sliding doors opened and a small zebra with multiple ear piercings in a sleeveless grey hoodie walked out. She punched the purple changeling in the shoulder.

“Sorry about the new guy, I would’ve expected employees to remember one of our most popular Runners.” The guard moved to the side at Crash Bug’s glare before the zebra turned around and gestured with her head for us to follow her in. “Come on in.”

The changeling didn’t even breath as Hexadecimal and I entered the multiple neon-colored chamber through the door. A large area was packed to the brim with patrons drinking and vibing to live, upbeat dubstep. The sitting bar to the left had every seat filled with folks, which the two bartenders quickly served their drinks and food. The right side of the room was constructed to be an open dance floor, complete with a light up floor, stage for the performing musician and multi-colored strobe lights. The dancers threw their hooves, paws, claws or talons, both metal and organic, in the air, filling the space with jubilant sounds. The booths around the dancers were occupied by those conducting business or other tasks. Like the farthest corner booth from us that was filled by a mixed group of griffins and dragons snorting neat lines of a small, glowing-red crystalled substance: Red Ice. They howled after each completed a line. I rolled my eyes and looked elsewhere.

The walls, and even the roof, were covered in street art commissioned by the owner from famous artists around the city. A new piece was being worked on the wall to the right of the front door. It showed a masked kirin walking through a field of red spider lilies to blindly leap off a cliff and crash into the dark body of water below. There was no tag on the art, but there was a black symbol on the kirin’s jacket: two connected eight notes.

I stopped and took a long puff from my cig as I squinted to observe the painting in more detail.

“Remind you of someone?” a voice sounded from behind me.

It was like looking in the mirror all over again. The kirin, with eyes of silver and a mane of crimson, walked towards the image and placed a hoof on its fresh paint. He laughed at the art, turning to see my reaction. The figure who stood in front of me was me; my shadow. He bared his teeth, making a childish face before raising an eyebrow at me.

“Something in my teeth?!” he asked while nervously trying to look down at his mouth.

I waited a moment to answer, searching for the right words. “Are you real?”

He patted himself all over as if to make sure his body was still there. “Yeah, I would say so.”

My reflection looked closer into my eyes, getting right up in my face. His own eyes appeared like mini cosmos as his pupils were sprinkled with millions upon millions of ‘stars’. His face grew serious. “Are you really that afraid that you can only see me through your new real eye?”

I immediately started to rub my right eye while leaving my other open and, sure enough, he was right. Not only did my doppelganger vanish, but so did the symbol. I repeatedly opened and closed my right eye to confirm what I was seeing was real. My heart began to race as I thought to myself that I’d lost it.

“You’re perfectly sane,” he reassured my worries. “You are just opening your eyes for the first time. Breathtaking, am I right?”

He paused to read my body language and, seemingly, my mind again.

“I get it. The world is moving too fast for even some like you. Buck on the afterburners or stay in the dust, but you won’t like the outcome of the latter.” he stated while flames engulfed his figure, transforming his skin as black as coal and setting his hair ablaze. He drew a pistol out of thin air with his crimson magic and laughed, leveling the barrel of the firearm with his temple and pulling the trigger. I blinked rapidly as the shot echoed in my head, forcing me to the ground along with my cigarette. When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

The patrons of the bar and some from the dance floor around me looked on in bewilderment as Hexie galloped quickly over to help me up.

“Not now,” she pleaded quietly at me.

I rhythmically rubbed the side of my head with a hoof as I wobbled behind Crash Bug up the nearby white-backlit glass stairs that lead to her office, looking over the main room of The Underground. Hexadecimal helped to keep me up right as we entered the head office.

It was a beautifully stylish soundproof room with a soft brown carpet lining its floor, bulletproof windows to gaze out of, a plush grey loveseat right next to the exit door, a small, fully-stocked mini-bar next to the couch, a digital television playing the latest news stories from multiple channels with split screen, and a tall record player that stood by a massive shelf of vintage vinyls. A few band posters were hung on the wall including a DJ Pon3 ‘Resist’ poster featuring the white mare artist smiling determinedly at the camera while wearing a pair of purple-tinted shades with her blue and silver mix mane on full display. Of course, the main object in the room was a large dark wooden desk with two chairs facing opposite of a single, larger chair on the other side. Crash Bug sat down in her padded red chair behind the desk while Hexie assisted me over to the loveseat. Only after I was lying down on the chair did she grab a seat of her own. I levitated a new cigarette from my inner jacket pocket into my mouth and lit it. Crash Bug couldn’t hold back her grin.

“You know, I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Like what?” I asked, wincing a little from the pulsing pain in my head.

“So vulnerable.” She grimaced at my groans. “Anything I can get you to help with the pain?”

I took a long hit from my cig, pulling the small white and orange stick away from my mouth in my magic as I blew a large cloud of smoke into the air. I gestured to it, “I think I got that covered?”

Hexie smirked at my comment before speaking, “Let’s save the rest of the jokes ‘til after the business discussions, okay you two?”

Both Crash Bug and I nodded in agreement.

“So what can I do you for?” the zebra asked, taking a drink from a glass of whiskey in front of her.

“We need to locate those unreformed changelings that hired us,” Hexie said bluntly. “They left Afterburner and Hardcase to fight for themselves.”

Crash Bug just stared at the mare in disappointment, “You know the rules, Hexadecimal. After the payment is received neither party is required to protect the other.”

“That’s not the point,” I snapped at the zebra. “They didn’t stand and fight the corpo rats in front of us!”

“He makes an excellent point,” Hexie agreed.

Crash Bug sighed and reclined back into her seat, “Look I get it, but that’s a breach of buyer’s privacy.”

“Do you really think that matters at this point? The corpos already know everything about us, from our buying habits and decision making to our fucking sexuality. We’re asking for a favor,” came Hexadecimal’s cogent rebuttal.

The zebra mare got out of her chair to walk over to the windows of the office, which overlooked the patrons in The Underground. Her eyes flickered a soft green as she stared blankly out into the crowds. Crash Bug spoke in a tongue I didn’t know for a few minutes, but whatever she heard from the other end caused her to just nod in response. Her eyes returned to their flat green color as she turned around to us.

“I’ll get you what you need.”

I sat and took a hit from my cigarette. “Great! So where can we find them?”

“That part,” she took a deep breath, “Is the problem.”

“Nothing Detrot’s best Fixer and the owner of The Underground can’t handle,” Hexadecimal chuckled, failing to lighten up the mood. “R-right?”

“The owner can handle the problem,” Crash Bug said as she walked over to the vintage record player.

“But… aren’t you the owner?” I raised an eyebrow.

“No, no that’s my mom.”

“From what Melody told me,” Hexie’s expression turned sour, “your mom died…”

“Yeah.” The zebra opened the top of the record player and pushed a button on the inside. “She did.”

A seamless door in the wall slid open, revealing a new part of the room. Crash Bug smirked at Hexadecimal and my astonishment and shock. My Nirik reflection appeared in the desk’s main chair and pointed at the opening sarcastically. “I wasn’t even expecting that.”

I tried my best to ignore his comments as the zebra waved a metal hoof at us to follow. We both hopped out of our seat and walked into the new room. It was a bedroom lined with a music note wallpaper and a set of simple wooden stairs to the right leading further down. The door shut behind us as we followed Crash Bug to a lower level.

Reaching the bottom of the flight of stairs, we were presented with a long hallway with two studio-sized rooms on both sides, with windows peering into each. At the very end of the hall on the other side of an archway was an open space, appearing like a small auditorium. Our zebra guide continued to proceed towards the theater. I stared into each window to see what was on the inside. The left had a large server farm; its silver tower had neatly kept wires running all over the place with blinking green and yellow lights on the front of the racks in each tower. The window read a chilly 60 degrees fahrenheit. The other room was bathed in deep navy blues and pinks as a light opalish grey unicorn stallion with a spiky dark grey mane sat in a computer chair talking into a hanging high-end studio microphone that was connected to a massive RGB-lit computer system. Everything from his lower jaw down to his throat was replaced with shiny black and gold cybernetics. Two holes were placed on either side of his esophagus, similar to my own, but the unicorn’s were used for a different function. His Serenade cyberware, from SongBird, was designed to amplify the user’s ability to produce different vocal pitches, sounds and prevent the loss of voice; an extremely popular, and expensive, piece of technology of many musicians and singers. My modification was only installed for sound multiplication. Crash Bug waved to the stallion, who returned the gesture, then continued to speak into his microphone. The nameplate next to the door of the room read: “Love Doctor’s Studio”.

I pulled Hexadecimal away from his door before she could break in and ask a billion fangirl questions. Only after a few seconds of empty threats and whining did she finally submit and continue down the hallway with us. Above the archway to the auditorium on the ceiling was a beautifully painted mural of music and multiple colors of magic exploding away from a single center image; a large purple treble clef.

On stage was a single unicorn pony dancing between many different instruments, sound mixers and a central dual record table. They didn’t hear us enter due to the set of white, teal and purple headphones they were wearing. They bobbed their head up and down as their spiky blue and teal striped mane followed suit. We walked side by side straight down to the middle aisle of the theatre to meet the white pony on stage. They turned around, finally noticing us, and gleefully looked at us through their purple tinted shades; specifically, the unicorn looked at Crash Bug.

“My little love bug,” the mare said, the way someone addresses a child, while lifting her glasses and placing them above her horn on her forehead, revealing a pair of red eyes. “You even brought friends this time!”

I felt my heart skip a beat. Was the room as always spinning? I looked directly in the eyes of the white unicorn mare with a black double eighth note cutiemark, “V-Vinyl Scratch? The DJ Pon3?!”

“Don’t forget it!” Vinyl and the stage of musical equipment disappeared from in front of us, leaving Hexie and me in blissful confusion. Crash Bug smiled and giggled at our childish behavior. We all turned to find the source of a high pitched whistle from behind us. The DJ was resting in one of the theatre’s back row chairs. Her image flickered slightly as the white unicorn laughed at us.

“Before you two start bowing at my hooves, mind if I ask a question?”

The mare cut us off before either of us could respond.

“Good. Let me keep it a whole three bits with ya: which one of you is dating my daughter?” Vinyl glared daggers at Hexadecimal and me.

Hexie was failing to keep her composure, “I-I am, m-mam…”

The room was quiet enough for the sound of the server room’s fans to be heard. My young punk counterpart couldn’t calm her visible shaking. DJ Pon3 approached Hexadecimal, shook her head and let out a wide smile.

“How did she get so lucky!”

“Umm, if you don’t mind me just asking,” I cut into the conversation. “What the fuck is going on?”

“We’re having some friendly conversation,” Vinyl put her violet shades back on. “Try to keep up Speed-demon.”

My face immediately flushed with a hot reddish-pink color as I took a step back. I felt unbelievably small. The feeling left my mind completely blank.

“So, you kids are here to find that little pack of run away insects. Shouldn’t be too hard to find them, just let old DJ-Pon3 here work her magic for a second,” Vinyl said as she disappeared again.

I turned to Crash Bug, pointing an open hoof at the unicorn’s last location. “That’s your mom?!”

“Yeah, the old hag adopted Melody and I when we were little fillies.”

“I heard that!” Vinyl’s voice echoed throughout the room.

Crash Bug snickered as I jumped onto the stage and explored the surroundings. Objects were hidden by curtains in the wings of the stage. On the right side were piles of unorganized sound equipment, microphones and wires while the other side held instruments on racks and inside cases. But there was something further in the back inside a glass case that caught my eye. I pushed past the racks of instruments blocking the entrance of the left wing. Their dust was flying everywhere, causing me to sneeze every few seconds.

Finally, I got close enough to see what was in the glass case. It was a beautifully designed and crafted wooden cello with a very detailed ornate carving of a treble clef as its scroll. Whereas the cellos crafted nowadays were made out of materials such as plastic and synthetic wood, this was the real thing. Its ivory bow shimmered next to the instrument’s soft curves and under a violet bow tie. The metallic strings screamed out from its glass prison demanding to be played, but I didn’t think I could. The polished brass plate in the glass read: “The song has ended, but the melody lingers on.”

“It’s made out of Ashen Oak.” Vinyl walked past me towards the case. “She only accepted the best, and Kirins made the best.”

We locked eyes. “So she had it commissioned and sent to Detrot. The sound was always so beautiful and precise when she made it sing on stage. It took the listener out of this cruel world, even if only for a brief, blissful second. She was truly a cut above the rest.”

Vinyl Scratch paused and looked at the cello again. The white mare sighed as her image flickered briefly. I felt my skin crawl as my reflection placed a hoof on my shoulder. She looked me in the eye again; this time was a harder, more serious look, “So what about you, Afterburner? Surely a fan like you has an almost endless list of questions for me.”

Pulling out one of the thrones from a drum set nearby, I sat down and looked at my hero. “I don’t really know. I guess I just never thought this day would come.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Vinyl demanded. “Just speak what’s on your mind, dude.”

“Well, I guess I thought things would be different. That there would be an army ready to take down the corpo at your command.” I throw up my hooves in defeat. “I thought I would be worthy of joining. I know, stupid idea. Just another foal’s wild dream.”

“Cut yourself a break, kid. No one is the Celestia-sent hero that will guide us through this bloody revolution. Ponies are afraid to fight back because they don’t know how. They don’t want things to change due to fear of what tomorrow brings. It’s difficult for them to face change because they’re comfortable where they are. They’re used to their shitty job, the trash pile they call home and even their friends because, even if it’s not perfect, they accept it because it’s familiar.” She spoke of her cause with so much pride and determination that it filled my chest with an overwhelming warmth.

“We’ll be that light for them.”

“B-but how?” I tried desperately to find the words to convey my mixed emotions. “You’ve been doing this for years and still nothing has changed. What could someone like me do that you already haven’t?”

A digital screen appeared in front of me showing footage of yesterday’s job. Corpo drones and rats alike being gunned down by Hardcase’s machine gun from the back window of my car. The camera zoomed to try and catch my face, only seeing half of a wide smile. Vinyl gave a light chuckle. “You’re already doing what I couldn’t.”

The image blinked away as the sound of hissing and whining came from behind me. I watched as the robotic body’s dull grey shell was quickly replaced with Vinyl’s colors and matching holographic mane. The fake horn on the machine levitated a nicely folded sleeveless black tinted sweatshirt with a patch sewn into the collar. I accepted the gift with a crimson magical grasp.

“A DJ doesn’t need to play for an endless crowd of ponies to change lives. She just needs to play; even if the show is just for one.” She waved a hoof for me to follow her back down stage. “The search for your swiss cheese friends just finished. Let’s go make sure Hexadecimal doesn’t assault Neon.”

I paused, looking over my new digs. The DJ packet wasn’t the only thing that was changed on the fabric. A large set of Discord’s blue and white horns took up a majority of the back, being painted over a gold triangle breaking out of a deep blue ring.

“How do you know so much?!” I yelled after Vinyl’s robotic shell.

She paused and looked back. “I have eyes and ears everywhere. If it’s linked to cyberspace, I can breach and use it. Simple shit.”

I galloped up to her and changed into my new hoodie. The white unicorn mare grabbed my bloody, torn leather jacket with her teeth and placed it on her back. I tilted my head in confusion.

“I’ll get this fixed for you. Every DJ needs their own style and the sleeveless hoodie look is already in my family,” she said, walking downstage.

As I rounded the corner, I saw Hexadecimal gleefully chatting to the Love Doctor, who had come out of his studio. Judging by his uncomfortable shuffling and fake smile, I guessed it was a very one-sided conversation.

“So what do you bounce the signals of The Underground radio station off of in order to hide your location? A forum I’m on has been trying to track you down for years! You have to tell me!!” Her head swayed side to side while she talked the stallion’s ear off. Crash Bug was laughing her ass off just a row behind them.

She was sitting in the seat directly next to Neon, as Vinyl had called him. Neon gave a loud sigh of relief, “Vinyl! How about you answer this young mare’s questions, choom?”

DJ-Pon3 rolled her eyes as she just grinned. “Hexie, Neon Lights doesn’t know shit about tech. He’s just the voice behind the radio show and a small time musician on the side.”

“That’s cold, Vinyl,” Neon told her, getting out of his seat. “Well as nice as it’s been keeping you company, I gotta head back into the studio. The music break is almost over.”

Neon Lights walked back to his studio, bopping his head to the rhythmic sound of his hooves making contact with the ground. Vinyl wasted no time in leading the conversation. “The little bugs you dudes are hunting can be found on the border of the Evergreen and Vineyard districts.”

My heads up display lit up as a new link was added to my contact list; its picture being that of a B music note being sharpened on a treble clef staff. I chuckled at the name even though it was a terrible pun.

“With the cameras and drones in the area,” a picture of a pink and red neon-lit sign where a heart, with three little Xs inside its outline, just above its front door appeared in the corner of my HUD, “I found them here at the Wayward Pony. It’s a building located on the twentieth floor of the Moonlit Megabuilding. Trust me, the huge ass dark purple and neon blue dick of corpo architecture is really hard to miss.”

“So,” Hexadecimal blushed while looking down at the tiny invisible circle she was drawing with the tip of her hoof on the floor. “They’re hiding in a… D-doll House?”

“You gotta problem with whorehouses, Hexie?” Crash Bug’s eyes stopped flickering as she looked at the punk unicorn holding back laughter.

“It’s just…” Her body visibly shivered. “The idea of letting a fuck’n chip behind the wheel instead of yourself is just wrong. How could anyone be okay with forgetting everything their body does for six to eight hours at a time and continue with like everything is okay?”

“What other choice do they really have?” Vinyl asked.

Crash Bug gladly interrupted the awkward silence that was beginning to engulf the room by loudly clearing her throat.

“As much as I want to sit here and chat about the decaying organic matter in this city, I think both of you should get ready for your night on the town.”

“She’s right,” the white unicorn sighed. “Now CB I need—“

“Melody already got their car repaired and Stitch is waiting to have a talk with you about your recent cybernetics.” Crash Bug poked me in the center of the chest. “Don’t worry about price. Consider this a professional courtesy for your years of service.”

“Thanks.” It was the only response I could think of. Detrot was known for its weird shit, but seeing the dead walk again was crazy, and simple generosity crazier. I nodded my head and trotted through the center row of the theater towards the exit. I stopped under the arch and looked back.

“Is Gilded in?”

Crash Bug smirked, “She’s always in.”

“Hexie, I’ll meet you at the car later. Try to gather as much information and gear on the location as possible till then, if you don’t mind,” I hollered back while walking up the stairs out of the hidden lower level. The perfectly flush door slid open on my approach and I exited out of the bedroom, then out of the main office back into the neon rave lights of the Underground.

Following the neon lights that lit the carpeted floor to the opposite side of the room, where the bar stood, I took a right towards the private rooms held behind a sliding door and guard. The aqua dragon’s eyes flickered with yellow code as she scanned me on approach. She nodded and moved aside only after her software confirmed my partnership to the organization. The door opened to a large open space on the other side where many different creatures were gathered at tables discussing higher risk jobs than the contractors outside gave. The unoccupied fixers briefly looked at me walking towards one of the many rooms that connected to this hub before returning back to their drinks.

Stitch’s door had a large red ornate bowtie spray painted onto the translucent glass. His name formed just below it out of a needle and white thread that contrasted well against the black with gold detailing that made up the walls of the room. I pushed open the door and was immediately greeted to a quite large and fit cyan zebra with a flexible white tape measure dangling from his neck screaming at the holographic television screen. At first glance the stallion didn’t appear to be augmented, but upon a closer look fine silver lines were found all over his body.

“Fuck’n hell! How could she produce an outfit that tacky?! Shit! I could make a better dress out of a trash bag!” Stitch howled at his screen while slamming his hooves onto the desk.

“You good?”

The zebra finally noticed me. “Oh, Afterburner! Sorry about that. It’s just this new tv show called Thread. The cast is great but whoever did the research on actual outfit design doesn’t know shit!”

I snickered at his comments. “Soap operas are always like that. You can’t expect too much out of them.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Stitch, on a rolling stool, pushed himself over to a medical chair in the middle room. “Well, enough of me. I got a present for you! Now I know your birthday isn’t soon—“

I placed my cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. “You don’t know when I was born.”

“—but I thought you could use this gift now in light of recent events.” He completely ignored my comment and proceeded to pull out a container from just behind the silver seat. Stitch’s forehooves and eyes began to glow a bright blue as he levitated a black cybernetic hoof out of the box. “I know how much you like Chiron’s tech, but the recent models of hoof-cannons from Apex are quite amazing. Chambered in caseless 10mm that carries seven shots inserted to the flexible magazine from the port found in the inner bicep. Simply flex your elbow to channel the first round and cock back the hammer inside. A real elegant piece of cybernetics. I thought you’d prefer it over whatever basic shit you got there.”

“At this point,” I looked down at my black metal hoof, my distaste for it reflected on its surface, “I’ll take anything over this.”

The zebra grinned. “Excellent. Pop up onto the seat and I’ll get to work.”

I hopped into the seat then reclined back with the chair, placing my right forehoof onto the steel table Stitch pulled out. He immediately got to work. The zebra carefully undid the locks and connection points in my shoulder while pulling up a screen and inserting a jack into the port behind my ear. After a few moments, I lost all feeling in my right hoof as Stitch quickly removed it with his magic. He placed it in a pile of used, cheap forehooves, then lined up my new hoof on the table. Pain jumped all around my neck and rib cage while inserting the new cybernetic into my shoulder.

“I’m liking the new style. It complements the white short sleeve dress shirt and black tie,” the zebra said as he coded away on the screen in front of him. “But what happened to the jacket I made for you?”

The Nirik faded into my vision, blowing a ring of cigarette smoke in the air. “Tell ’em what happened. I want to see how this plays out.”

“It got torn…” I said slowly.

‘Why the fuck did I say that?!’

“What!” Stitch yelled, twisting the locks of the new cybernetic hoof into place in my shoulder. I gritted my teeth and hit the chair with my free hoof.

“How the fuck did you manage that?! That was cutting edge body armor woven into the leather! A bullet can’t even pass through it unless it was shot from a high powered rifle!” The zebra threw his hooves up and spun on his stool.

My shadow in the corner of the room laughed at my pain while pointing a hoof at me like a filly, not even trying to regain his composure. I did my best to ignore him. Me, I guess? I was still trying to work that out.

Stitch returned back to his work and with a few software commands, my new augmentation was connected to my nervous system. “Hold still for a few minutes. Just have to run some diagnostics to make sure you’re not gonna be dragging around a piece of dead weight on your body later.”

He paused for a breath.

“So,” The zebra was much more composed this time as he used one of his hooves to scan my entire body. “How did the jacket rip?”

“I had a run in with SomaTech.”

“Again?” He rolled his eyes.

“What?”

“Kid,” Stitch shook his head. “I get you don’t like them, but only taking jobs that fuck directly with them, or any corpos for that matter, is gonna get you killed. Why can’t you just be like other Solos?”

“Because someone has to stan--”

“Please spare me the lecture,” he groaned as he unplugged the jack from behind my right ear. “I know about your past. I’m just scared a young buck like you is going to throw their life away. Just like…”

I darted away from his eyes.

“Listen. At least think before you end up making a choice you’re gonna regret.”

“Far too late for that, choom!” my shadow yelled as he disappeared again.

“I-I’ll try,” I said, sounding as defeated as I could; I didn’t want Stitch to worry too much. At least with that answer he would grin and continue to do whatever older ponies did in their freetime. But instead of what I hoped for, I got a frown.

“Well at least now, if you do make a bad decision, you should be able to get out of it,” Stitch rolled himself back to his desk and began watching his show again. “Hopefully I will see you again.”

I got off my chair and wandered around the room, testing the feel of the new hoof before stopping at the door. “Thanks, Stitch.”

“Anytime.”

Pulling the door open, I exited into the luxurious-looking hub again and immediately hooked to the right towards a single large room with a set of tall oak doors. Unlike the rest of the building, not a single drop of paint had touched the room’s entrance, instead fading as the colors drew closer to the door. Four ponies, all dressed in nice suits with matching blue surgical gloves on their front hooves, exited out of the room. I held the door with my crismon magic and allowed them to pass first. The lead unicorn with a tan coat and silver combed back hair gave me a small nod of gratefulness.

After all members of his party had entered the hub, I walked through the door to be met with racks of fine wine bottles covering the side walls, and in the center was an ornately carved steel table covered with fancy cakes and other desert lining it at different levels, and the last half of the room, furthest away from the door, was flooded with weapons; everything from firearms to knifes. They were presented on racks and walls, with a few even being displayed on pony and griffon mannequins striking dynamic poses.

In the back was a tall orange-colored hippogriff with short, curly red hair that faded into pink highlights behind a glass display case table. In an elegant red and white designer suit dress, she was admiring a smart-pistol, watching it change at the end of the barrel from a normal slide to a powerful magical arc single shot form where the part of the metal slide expanded around the barrel. Gilded put the gun down as she noticed me walk in.

“Guid efternuin, Afterburner,” the hippogriff said in a trottish singsong-like tone as the scar that ran from the tip of her left ear to the corner of her mouth flexed with every spoken word. “Finally decided to take ma advice and get rid of the old wartime thing ye call a weapon?”

“No,” I responded to her smirk. “I need more firepower for my next job.”

“Well, whit would ye like to sample?” Gilded asked, waving a claw to gesture to the weapons that surrounded us.

“I’m gonna need something easily concealable, but still able to pack a punch.”

“Compact but powerful…” She murmured to herself as she thought. The hippogriff’s violet eyes seemed to light up as she flew over to a shelf and removed a small black pistol from it. Handing it over to me to test the sights, she spoke more on the weapon.

“The pony variant of Baby Eagle III, recent bairn of the Griffons engineers, chambered in .45 acp. Custom porting fer easier control both in mouth and magical grasp. Aluminum Talon style pistol grip fer less weight in the mouth and course a flared magwell to cut down on those reload times. Ten rounds per magazine.”

I placed the weapon back on the table. “Gonna also need a real showstopper in case things get out of hoof and I have to get a little creative.”

“Aye, A got the perfect gun for ye.” Gilded reached into the glass case in front of her and delicately placed a tan and black stockless shotgun onto the display case. “Deity Armaments’ Predator Steel 12g. fourteen inch barrel and super full choke. A built-in talon 1.5x digital scope fer more precise shooting with a three shell shotgun saddle fer faster reloads. Along with a Custom bolt carry release and charging handle. A farmer’s oldest and most reliable friend fer defence back in the day.”

The hippogriff laid out a tactical belt onto the table, along with five pistol magazines and an open white box of roughly thirty black shotgun shells with a single red-colored ring wrapping around it. She also placed a box of careless 10mm ammo next to the shotgun shells. Gilded raised one of the dark shells up to the lights, marveled at it’s design.

“These wee ‘uns came in yesterday. A new mixture of buckshot and slug designed to eliminate any cybernetic threats. Thanks to some insider information, we managed to take a shipment. Thought you might want them knowing your type of jobs.”

“They’ll work just fine,” I smiled, putting the belt on and placing pistol mags into it. “Same rate as always?”

“Ay. Just confirm the transaction,” she responded softly.

A small window appeared with a “Y” and “N” to confirm the money transfer. With a quick thought, I was twenty thousand bits poorer. Money always had a way of flying out of pockets and bank accounts. Both intentionally and not.

Loading each weapon took time, but with a helping claw from the hippogrif, I collected all my items. I holstered the Baby Eagle in my belt and strapped the shotgun to my back. I loaded my hoof cannon to its maximum capacity, then quickly flexed my elbow to the click of a chambered round. I stored the rest of the bullets in a pocket on the belt opposite of the shotgun rounds. With the ammunition organized to my likings and on my person, I bowed my head to her and started for the door.

“Thank ye, and hae a guid nicht, Afterburner.” Gilded tilted her head slightly and smiled before returning to her collection of fine items and weapons as I exited the room.

The next client for Gilded’s services entered the room after I passed by them: a mare who gave me a light smile. I pulled up my jacket’s hood and began to make my way towards the entrance of the club, not wanting to converse with any other lost souls there. The bouncer at the front door nervously stepped aside as I climbed the neon lit stairs into the back stockade room of the Electric Fetus. Instead of going towards the store, I continued through the dusty, packed backroom to a door on the far end. Pushing it open with my crimson magic, I was greeted by Melody and Hexadecimal packing equipment into the recently fixed Ford. Sparks flew around me as I made my way to the pair through the small army of mechanics fine tuning and repairing vehicles of all kinds.

“Looking sharp,” Hexie said, tossing me a packet of white and gold cigarettes. “You forgot those in your other jacket.”

“Thanks.” I blushed at my little blunder before lighting up a cig and placing the packet in my new one’s pockets.

“Well, we patch up really quick and apply new coat of paint but what the helvetin helvetissä you do to front drive shaft?! It took few small favors but it should ride like dream again,” an older dark grey deer, an eight point rack on his head, covered in grease and mud with a dirty towel around his neck said in a rough Deerdic accent; an old language spoken in the northern part of Stalliongrad.

“Sorry about that, Sisu.” I levitated my shotgun into the car’s backseat next to my PDW. “I had to get a little creative with the last job.”

“Well,” the old buck sighed, “don’t do it again, lapsi, or I ain’t fixing your ride ever again!”

As Sisu moseyed away, I hollered after him, “You said that last time!”

“Oikeasti! This is the last time!”

I chuckled. He’d been saying that same thing for the last three years. He loved my car too much to not fix it.

“So, everything you asked for is in the back,” Sweet Melody told us.

“What’d you get?”

“A few new toys and some explosives for you.” Hexie gave a toothy grin at my raised eyebrow. “Oh come on! We both know you love making discord. Just packing it in case you want to get ‘creative’ again.”

“I don’t…” The pink unicorn’s eyes seemed to sparkle as Hexie smirked. “Fuck, fine. I guess I do like a little mayhem.”

Melody pecked a kiss on Hexadecimal’s neck and winked, causing the punk mare to heat up with a large blush. “I gotta head back to the shop. Make sure to get back in one piece for tonight.”

With that, the zebra sauntered away. Hexie was trying to hide her embarrassment by burying her face in her hooves. I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned her head to look at me. Gesturing to the car with my head, the unicorn got up and entered into the passenger seat of the vehicle. I eased my plot into the Ford’s well-worn driver’s seat, waiting for Sisu to open the garage door.

I turned to Hexadecimal, “What was the address again?”

Her eyes flickered their neon blue as she searched her notes. “780 Evergreen District at the corner of Sparkle and Rose Street.”

I turned up the engine with the keys that were already in the ignition; the Ford gave me a ferocious roar in response. I entered the address into my orange heads-up display and techno-styled arrows appeared on the ground in front to the desired destination. I switched the radio onto The Underground station, which was currently playing a slow soul song about coming back stronger than ever, like the seasons. Putting her in gear, we exited out of the garage into a side alley, then onto the main street. I took a drag of my cigarette and opened the window, tapping the ashes off the end of it on the open ledge before returning it to my muzzle.

‘Don’t worry, Hardcase,’ I thought to myself as I noticed my shadow appear in the backseats, lying down with his hooves behind his head. ‘We’ll fight anyone; we’ll fuck up everyone that wronged you. The job isn’t settled yet.’

//Hocus Pocus

“Do you like hurting other people?”

Rain drops created a symphony of metallic music on the steel roof of my car as I turned into the parking lot in front of the Moonlit Megabuilding, a single straight line shooting from its base to the roof in a glorious dark royal purple contrasting from its other blue neon lights.

“You see a prime parking spot anywhere?” I leaned over the steering wheel, trying to peek past every parked vehicle in hopes to find the spot next to it open.

“How about there?” Hexadecimal pointed over to the left, right in front of my face. “Oh… nevermind there’s a motorcycle tucked in there.”

I let out a long groan, “Fucking hell. Why are so many ponies showing up to these kinds of clubs?”

“A fake world is a lot less painful than the real one,” Hexadecimal shuddered a little, looking at the Wayward Pony’s sign that hung alongside other glowing advertisements. The neon red-lit heart and pink X’s light glimmered out off the tops of the wet parked cars, hanging off the side of the building like a scab. “We really do live in a world of total dusk.”

“Beautiful words, Hexie, but are you planning on drowning over there in all that self pity?”

The punk unicorn raised a single eyebrow at my rebuttal, crossing her forehooves and leaning back further into her seat. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Come on! You’re sounding just like the characters on holoTV.’” Hexadecimal groaned and turned to look out the window. “No, no I’m serious you sound just like the actors on the silver screen giving out canned lines. Look around you, I don’t see everyone’s consciousness controlled. As long as we can think, we can act.”

“For now,” Hexie grunted.

I pulled up my hood with a free hoof, “You’re really stubborn sometimes, you know that choom?”

I stopped the car as a vehicle in front of us pulled out and drove off; I quickly took the open parking space. My friend silently exited the car and walked through the rain to the building’s entrance for cover. I levitated my shotgun out the back seat and tucked it into the back of my jacket. Turning off the vehicle, locking it in the process, I began to saunter over to Hexie.

“That guy? Really?” A voice scratched the edge of my ears, the nerves on my spine crawled up from my tail. I looked over my shoulder and scanned the area with my eyes. My eyes were instantly drawn to a small tan and brown spotted mule in a high collar trench coat sitting under a mural. It depicted a shining silver balance scale surrounded by a deep violet spiraling void. There was something else. A presence. It encased the mare.

The mule raised an eyebrow at me, “Whatcha you looking at, punk?”

“You coming?” Hexadecimal yelled from the doorway.

I looked at the punk mare then back at the small mule who was trotting away.

“Yea… yeah.” I nodded my head and hurried over to the building’s entrance.

Hexie nudged me with her shoulder as we walked into a nearby elevator. She continued to just smile at me as I pushed the button for floor twenty.

“Was that baddie an old booty call of yours?”

I choked on my own spit. “What?”

“I don’t blame you. If I wasn’t in a relationship I’d hit that too.”

“I don’t date anymore. You know that.” Hexie just laughed at my comment.

“Emotions just create so many problems.” I looked through the rising cage’s fence-like walls at the dirty apartments across from me. “Causes choombas to do incredibly stupid things for love or whatever.”

“Explains why you’re so dead all the time.” The elevator dinged and displayed that we had arrived at the twentieth floor. “You need to get laid.”

I rolled my eyes with a grunt. Exiting through the opening doors, we were hit with the smells of processed meat and baked synthetic grain mixed with sweat. Ponies, zebras and griffons crowded the area buying goods and conversing in the crowded area. We pushed our way through the people on the floor towards a neon-lit heart just ahead. Folks entered in and out of the establishment’s front sliding doors. On each side was a digital stripper dancing on a pole, its species changing to whatever user walked in front of it. In big stylistic letters the sign read: The Wayward Pony.

Hexadecimal shivered at the sight of the projections changing to a pair of stallions as we walked in. The floor was a violet grid which reached all the way through to the next room. Different sex toys and foreplay items were displayed like prized token on shelves to both sides of us. I couldn’t understand why someone would want rainbow colored dildos as decor, but everyone had their style. Hexie was just completely melted with blush at their sight.

The hallway gave way to a dim club with everything a horny pony would want. A stage filled with metal poles and dancers of all genders, a dance floor where folks rubbed together like packed meat under maroon-colored laser lights, waiters and bartenders dressed in questionably tight glossy clothing, and of course private back rooms for more serious “business”. A mare dressed in black straps and glowing neon pink eyes approached us.

“Hi, I’m Mountain Creek. What desires can I fulfill for you two?” she yelled over the loud techno-dance music.

“I need to have a private talk with your boss.”

“Don’t worry sir,” the waitress gave a hollow smile. “Our dolls will be willing to talk to you about anything you wish.”

“I know Cornicle here. Don’t bullshit me.” My tone shift caused the mare to flinch; her eyes flickered off into a dull green.

Mountain Creek gestured to a staircase next to the private rooms, “His office is up the stairs on the left.”

“Thanks.”

I nudged Hexadecimal, who was now boiling bright red, to follow me. Mountain Creek ran her long tail across Hexie's neck as she walked past.

“Maybe I’ll be seeing you later, cutie.”

The punk mare immediately began to walk hip-to-hip with me and stared at the floor. I chuckled at her dismay. Upon reaching the base of the stairs up to Cornicle’s office, I used my magic to flick off the safety of my pistol. I wasn’t leaving there without answers or a head.

“You have a plan?” Hexie asked as we reached the top of the stairs.

“Nope. I was kind of hoping we’d catch a break this time.”

I got a hearty laugh as a response. “When has the ‘Child of Discord’ ever gotten a break?”

“Why’d you say the name like that? What, you don’t like it now or something?”

“Nah,” We started approaching the door to the left. “It’s the only good idea you’ve ever had really.”

We paused in front of the office. Hexadecimal looked me straight in the eye.

“You really don’t have a plan, do you?”

I gave a warm smile. “Is that a hint of worry in your tone?”

“And if it is?”

“I’d tell you I’m a big boy,” I tugged the door open with my crimson magic and waved her to enter. “And not to worry about it.”

“Well, I’m gonna lead so you don’t do something that’ll make Celestia’s light shy away.”

We entered the square office where pegasi laid on each other on the couches inside. They stared, some in shock, as we walked towards the other end of the room where behind a desk a familiar voice rang out.

“We can’t. It’s too risky!” The large black chair spun around as a zebra stallion appeared sitting in it. His flickering blue eyes went wide at the sight of me.

“Oh… I’m going to have to call you back,” the neon in his sight disappeared. “Glazia, would you mind getting drinks for our guests?”

“Of course,” a large griffon said from behind us.

“I hope you do understand that it was in our best interest to leave the building at that time. We did hear about your companion and you have our sincerest condolences, but you seemed to have escaped just fine.” Cornicle gestured at me as he shifted into his real form.

I gritted my teeth.

“Then we can cut to what we want,” Hexadecimal waved a hoof. “And I’ll take a coffee, five cream with one sugar.”

“And what about you sir? Our alcoholic section is the largest in the Evergreen district.”

I locked eyes with the young griffon. “I’ll take a glass of orange juice, please.”

“I’ll see if we have any.” Glazia cheerfully sauntered off.

The changeling raised an eyebrow. “Don’t drink during a job I presume?”

“Reminds me of my mother...”

“Well,” Hexie cut in before Cornicle could ask a follow up question. “Could we continue?”

“Certainly.”

My punk friend and I sat down in the chairs in front of the desk. Glazia returned with a silver tray and placed our desired drinks in front of us. Everyone took a sip as the large griffon went to stand by Cornicle’s side.

“It’s not your actions necessarily we’re pissed at, we just want revenge on the piece-of-shit borg from that night. I hope you can understand,” Hexie said with a smile I could tell was fake.

“So,” the changeling leaned back into his chair. “What’s your offer?”

“Excuse me?!” I squinted at his grin.

“The city runs on deals, my friend. The powerful demons at the top can take from the powerless below because of their subconscious submission,” Cornicle leaned over to the young griffon and opened his mouth. Slowly, pink energy was pulled from Glazia into his mouth. He finished with a satisfied lick of his lips. “But those who rebel, who try to deviate from their given roles need to crack a deal with the devil to rise or they’re doomed to fall. So I’ll ask again. What is your offer?”

I felt my internal flame begin to grow. “You left us there to die and you have the fucking balls to ask what we can give you? You know what? Fuck you and your two-bit whorehouse! Hexie, let's delta.”

I stood up from my seat and headed towards the exit, but Cornicle’s laugh made me stop in front of the door.

“Something funny?” I glared back.

“I read that kirins were emotional, but didn’t know it was this severe,” The changeling took another swig of his drink. “I know how to find that borg and I’m willing to help you if you help me.”

The room fell silent for a few seconds. I returned back to my seat, softening my facial expression.

“I’m in a tight situation myself currently and I need someone to break into SomaTech’s main servers. You--”

“But you’re changelings. Can’t you just sneak through the front door and do it yourselves?” Hexie cut in.

“We could, but even with our netrunners we have no idea what the layout of the lower floors are like. The corpos have that information on lock and key. We need an insidepony.” Cornicle stared directly at me.

“Is that it?” I raised an eyebrow, taking a sip from my glass.

Tilted his head to the side, his grin growing to a large toothy smile, “Of course. We need access to their servers for information and we can help you find that borg. A real ‘win-win’ if you ask me.”

“What kind of information are we talking about?” Hexie asked.

“That’s something I would prefer not to be discussed.”

“There’s no way in hell we’re going into that building without knowing what we’re there for.” Hexadecimal impatiently tapped her hoof on the floor waiting for an answer.

“We’re trying to gain information to increase our power in the city.”

“Blackmail?” my friend and I said at the same time.

Cornicle took another sip of his drink, “Yes. We’ll handle getting you two into the building, but need uniforms and ID cards. Luckily, two new employees are being transferred here as we speak. Jump the convoy outside of the city and take their credentials. Simple.”

I turned to Hexie, who was nodding in agreement. I pressed my lips into a thin line and shook my head. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of variables in a job like this.”

“Things you can solve of course.”

I let out a sigh. It was the best chance to find Meltdown. What other chance would we have? I nodded. “You’ve got a deal.”

The door to the office swung open and everyone turned their head to see a unicorn enter the room. Half of his body had been replaced with jagged metal pieces, wires and tubes. The pony’s muzzle, if you could even call it that, had been completely replaced by sharp fang-shaped copper that hung from the roof of the mouth.

“The Techno-Scorpion sends her regards, bitch!” He quickly drew a pistol from his wrist and took aim at Cornicle.

*BANG!*

A single shot deafened my ears as blood splattered onto my face. The metal Techno-Scorpion member slumped onto the blue carpet, tinting its color. Glazia had a long smoking barrel revolver right next to my ear. I wiped my eyes.

“Well, shit.” The changeling’s face grew sour. “Glazia, inform the rest of The Jets that we need to move ahead with the plan.”

“Of course.” She bowed her head and left the room by gracefully hopping over the headless corpse.

Gunfire and screams erupted from the floor below. The building seemed to shake at the rapid vibrations.

“Let me guess,” Cornicle’s ears perked up at my question as he finished his drink. “Someone decided to play favorites in the turf war?”

“Can you blame me? Those robotic freaks have been messing with my capital.” He smirked a little. “Take the stairs down into the dress room. Just make sure you get out in one piece. We have a deal to keep.”

Hexadecimal and I nodded as we made our way out the door. I pulled my shotgun out from under my jacket with my magic, flicking the safety off in the process. She pulled out her own weapon with her magic, a pistol with a heavy two-toned yellow and black slide and compensator.. The grip was made of wood with a rose stamped on both sides. Its orange-colored trigger was positioned just below its grey name: .30 Silver.

Together we took the stairwell in front of us down to the dress room. We paid no mind to the ponies running away from the situation in the main room at the stairs. Hexadecimal waved a hoof for me to come to the swinging double doors in the room. She took one side while I took the other.

Hexie nodded towards the window. “What’s in the way?”

As quietly as I could I peeked through the space in-between the doors.

“Five… wait… shit that’s a big guy.” I quickly darted back into cover as one of the cyber amalgamations glanced over to the doors in the midst of combat. “At least six visible, but I can’t see the bar.”

“Shock and awe?” She raised an eyebrow.

I nodded. Hexadecimal’s horn began to glow a brighter lime-green with each passing second as she concentrated on the spell. The bright light was overtaking almost everything.

“What the fuck?” one voice in the other other room yelled over the gunfire.

“Go check that out! We’ll keep the winged freaks grounded!” another commanded.

I stole another peek through the space. Three bodies, two ponies and a zebra, were approaching us fast. Quickly I turned to Hexie.

“Open it!”

I bucked the swinging doors wide open and leapt out of the way. Hexadecimal launched her charged light spell around the corner. It exploded in the center of the main floor, blinding everyone on the other side indiscriminately.

I quickly popped out of the entrance and rapidly fired off shots from my shotgun. The rounds ripped off chunks of my target’s legs, dropping him forcefully to the ground before I blasted his nearby friend’s head clean off. Hexie followed me out shortly, pulling out her fiber optic wire out from her hoof. She slid by the third hostile and tripped them with the wire before popping two shots into their head. I pointed my barrel at the last injured pony and dispatched him with a quick blast.

The other Techno-Scorpions had finally regained sight, opening fire on us. Hexadecimal dove at me, knocking me behind a turned-over table.

“Fuck you!” they screamed in between shots.

Both Hexadecimal and I began unloading blind shots over the table, making sure to reload only when the other was covering.

“Alright,” I screamed over the ringing in my ears. “You cover me and I’ll make a break towards the exit!”

I got out from behind cover and was immediately shot in the shoulder.

“Fuck! That was a bad idea,” I said as I fell back into cover.

“I could have told you that but you’re always acting too fast!” Hexadecimal scolded.

The fight went on for a few more minutes. The taste of burnt gunpowder replaced the chilled club air. My shotgun gave a click as I pulled the trigger for another countless time.

“I’m dry,” I told Hexie while reaching into my belt. “Fuck me.”

The pouch was completely empty. I was out of shells.

I leaned nearer to my friend. “What are you at, Hex?”

She fell back behind cover and reloaded her .30 Silver then checked her own belt. “Three mags plus one.”

“Can you prepare another spell?”

“Ya, just buy me some time,” Hexie responded as she began to focus her magic.

One of the gang members must have seen the light begin to grow from behind the table because the sound of galloping was approaching fast. I levelled my shotgun and swung with my whole body at the cyborg zebra that rounded the corner. The mare’s legs shot out from under her as her head bashed into the floor tiles.

I chucked my shotgun at the gangbangers as I ran out of cover towards the bar under a hail of bullets. Sliding into cover I noticed more borgs walk in.

“Kill the fucker behind the corn—“ He was cut off by a hoof to the face that threw him to the ground.

I popped my head above the corner to watch multiple colored blurs assault the Techno-Scorpions. The big one swung at one of the blurs, slamming it into the ground. It was a pegasus with a clear cybernetic spine injecting black liquid into different points of their body.

“Fuck off fleshy!” the stallion screamed at the pony before unloading the whole clip of his automatic pistol into the poor soul.

I locked eyes with Hexadecimal and gestured to the exit. She nodded in agreement. It was the perfect time to make a break for it. This wasn’t our fight. I wasn’t dying in someone else’s stupid turf war.

Hexie tossed her charged magic over the cover, its rays bursting everywhere. She made a break for the door, shooting anyone who got in her way. I slid over the bar and followed.

Then I heard the thunderous sound of galloping metal hooves. I couldn’t stop. The large Techno-Scorpion knocked me off my hooves and sent me flying through the stage’s wall into the next shop. The force knocked the wind out of me before I even hit the construction site's floor.

The world spun around me. Workers screamed while running away from the scene. The huge cyborg pony stepped through the hole in the wall in my double vision.

He slammed another magazine into his pistol and yanked back the slide. “Ready to die, Ashie?”

I pulled my pistol out in response, firing multiple rounds into his legs before rolling back onto my hooves and sprinting to cover. He didn’t even flinch, instead just unloading a whole magazine as he tracked my movement. My ears perked at the sound of his slide locking back.

I peeked out of cover with my pistol first. The cyborg was hastily reloading his gun. Lining up my sights with the ganger’s head, I squeezed the trigger slowly.

CLICK

I turned my baby eagle sidewises. The slide hadn’t closed fully from the last round. It was a failure to feed. My eyes went wide.

A familiar dark nirik watched cheerfully next to the hole in the wall. He even gestured to me to ignore him.

The cyborg’s eyes zoomed in and narrowed as his slide slammed forward. In response I whipped my pistol at him, bouncing off his forehead. He dropped his pistol onto the ground while stumbling backwards. I ran as fast as my cybernetic hooves would carry me to close the distance.

He regained his hoofing just in time as I lunged at his face. Gas rapidly escaped from his spine, shifting his momentum forward with a single point; his hoof. I cartwheeled into the floor after the punch connected with my legs. The ground was painted with watery blood.

“Need some help, choomba?” My shadow knelt down to my face.

I wiped blood slowly oozing from my mouth and got up. I felt my flame start to burn. The hissing and yawning of heavy metal joints and servos approached from behind. I pointed my hoofcannon straight in front of me before firing. The recoil whipped my body around as the black hoof made contact with his face.

Quickly discharging another round, this time into his leg, the cyborg had dropped into a low crouch. I could see him grimaced through a blood soaked face for only a moment before he tackled me back into the ground. We tumbled.

I tried firing another shot from my hoof but he held it to the ground with his own. The large stallion began pummeling me with his free hoof. My vision grew blurrier with each punch. My lung tried to grasp for fresh air but only received a mixture of his and my blood.

A call connected through my head up display.

“Afterburner! Where the hell are you?” Hexadecimal screamed on the other end. All I could give her were gasps. I forced the call to end. She didn’t need to hear this.

My soul had enough. My core began to burn along with my mane and tail. My coat was forcefully overtaken by an almost animalistic black color. The cyborg’s eyes went wide as I blasted a breath of flame directly into his face. He howled as he fell back on his spine.

I gritted my fangs together as I fought to find my balance back onto my own hooves. The stallion was still padding out the fire off himself. I picked up a hammer off the floor with my magic as I approached the cyborg, flames dripping from my hooves with every step.

The Techno-Scorpion stared up at the pair of glowing angelic eyes that stared down at him. I raised the hammer high then slammed it into the robotic half of his face. I repeatedly hammered his skull again and again and again. The cyborg’s eyes had rolled back after the second hit, but that didn’t stop me. I kept going. Kept clobbering. Covering myself in his blood.

When I regained control of my mind the corpse’s head was nothing more than a mess, chunky blood splattered onto a backdrop of grey. I returned back to my normal colors as ragged breaths escaped from me. I dropped the hammer and looked back through the hole at the fight still occurring in the club.

Ricochets bounced all around the area. I glanced back down at the mess on the floor before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. Using my magic to clear the chamber of my pistol, I returned it back into my hostler.

“Good shit,” my shadow said while admiring the corpse.

The sound of hissing and yawning of metal joints and servos came once again from the club. I groaned, turning to see the source of the noise along with the rest of the gang members.

A tall and slim earth pony entered the room. His whole body was covered in blue tinted steel except for his mouth. The crest of the Detrot City Police Department sat on his left breastplate. He scanned the room slowly before he stopped and spoke, “You all are under arrest.”

Laughter erupted from the room and one of the Techno-Scorpions aimed his pistol at the side of the cyborg’s head. The laughter was cut off by a single loud crack that ripped through the air. The gangbanger looked down at the gaping hole in his chest as he dropped to the ground. The rest of the room opened fire, but it didn’t stop the cop from continuing his speech with practiced bravado.

“Anything you say or don’t say will be used against you in a court of law.”

I dropped the cigarette from my mouth as police officers began to discharge bullets from the hallway behind the robocop. I decided it was time to go. I’d heard enough bullshit for today. Trying my best to nonchalantly walk out of the construction site, I was spotted by two officers.

“Hey lowlife, freeze!” They drew out their sidearms with their magic and began opening fire. The bullet followed my movement as if guided by an invisible magic thread. I started to run.

Bolting through the next corner my HUD notified me of another call trying to get through. The ear piercing sounds and image, of which could only be deciphered as Hexadecimal’s reddened face yelling rang in my ears.

“Don’t you ever hang up on me again!”

I dived over outside dining tables and fenced areas, dodging the cops that tried to close me off. “Sorry I was a little busy when you called.”

Hexie’s eyes looked up and down. “Holy shit. Your face get caught in a meat grinder?”

“Can we talk about this later?!” I yelled as a bullet caught my shoulder. “The pigs are hot on me and I don’t have any plans to get dirty.”

“Meet me on fifth street, I’ll be waiting next to the laundromat.” She paused as she let the engine roar in the background. “Don’t be late, Smokey!”

A cop busted out of a nearby stairway. I jumped off the floor’s railing, riding a pipe down a few levels before returning to the solid ground of a lower floor. The DPD officers watched while screaming into their radios, “Solo. Kirin stallion in a sleeveless hoodie moving fast down towards the ground floor!”

I peeked down a stairway to see more members of the police begin to rush up to my floor. I returned to the edge of the floor in search of an exit. In the corner of my eye I spotted a nearby elevator descending down from a higher level. The nearest platform was roughly ten to thirteen feet from the shaft. Nothing I couldn’t work with.

I bolted through groups of ponies that had gathered together to watch the chase, shoving them aside as I drew closer to my destination. Hopping over a hoofguard rail, I was now running over barely stable rusty sheet metal roofing. Cops on the nearby balconies sent bullets my way, chipping the wall and metal around me.

‘Keep it together. Keep it together.’ I kept repeating to myself in my head.

The elevator was only a few floors from my level now. I generated as much speed as my hooves could muster before leaping towards the moving platform. In midair, my hooves boosted my distancing shooting fire to propel me even farther. I crashed on my side on top of the elevator. Ripping open the service hatch, I dropped into the box.

An elderly couple hugged each other tightly in the corner of the elevator as my hooves crashed onto the metal floor. To my right was a very startled mother and her captivated skinny young colt. I caught my breath and just stared at the small colt’s grinning bruised face. I wiped some of the blood off my muzzle onto my sweatshirt before holding up a hoof to the yearling. The mother pulled him closer to her body before he could react. I shrugged and hoof bumped myself before exiting the elevator’s opening doors.

I looked towards the ground as I exited into the rainy streets of Detrot, scanning for possible rides out of here. Police SWAT members were now entering the building just as I left. The rows of parking spaces were mostly filled with cheap beater vehicles. After a few short minutes a high end sport car pulled in, most likely a local landlord. The unicorn mare locked her car before walking off. I didn’t expect biometric hooflocks on the car when I tried to open it.

“Shit,” I vocalized to myself.

I looked around the parking lot for pigs before breaking the driver side window with my cybernetic hoof. An alarm from within the vehicle began screeching for help. I unlocked the door and hopped in, working as quickly as possible to hotwire the automatic car. The sound of stampeding hooves came from the Moonlit Megabuilding. It was time to leave.

The sports car roared to life. I quickly switched the radio to The Underground before I shifted it into reverse and pulled out of the parking spot, slamming into another backing out car as I did. Switching it into four wheel drive, I sped off to the high bpm of techno music under a hail of gunfire. Patrol cruisers chased me through corners and traffic as I drifted and ran through intersections. Cars piled up were left in my wake as I rocketed past red light after red light, slowing down the cops on my tail.

My reflection manifested himself into the passenger seat and pointed out the window. “Watch out.”

I swerved out of the path of two cars trying to t-bone me. As I nodded to him a heavy suv rammed into my side of the car. Sparks flew off in every direction. I tugged the wheel back into my control.

“Stop this vehicle right now!” the zebra officer demanded over the SUV’s megaphone.

I responded by opening fire with my hoofcannon, zeroing the passenger while the driver’s face got splattered with blood. They lost control of the wheel, whipping sporadically all over the road ahead of me before cutting sharply to the right. I slammed on the brakes but it didn’t stop the collision.

The zebra pulled out their pistol, firing off shots that barely missed me. Only after I heard their weapon’s deafening click did I sit up and return two shots that ripped through their vest. The two vehicles sailed across the road before the police cruiser was crunched by a lamp post. My seatbelt was the only thing that stopped me from flying out the front window.

My brain rattled around in my skull like a bell. My heads up display informed me that I was suffering a mild concussion. I pulled up Equestria Maps in my HUD to check where I was. Fifth street was just a few blocks through the back ally on my right.

“C-Celestia damn it. Keep it t-t-together!” my shadow’s voice stuttered over the continuous ringing in my head.

I groaned, forcing myself to roll out of the car. The shadow glitched in front of me. “Well shit. I’ll step in, so you better fucking thank me.”

My eyelids were too heavy for me to fight against him. All my senses faded as I fell through the threshold of unconsciousness.

*** *** ***

The ringing in my head was replaced with the hiss of police sirens filling the streets. I couldn’t see. But I could feel myself running.

“Come on,” my own voice called out. “I can’t run half a ship.”

I felt my chest being pierced with tight pain as a cool minty liquid rushed through my veins. My body arced forward as my eyes snapped open. The vivid colors of the city rushed at me all at once. Hyperventilating, I removed the syringe I had injected into myself with magic. The large yellow and purple medical injector read “Buffalo: Buck Back!” in big black lettering. I tossed the device over my shoulder as I checked my map. I was only a single street away.

“You gonna thank me or what?” my spitting reflection asked while smoking a cigarette, the ashes disappearing into thin air as it fell off the white and orange stick.

“Thank you?”

He scowled. “For getting you out of the heat.”

Rolling my eyes I continued down the alley. I could feel the frown on his face. Phasing in front of me, he brought his hoof down with a loud stomp.

“Listen, I’ve tried playing nice, but this thing between us only works if both of us work together. Ya following?”

I scrunched my lips together, “I guess, but um… I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“What you are,” I continued out of the alley and quickly crossed the street. “Like I get it. You’re me, but why?”

It was my shadow’s turn to be completely bamboozled. “Now you’ve lost me.”

I stopped at the front of the next alley and turned to him. “Why now?”

“Well, tha--”

“I can’t grasp why this fucking world wants to destroy me just because I was born in it,” I cut him off. I failed to realize I was making a commotion. “It’s not enough I lost a close choomba but now… now I have to deal with myself! Why can’t I just have one single good day in my life!”

Ponies were staring. Some even recorded the scene with their phones or eyes. I glared left and right of the whole street before my vision landed on two cops nearby. They imminently dropped their coffee before one bolted after me. I hightailed into the small avenue. Hexadecimal should be only a few feet.

I swung around the corner and was stopped by the second police officer at the end of the alley. She quickly drew her firearm, aiming directly at my chest.

“Freeze! Don’t move or we will open fire,” the second pig yelled from behind me.

My HUD tried its best to calculate an escape, but failed. There was no way out I was getting out of this situation on my own.

“Get on the ground!” The zebra officer jabbed me in the back with the butt of her pistol, which caused me to fall. “Hooves spread out wide!”

I followed the orders, slowly spreading out my legs away from my body on the ground. The sound of the pig holstering her weapon and rifling through her pockets echoed softly off the buildings. It was replaced with the soft electrical hiss of a power device that grew closer to me every second.

My ears perked up at the sound and smell of burning rubber. The officer at the end of the alley turned to the left just in time to catch the front end of a Ford. Not just any Ford vehicle, but my beautiful gunmetal grey Ford GT. The GT sent the mare flying.

Rapid shots came down the alley, hitting the flesh of the zebra behind me, her body falling limp on the ground. On the other end of a smoking compensator I saw Hexie giving a warm grin.

“I’m not the Trauma Team. Pick yourself up off the pavement and get in.” She swung open the door with her telekinesis.

I picked myself up off the ground and rushed into the car. I let out a long sigh of relief as we drove off. Hexadecimal turned down the punk rock that was playing over the radio.

“So, you have a nice run?”

“Fuck off.” I started to clean the blood off me, flicking some onto her as a retort.

She giggled. “I already called Crash Bug for suggestions on how to hit that transport convoy.”

“What’s she got?” I lit a new cigarette.

“She wants to keep it simple.” Hexie paused for an uncomfortable amount of time. “The plan is to hit while moving.”

“What?! That’ll take more than just us.”

“Neh? That’s what I told her.” Hexadecimal merged into the massive highway heading west. “Crash Bug is setting us up with a local nomad clan.”

I groaned, “We’re really gonna be working with those psychopaths?”

“Come on, you’ll fit right in with the greaseponies.”

“Maybe when they’re done stripping my ride for parts,” I scoffed.

I looked out at the rising colors of dawn over the city skyline of Detrot City before asking, “What family is it anyways?”

“The Blood Drinkers.”

{Foreword} /run CyberPone_v1.exe

$login: Neo
$passkey: WhiteRabbit

Welcome back Black Friday.

C:\Users\Black Friday>/call CyberPone_v1.exe

import javafx.application.*;
import javafx.stage.*;
import javafx.scene.paint.*;
import javafx.event.*;
import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.input.*;
import javafx.scene.shape.*;
import javafx.scene.image.*;
import javafx.scene.text.*;

public class CyberPonev1 extends Application {

int index = 0;

int index2 = 0;

@Override

public void start(Stage stage) {

Group root = new Group();

Scene scene = new Scene(root, 2020, 2077);

stage.setTitle("CyberPone");

stage.setScene(scene);

String[] adjectives = new String[5];

adjectives[0] = "Optimizing";

adjectives[1] = "Cleaning";

adjectives[2] = "Diversifying";

adjectives[3] = "Recoding";

adjectives[4] = "Breaking";

String[] nouns = new String[6];

nouns[0] = "holographic algorithms";

nouns[1] = "cybernetics";

nouns[2] = "artificially intelligent";

nouns[3] = "cyborgs";

nouns[4] = "super computers";

nouns[5] = "cars";

Text text = new Text("Welcome to the dark future of Equestria.");

text.setFont(Font.font("Papyrus", FontWeight.BOLD, 40));

Color black = new Color(.1, .1, .1, 1);

text.setTranslateX(800);

text.setTranslateY(450);

text.setStroke(black);

root.getChildren().add(text);

EventHandler keyPressHandler = new EventHandler() {

@Override

public void handle(KeyEvent event) {

if (event.getCode() == KeyCode.DIGIT1) {

index += 1;

if (index == 5) {

index = 0;

}

else if (event.getCode() == KeyCode.R) {

index = (int)(Math.random() * 5);

index2 = (int)(Math.random() * 6);

}

else if (event.getCode() == KeyCode.DIGIT2) {

index2 += 1;

if (index2 == 6) {

index2 = 0;

}

text.setText(adjectives[index] + " " + nouns[index2]);

}

};

scene.setOnKeyPressed(keyPressHandler);

stage.show();

}

C:\Users\Black Friday>/compile CyberPone_v1.exe
Program compiled successfully.

C:\Users\Black Friday>/call Sleep.java

public class Sleep extends Group {

ConsoleIO.printLine("War upon stone and it grows weaker. War upon man and he grows stronger. Which shall your wall be built of?");

ConsoleIO.printLine("How can you trust your mind with that chip in your head?");

ConsoleIO.printLine("What was your IQ before the cybernetics?");

int IQ;

IQ = ConsoleIO.readInt();

ConsoleIO.printLine("How many upgrades have you received?");

int sleep;

sleep = ConsoleIO.readInt();

sleep = Logic.sub(sleep);

int sleep1 = sleep; //48

ConsoleIO.printLine("How many hours of sleep do you get a night?");

sleep = ConsoleIO.readInt();

sleep = Logic.sub(sleep);

int sleep2 = sleep; //65

ConsoleIO.printLine("How many lives have you cut short?");

sleep = ConsoleIO.readInt();

sleep = Logic.sub(sleep);

int sleep3 = sleep; //78

ConsoleIO.printLine("How many more have to suffer before you submit?");

sleep = ConsoleIO.readInt();

sleep = Logic.sub(sleep); //69

//How do you know what's real?

int N;

int N2;

int N3; //65

N = sleep1 - sleep2;

N2 = sleep1 - sleep3;

N3 = sleep1 - sleep;

IQ -= Logic.timeloss(N);

IQ -= Logic.livesloss(N2);

IQ -= Logic.bitsloss(N3); //0

ConsoleIO.printLine("Your effective IQ after all this time is " + IQ + " You're not here to save the world, but just here to save yourselves. Wake up and smell the ashes, Afterburner.");

}

C:\Users\Black Friday>/compile Sleep.java
Program compiled successfully.

C:\Users\Black Friday>/run CyberPone_v1.exe
Are you sure you want to run CyberPone_v1.exe?
or

C:\Users\Black Friday>yes
Running CyberPone_v1.exe...

Ȩ̵̡̨̢̧̧̧̛̛̖̟͉̺̗͇̭̬͕͓̪̗̪͇̳̺͚͍̯̫̯̗̭̦̲̠̭̫̳̥̯̼̯̙̜̘͇͙̩̣̝̫͎͈̟͖͉̬̺̝͕̖̟̤̗͔͍͖̝͕̤̘̯̖̯͓͖͔̩͓̳̬̝̱̤͙̹̺̙̖̰̏́̂̍̌͑̈́͑̌̎̔̌́̆͐̄̊̍̂́͛̏͂̅̽̇̈́̋̄̊̇͒͘̚̚͜͜͜͠͠͝͝ͅͅͅͅͅŖ̷̨̡̨̡̢̡̛̞̤̯̪̭̥̥̣̹̥̗̤̣̪̹̦̠̮̻̲̲͓͙̳̺͖̗͉̭͔̹͍̱̟̦̻̰̺͚̣̹̠͓͕͓̗̭̯̥̙̻̞̦̗͚͖̩̪̣̜͕͓̫͓̘̬̳̼̘̬̤̠̜̻͙̗̝̞̦̱͕̪̱̹́̓́͆̅̓̓̎̇́̋̍͌͘͘̚͜͝͝ͅͅͅ

Error: File Corrupted.

Please wait while your files and settings are
being restored.
System Restore is restoring the registry...

≫⊂＝＝＝＝＝ ⋈ ＝＝＝＝＝⊃≪

"Fuck. How many times has it been?"

"I don't know, but this isn't working."

"I know. Try something else."

"But the latest version isn't ready!"

"Just do it."

"Yes, ma'am."

≫⊂＝＝＝＝＝ ⋈ ＝＝＝＝＝⊃≪

Resetting this PC.

...

System Reset