Eating the breakfast that Hash had left for me was much more easily accomplished when I realized that I’d be able to pay her back for it after she paid me for the job tonight. In fact, I ended up spending a good portion of the day doing rough estimates to figure out what I owed her and Gary for all of the little favors they’d been doing for me off and on this month as things had gotten progressively more financially dire for me. I’d have the better part of five thousand gibbies left over after giving Grinder what I owed him, and I’d be able to square my accounts with the others and still have plenty to survive for a good while.

It was almost overwhelming to think about having thousands of gryphusbits sitting in my account that were mine to spend as I pleased. For a while anyway. Next month’s ‘protection dues’ would need to be addressed sooner rather than later, I knew. I didn’t have a plan for that yet. Honestly, I was still trying to fully wrap my head around catching such a lucky break like this. It hardly seemed real.

I’d smacked myself across the face again after Hash left the apartment. Then I’d messaged the pegasus at around noon after waking up just to make absolutely certain that the whole exchange hadn’t just been some ridiculously lucid dream. Yet, even after plenty of reassurances from my roommate, I was still finding this all so surreal.

It all just seemed too…contrived.

The work was too easy. It paid out too much. The timing was too convenient…

If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that Hash Stack was setting me up for something. In fact, had it been any other pony making me an offer like this, I’d have turned them down flat out. Even knowing what Grinder had in store for me if I didn’t turn up with his gibbies, a job with pay like this wasn’t something that got offered to ponies like me out of the blue. The only rational explanation would have been that it was a bait job designed to lure me into some sort of trap. Likely a scav den so I could be offed and stripped down for talismans.

My roommate wouldn’t do that to me though. At least, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t.

…

So much for feeling good about this job.

A sudden clamoring of hooves and a scattering of indignant curses startled me into a small jump, my eyes darting immediately towards its source. I identified a green pegasus stallion stumbling their way out of a harder-than-intended landing a short ways down the sidewalk. More than a few creatures who’d been forced to dart out of his way in order to avoid being involved in a collision made annoyed sounds and gestures to the oblivious flier, but did little else to try and escalate the situation. Everycreature had places to be and none of them was feeling particularly inclined to get into a fight at the moment.

The pegasus shook his head and mumbled something under his breath about the ground jumping suddenly upward to meet him, but no apologies seemed to be forthcoming. Indeed, it looked like he wasn’t even aware that he’d nearly trampled any of the nearby pedestrians funneling around him. The slight stumble of his step and slurred words suggested that the ground had probably not moved at all, contrary to his claims.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to slow my suddenly spiked heart rate. I peered around at the parade of other creatures meandering down the sidewalk in opposing directions and made an effort to push myself further up against the wall of the building I was sitting against so I’d be more out of the way.

Trotson was a very different kind of neighborhood from Haywood. While not ‘affluent’, by any stretch of the definition of the word, there were a lot more genuine apartment complexes here that ponies with decent jobs could afford to live in. There were still a couple of megasilos like the one Hash and I lived in here too. Indeed, one of those very megasilos was sitting right across the street from me. However, they were the exception in this ward and not the rule. This neighborhood was actually pretty lively, economically speaking.

Why, I bet the LCPD would even respond to an emergency call in less than a whole hour! Assuming it wasn’t placed during their lunch break, of course.

All that being the case, I did find myself wondering what this job could be about. Trotson would have a larger pool of decent-paying clients than Haywood, sure, but the compensation that was being implied by my roommate was still a little on the absurd side. Not all of this was entirely outside of the realm of possibility, I convinced myself. As a nettrotter, Hash’s skills were highly sought after. High demand translated into preem pay. It was entirely plausible the right client would be willing to pay the pegasus an amount in the high five figure range for a particularly sensitive job. Even if this was one of those jobs though, the twenty thousand cut I was getting sounded a little excessive for what I was doing. My part in this wasn’t much different from being a look-out.

Actually, no; I was exactly a look-out!

Which wasn’t to say that this was just make-work that Hash was throwing my way. While Hash was trotting through the net, her situational awareness of her immediate physical surroundings here in the material world was going to be the next best thing to nil. She would be extremely vulnerable if anypony happened to come along while she was connected to the terminal she was accessing. Having somepony watching over you while in that kind of state was just good sense. So I understood that my task did have value.

I just wasn’t convinced that it had twenty thousand gibbies worth of value…

It was also odd that she’d chosen me. I mean, kinda. She said that she’d needed a pony she could trust. While it was flattering that she thought of me that way, it was also something that I found a little surprising. She’d never asked me to work with her on one of her jobs before. Which wasn’t something that I held against her. I knew that I lacked a lot of the skills that a mare like her might find useful for whatever contract work she usually got. Besides, I was under the impression that she had a regular crew of other creatures that she normally worked with. I’d never met any of them, but I’d overheard her more than a few times clairaudiently conversing with other creatures and using the same names before heading off on another job. I found myself wondering why she wasn’t relying on one of them to watch over her this time like she must normally do?

My mind entertained a few possibilities off and on for the next hour as I watched life in the city carry on around me. Nopony paid much attention to the young unicorn mare sitting on the street corner minding her own business, and so the crowds trotted past me without a second thought. Nothing much new there. It’s not like I was anypony worth noticing.

Inevitably, my gaze would occasionally wander towards downtown and its shimmering towers of lights and glass. The running lights of a few air carts were visible as they transported their passengers among and between the various landing pads scattered around Light City. It was a given that anycreature riding along in one of those carts had the wealth and means to―perhaps quite literally―buy and sell mares like me with less thought than I put into weighing whether or not I could afford to eat more than bargain bin instant noodles that month.

The amount of money it cost to reserve a ten minute air cart trip would have paid all of my living expenses for a month. And I’d heard that there were high-up corpo execs who’d use them to go back to their condos on their coffee breaks so that they could enjoy their favorite imported bean blends in the comfort of their own living rooms. Meanwhile, I hadn’t learned until just a few months ago that coffee actually came from a bean; because I’d only ever experienced it in its powdered form and had assumed that coffee was mined somewhere just like salt and sugar were.

Hash showed me some of the prices for tiny pouches of ‘artisan blend’ whole coffee beans and I just about spit my bit. It was then that I concluded that rich creatures didn’t get rich because they were smarter than everycreature else. Spending that kind of money on beans was stupid, and anycreature who did was clearly an idiot.

I’d caught part of a broadcast a few years back which featured Light City’s mayor talking about how ‘wonderful’ this city was. The smartly-dressed griffon hen had extolled the city’s ‘egalitarian virtues’―whatever that meant―and how lucky we all were to live in a place where there wasn’t a ruling class of nobility that created a system of oppression, the way there was back in Equestria or Gryphus. “Classism doesn’t exist in Light City,” she’d explained. “This is a place where anycreature can accomplish anything, as long as they’re willing to put in the work. The only thing keeping you from achieving your dreams is yourself!”

The sentiment had sounded logical enough on the surface. For a long while, I’d even believed her. Then I’d taken some time to look back over my own life, and my mother’s life. I knew that my mother had worked hard. Most nights she didn’t make it home until close to ten o’clock, and she was gone off to work again before five the next morning. She almost never had fewer than two jobs. Yet, despite that, she’d died young and arguably with more debt than she’d started with. I was well on track to meet the same fate.

What were ponies like us doing ‘wrong’ that we couldn’t do more than barely hold our heads above water? It’s not like I even had unreasonable dreams! At least, I didn’t think they were unreasonable. I just wanted to be able to eat a real meal and sleep on a soft mattress for a few nights at this point. That was it. That represented the height of my aspirations in life.

How much harder exactly were the creatures flying around in those air carts working than I was that they got to spend more on brown bean water in a month than I did on rent? How much harder was I supposed to work to afford regular meals that weren’t just flavored soybeans?

“Pel!” My attention was dragged back to the present by the sound of a familiar mare calling my name. I turned to see a smiling Hash Stack gliding in to land next to me. She did so with far more grace than the drunk stallion from earlier. “Glad you could make it, bloom! Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long?”

I forced a smile onto my own face even as I felt the embarrassment and shame welling up inside of me at the knowledge that my life was so empty, that I’d had nothing better to do with my day than stand here waiting for her for over an hour. I didn’t want her to know that though. She pitied me enough as it was. “Nah, I just got here, like, seconds ago,” I lied, “you timed it perfectly.”

“Preem!” Hash beamed at me. Then her demeanor became more serious as she shifted into ‘work mode’. “So, like I said before: you’re mostly just here to foalsit my body while I’m trotting around the net,” she reminded me. “I’m going to be using one of the rooms in that building there,” she pointed one of her wingtips at the megasilo across the street. “Just park your flank at the door and make sure nopony comes in. There shouldn’t be anypony coming by to bother us, but, you know: better safe than sorry, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, nodding my head even as I looked in the direction that the smaller mare had pointed. The building didn’t look like anything special. It was just another towering megasilo apartment complex targeted at creatures who were just scraping by. Exactly like the one Hash and I lived in. I’ll admit, I was more than a little curious as to what kind of job the pegasus could have gotten taking place somewhere like that that paid out what I was guessing it did. Surely anypony hiring Hash for a high-paying gig would have her working somewhere more…substantial, right?

Whatever. It wasn’t any of my business what she’d been hired to do, or where she was supposed to do it at. Like Hash had said: I was just here to keep an eye out. I didn’t need to know any of the intricate details on the op to do that. “How long is this going to take?” I asked.

“Less than an hour, I’d think,” Hash assured me. “It’ll take longer to run the ice bath than it will for me to actually crack the system.” She let out a confident snort. “Come on; follow me!” She headed off across the street, and I followed in her wake.

It was a little surreal wandering around inside the apartment complex; because, while this wasn’t the one that I lived in, the layout was a perfect match for it. However, despite the similarities, there were enough subtle differences that my brain kept hanging up on the ‘wrongness’ of this place. Vending machines were the ‘wrong’ brand. Trash piles were in the ‘wrong’ place. The smell was ‘off’. Things like that. It was surprisingly disorienting, honestly. Like I was misremembering a dream about being in my apartment building or something.

We stopped by an ice machine in one of the hallways. Hash slipped it a few bills for a couple of large bags of ice. “Do you mind?” She gestured to the bags. I nodded and reached out for them with my magic, levitating the ice out of the machine. The gem mounted in the pegasus’ forehead started to glow as well as she floated out another two bags for herself to carry. She then motioned with her wingtip once more for me to follow her.

Eventually, Hash brought us to what I presumed was the room that we would be using for the operation. The little pegasus stared at the digital panel on the wall for a couple of seconds, her head canted slightly to the side. The gemstone bonded to her forehead flickered. A moment later, there was a pleasant little chime and the door issued a soft ‘click’ as the lock disengaged and it opened. Hash glanced over at me and nodded her head in the direction of the apartment’s interior, indicating for me to follow her in.

As I stepped inside, I felt myself becoming slightly more uneasy. It was immediately obvious that this apartment was actively being lived in by somecreature. Judging by the amenities―and the absurdly large number of posters of tack-clad mares in provocative positions on the walls―I suspected that a stallion lived here. One who did a lot of drinking, if the pervasive stench of alcohol in the air was any indication. My eyes fell to a nearby coffee table, and the pistol that was laying on it. Being armed in Light City―especially in the ‘not great’ parts of town―wasn’t unusual. However, it was unusual for a resident to own something that boasted all of the modifications that I was seeing integrated into that weapon. That thing wasn’t simply for ‘personal defense’.

The door closed behind us. A glance from Hash and flash of the gem on her head was all it took for the lock to re-engage with another audible ‘click’. “Come on. Bathroom’s right through here,” the pegasus informed me. Somewhat redundant, I noted. While the furnishings were different, the apartment’s layout was identical to our own, after all. I kept any comment on the matter to myself and followed her to the washroom, toting the bags of ice along beside me in my telekinetic grasp.

Here were even more indications that this was an actively utilized apartment by somepony. A slew of medications crowded the edge of the sink. I recognized quite a few of them. They were the same cocktail of arcana-accelerants and neurotransmitter supplements that I was on. Me, Hash Stack, and every other creature who had more arcanetic implants than the standard arcanal interface which was a ubiquitous addition to everycreature in Light City. It was all but mandatory to have one of those, in the sense that it was impossible to perform a lot of basic interactions without those enchanted gemstones implanted into your head. After all, without the basic array of spell matrices that they granted their host access to, there’d be no way to perform clairaudient calls, scry a map of your immediate surroundings for navigation around the bustling metropolis, use telekinesis, or even access most terminals. They were genuinely essential to live here.

Fortunately, those implants were also free to have installed.

It did end up costing users a few hundred gibbies every year to cover the spell matrix updates that F.F.Inc periodically pushed out…

The standard cranial-mounted arcanetic interface and the other few small implants that allowed for net access and the ability to telekinetically manipulate small items didn’t tend to wear on a creature’s body too much. Not any more than mundane decorative piercings did. However, the moment you got around to replacing entire limbs with artificial facsimiles, that was when you started running into problems. A creature’s typically mundane nature tended to not play too well when magical auras were grafted into them. Some of the higher-end augmentations used more delicate and subtle matrices which weren’t as taxing, but implants of that caliber were significantly more expensive than ones made using basic runes and talismans. Anypony sporting the latter required a regular intake of alchemical supplements to offset the body’s more negative reactions to being infused with magic. Fortunately, as long as a creature had access to the right pills and potions, they wouldn’t suffer any serious ill effects.

…Well, provided they didn’t go too overboard with the extent of the implants. Replacing a few limbs, even an organ or two, was one thing. However, alchemy had its limits. Potions needed to be metabolized by the body’s cells. If a creature replaced so much of their original body that there was barely anything organic left, then there basically wasn’t anything biological remaining for the potions and pills to be absorbed with. Which meant those medications designed to keep a creature’s body in balance with magic would stop working altogether.

That was when things started to go…badly.

I wasn’t in any danger of something like that though. Aside from the typical implants that everypony in Light City had, the only other body modifications that I was sporting were artificial forelimbs and a reinforced shoulder girdle to support them. While it meant that I’d be on a moderate drug regimen for the rest of my life, it wasn’t anything super detrimental to my long-term health. So long as I could afford the potions, at least. Up to this point, the cost of those drugs was being covered by the herd. I wasn’t any use to Grinder if I was going through arcanetic rejection after all. Not that I was proving myself to be of much use to him even with the drugs…

Hash started running the bath. I emptied the contents of the bags of ice into the tub while the smaller pegasus set about stripping off her clothing. It was hard for me to not keep casting glances at the sink and the bottles there. While the pony who lived here was taking many of the same potions that I was, they were clearly being prescribed a significantly higher dosage. This suggested that they were more heavily augmented than I was. At least a third of their body was cybernetically altered. Maybe even half. I tried envisioning the stallion who lived here that apparently would give Grinder a run for his money when it came to augs. Were we ripping them off? Or was this simply a convenient place for Hash to jack into?

“Do you know the pony who lives here?” I asked the pegasus.

“Yeah,” she replied, almost too quickly. Seeming to realize that the simple response wasn’t going to do much to alleviate any concerns that I was having about being here, Hash elaborated. “I know him. He should be out all day. We’ll be gone long before he gets back.”

“Good.” I nodded. I took a deep breath to try and help further settle my nerves. Hash had assured me that this would be a cake-walk. We’d be here less than an hour, and no disturbances were anticipated. I tried to hammer home those points in my head, but I found that I was still feeling pretty anxious nonetheless.

I heard Hash rummaging around in one of her saddlebags and turned in time to see her withdrawing a small black case. She popped the lid open, revealing a collection of crystal shards nestled into a felt lining. She began to carefully scrutinize several of them.

“What are those for?” I asked, having never really gotten a chance to see the pegasus while she was “on the job” before. I only had a vague understanding about how nettrotters did their thing; which mostly consisted of: trotting around the net. The specifics weren’t a thing I’d ever thought to dig too much into.

“Icebreakers,” the alabaster flier replied without looking up. She lifted one of the conical shards into the air with her telekinesis talisman and carefully floated it into a receiving slot on her neck. She likely noticed that the expression I was wearing suggested I didn’t understand what her answer had meant and was gracious enough to go into a little more detail for my benefit.

“They’re cantrips which help me get around system defenses. They make hacking a lot easier.”

“Why are they called ‘icebreakers’?” They certainly didn’t look like they’d be any use physically breaking apart ice from what I could see of them.

Hash made a second selection and slotted that shard as well. “Just about every computer system is protected by something called: ‘Intrusion Countermeasure Enchantments’; I.C.E. or ‘ice’ for short,” she explained. “They’re a class of enchantments designed to keep creatures from getting into parts of a system that they aren’t supposed to. These enchantments are usually enough to keep out casual rune-kitties without much trouble.

“However…” A third and fourth shard were slotted before Hash closed the lid on the box once more and returned it to her saddlebag. “If you have the spells at hoof, you can ‘break through’ those protective enchantments. We call those spells: ‘icebreakers’.” She flashed a quick grin in my direction. “Every decent nettrotter has a collection on hoof.” Her wing patted the saddlebag she’d just closed off. “This is part of mine.”

“Part?” I raised a curious eyebrow.

Her grin briefly widened, her eyes sparkling with a good deal of mischief. “I’m a lot better than ‘decent’,” she quipped.

The pegasus then opened up the other bag on her opposite side and drew out a length of cabling. I recognized it as being similar to, if significantly more robust than, the smaller network access cable that I and nearly every other Light City resident had embedded in their fetlock or arm, depending on species. Hash Stack would have had a standard interface cable in her forelimb as well. However, I knew enough about netrotting to know that a ‘standard’ cable wouldn’t be up to the task at hoof.

The main difference between the standard cabling and what the pegasus was bringing out right now was the amount of bandwidth that was supported. For myself―and just about any other creature in Light City―the thin gigabit-rated cables that we had as part of our basic implants were more than sufficient to do conventional tasks, like accessing computer terminals to perform basic functions.

This bigger cable was petabit-rated. She could put her whole consciousness through that thing, allowing her to not merely ‘use’ computers, but to effectively merge with them. At least, that was how the mare had once described it to me. The machines that she interacted with through that cable essentially became extensions of herself, feeling little different than her physical body. Suffice it to say that this meant she was able to do a lot more with computers through that cable than most others could manage through more mundane interfaces.

However, the high data-transfer rates that were on the order of a million times greater than what most creatures had to deal with also meant that nettrotters like Hash couldn’t just be standing around in the open while they were plugged in. Not only did they have to be laying down somewhere because their brain was too preoccupied floating around in the net to even keep its host body standing properly, the hyper-accelerated neural activity also meant that their bodies were prone to overheating if it was sustained for prolonged periods of time. Consequently, it was considered a ‘best practice’ to only be doing so while outfitted with a specialized thermo-regulating bodysuit. Or, if lacking one of those extremely expensive pieces of equipment: submerged in a tub of ice water.

The flier stepped over to a nearby access port that was built into the wall by the vanity. She pried off the cover and spent a few seconds evaluating the available connections before selecting one that she was comfortable with. One end of the cable grasped in her pinions was plugged into the access port. What came next, I had to look away for.

The mare reached for her muzzle with her other wing…and removed it entirely. It was a modification that I’d known she possessed for as long as I’d known her―and one that I knew wasn’t exceedingly rare, all things considered. However, this particular variety of facial implant was still one that made me uneasy whenever I saw it in action. The act was made all the more surreal by Hash’s apparent apathy for the fact that she’d just taken half of her face off with no more thought given to it than most gave to removing a pair of sunglasses.

Beneath what was effectively little more than an aesthetic covering lay the mare’s real ‘face’: a concave facade of titanium, gems, wires, and ports. Hash Stack set aside her disembodied mouth and connected the other end of the cabling to the inset receptacle just below her ‘hard palate’ which permitted access to the cybernetic implants that were wired directly into her brain. A slight twist locked the connection into place. Hash slipped into the tub of ice water and made herself comfortable, laying on her back in the chilled liquid.

“I’m going in.” I heard her transmit through a telepathic link which she’d created between us now that she didn’t have a functional mouth any longer. “Go ahead and keep watch by the door.”

I nodded and stepped out of the room.

My nerves once more started to get the best of me, now that I found myself effectively ‘alone’ in the strange apartment. As instructed, I posted myself next to the front door, taking in and letting out several deep breaths in an effort to settle myself. I continually mentally assured myself that nothing was going to happen, and that I just needed to basically ‘hang out’ for an hour until Hash was done and we could leave. This was going to be the easiest money that I’d ever made. Also the most.

Those thoughts invariably brought me back to musing over exactly what sort of work Hash could have gotten in a place like this that paid out that kind of scratch? We certainly weren’t raiding the owner’s personal accounts. Anypony with those kinds of gibbies laying around didn’t live in government-subsidized housing like this. No, the stallion who lived here wasn’t that much better off than anypony else living in my own building. Though they did clearly have considerably more funds to blow on beer and cigarettes than most ponies I knew, I thought to myself as I scanned the floor around me that was littered with crushed cans.

The sight of the brand that was easily identifiable despite the crumpled state of the aluminum cylinders made me wince. Buckweisser, while a popular brew in Light City that could be found available anywhere that offered alcohol, was also Grinder’s own beer of choice; so I had a certain pavlovian aversion to it as a result. I tried to focus on something else, but whoever lived here appeared to either have something of a drinking problem or a hoarding problem, because it was the next best thing to impossible to find a part of the apartment that wasn’t covered in crumpled empty beer cans. Any place that wasn’t piled high with them was instead occupied by discarded mostly-eaten kirean take-out. Another thing that I wasn’t a huge fan of as a result of bitter associations.

Frankly, from what I could tell, the stallion that lived here would have gotten along great with―

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of hoofsteps on the other side of the door. I felt my breath catch in my throat as all of my attention focused immediately on the closed portal. A―nearly drowned out―rational voice in my head struggled to remind me that a lot of other ponies lived in this building and I was bound to hear a few of them walking down the hall past this apartment. That was just a thing that happened, and it didn’t mean that they were specifically coming here. Besides, Hash had assured me the tenant wasn’t going to be back any time soon.

That reminder fully in place, I was well on my way to settling back down again and returning to focusing on something that wasn’t beer cans and take-out.

Then the interface outside beeped and the door unlocked.

“Hash, somepony’s coming!” I frantically screamed in my head over our telepathy spell. I didn’t get a response though. Likely because the pegasus was still deep-diving into the net. The whole reason I was even here was because the nettrotting mare was effectively dead to the world in this state, after all.

Which left me on my own. Fuck!

My eyes locked onto the pistol on the coffee table that I’d noticed when I first entered the apartment. I didn’t own a weapon of my own―Grinder had determined that I didn’t need one to rough up poor unarmed ponies while shaking them down for cash. I reached out with my telekinesis talisman and drew the weapon towards me, holding it close.

Thoughts of how to handle the situation raced through my mind. The pony at the door was almost certainly the owner. While shooting them would certainly prove to be the most expedient means of solving the ‘problem’ of their return, that didn’t necessarily mean that it was the best. The gunshot would draw attention from the neighbors. Enough that somepony would almost certainly call the cops. Given the sort of place we were in, Hash and I would likely be long gone before any members of the LCPD actually bothered to respond to an ‘emergency’ as low priority as a shooting at one of the city’s many subsidized-housing blocks. I was well aware that calls for help in places like this only got a response if there was literally nothing else going on in the city…and any nearby officers weren’t currently enjoying a donut and a cup of coffee.

Even then, they’d stop off for a shit first on their way to respond.

That being said, while the proper authorities might not care about another dead pony in Haywood, I had no idea how Hash Stack’s employer might feel about attaching a body count to this job. It might get her in hot water, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her future employment prospects. That would have been a fine way to show my appreciation for everything that she was doing for me, wouldn't it?

No, keeping them hostage was my best option for now. Use the gun to coerce them into keeping quiet until the pegasus had emerged from her dive. Then she could determine whether leaving a witness was worth the risk. As little effort as the LCPD would have put into solving an outright murder in Haywood, they’d be even less motivated to investigate a simple breaking-end-entering call. They’d come down, take a statement, and then promptly ‘file’ the report in the nearest garbage bin. Especially when they found out that nothing had actually been stolen, and that somepony had just hacked their network. At that point, it became a matter of whether or not the cops remembered to pass a message on to NetWatch at the end of their shifts or not; with the likelihood leaning heavily towards ‘not’, given that it wasn’t one of the megacorps that was being hacked into.

…At least, I assumed that Hash wasn’t going after a megacorp’s network right now.

I hastily checked to ensure the pistol was loaded and took up a position against the wall by the door. There were scant few places to hide within the apartment, so I wasn’t even going to bother. As ‘exposed’ as I was going to be by the door, my hope was that whoever was coming in wouldn’t be keen to check to either side of the door just as they were coming in. Hopefully I’d be able to get the drop on them from behind before they knew I was there.

I was about to find out how clever I was or wasn’t in another few seconds.

The door slid open and a pony casually walked in. It wasn’t a gruff, beer-guzzling, stallion that I had imagined the owner of this apartment looked like. No, this pony was a lilac unicorn mare with a styled black mane combed over the side of her face. Fortuitously, it was brushed over the side that was facing me at the moment. The new arrival passed me by, her attention focused intently on a magazine that was floating in front of her face, held in the azure magic of her telekinesis talisman. I remained frozen beside the door, not even daring to breathe.

My gaze darted to the door, which was still open as its sensors waited for the mare to advance beyond its threshold before closing. The moment it did so, that would be my signal to make my move and take her hostage. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about passersby witnessing what was going on in here.

The mare suddenly drew up short, letting out a disgusted hiss that immediately caused my eyes to snap back to her. Had she spotted me?! My chest felt like it had been physically gripped by dread as I returned my attention to the mare, only to find that she was gingerly lifting a hoof out of a cardboard carton of stale noodles that she had apparently stepped in. She poked her tongue out and let out a displeased grunt as she shook off the worst of the gunk from her hoof. Her magic extended to the offending carton and flicked it away, bouncing it off the far wall of the apartment. A moment later she all but snarled, “Hey, where are you?”

My heart stopped beating for a solid three seconds as I was overcome with the thought that she must certainly be talking to me. I’d been found out! I leveled the weapon in my telekinetic grasp at her head and was about to command her to move away from the door and keep silent. However, just before the words left my mouth, the other unicorn continued speaking. “What are you doing all the way over there?”

My lips pursed in confusion. What was she talking about? I wasn’t ‘way over’ anywhere. I was just a few feet from her. “What message? I didn’t send you shit,” she snorted in obvious irritation. It was only now that it dawned on me that the unicorn wasn’t addressing me at all. She was on a call. My anxiety only diminished ever so slightly though. While the conversation that she was engaged in would certainly keep her distracted and mean that she was less likely to notice me right off the cuff, it was also keeping her from advancing further into the interior of the apartment and allowing the door to close behind her.

With where I was currently standing, a pony strolling down the hallway from the right direction would have a clear view of myself hanging out with a pistol pointed nearly right up against the back of this other unicorn’s head. Surely that wasn’t going to look ‘alarm worthy’ to any bystanders…

“No I’m not fucking with you! Why would I―” The unicorn let out an exasperated groan, glancing up at the ceiling and shaking her head as though beseeching strength from some unseen source. It was during this shaking of her head when I caught sight of a faint glow coming from within her ear confirming that she was using her clairaudience cantrip. She let out a resigned sigh. “Look, just stay there. I’ll catch a train or something and meet you in a half hour.”

The mare’s exchange with whomever she’d been talking to apparently ended at this point as she let out a string of barely audible mutterings to the effect of ‘dumb stallions’ getting themselves all confused about their schedules as a result of trying to juggle ‘too many side-mares’. This was then followed up by a chilling vow concerning what she would do to any said side-mare she learned about who was stupid enough to try and muscle in on ‘her turf’.

Apparently not having had any actual business in the apartment other than meeting its owner, the lilac mare whirled around back towards the door to take her leave. It was fortunate for me that the apartment was maintained in such an unkept state and the unicorn hadn’t made it more than two steps over the threshold before stepping in the carton of noodles. As a result, when the mare wheeled around to leave, her head was all but out the door the moment she was turned back around. I’d again lucked out with the unicorn electing to turn away from me when she’d done so. A second later, the door closed after her and I heard the lock re-engage once more. All signs suggested that she’d never been aware that anypony else had been in the apartment with her.

A heartbeat after I heard her hoofsteps leave earshot, I collapsed to the floor in a quivering heap of mare as I began to hyperventilate. That had been too close. We’d almost been discovered. I’d very nearly been forced to possibly kill somepony! Hash had assured me that we wouldn’t have to worry about visitors. Part of me internally railed at the pegasus for having been wrong, briefly drowning out the more logical regions of my brain which struggled to point out that the whole reason for my inclusion in this job was to serve as a contingency in case someone did unexpectedly drop by anyway.

Which was apparently exactly what had happened. Whoever that mare had been, I was pretty certain that this wasn’t ‘her’ apartment. She didn’t seem the type. Her mane and coat had been styled and well-brushed respectively. The kind of pony who was that concerned with appearances wouldn’t have lived in a place as unkempt as this. I also hadn’t spied a single mare-care product in the washroom. The unicorn had obviously had an access shard or knew the unlock code, so she was certainly familiar to the owner. Marefriend, most likely. While Hash might have known the habits of the stallion who lived here, it would have been unreasonable for her to know the schedules for everypony else in his social circle. Especially if he was possibly juggling multiple mares, as the lilac unicorn seemed to suspect.

In any case, the crisis had passed and the coast was clear once more. I engaged in another series of deep, cleansing, breaths in an effort to once more center myself. About a minute later, I managed to finally reach a point where I could stand under my own power again. To say that I was terrified would have been an understatement. I’d just come way too close to being discovered, and possibly having to shoot some random mare for the ‘crime’ of coming back to her coltfriend’s apartment at an inopportune time. Assuming, of course, that I’d have actually been able to go through with pulling the trigger in the first place. I’d never killed anypony before, and I didn’t much relish the thought of doing it in the future either.

My eyes darted to the pistol still clutched in the grip of my telekinesis. Large caliber, for a weapon of its size, with an attachment that would allow it to interface with the right augmentations to help with accuracy. That was in addition to the holographic sight mounted above the slide. It was clearly a pretty expensive piece of hardware. Glancing around, almost on instinct, I pocketed the weapon, stashing it inside my vest. I could probably find a buyer for it somewhere. As good as Hash was paying me for this job, it never hurt to have extra gibbies for a rainy day.

Or, you know, next month’s dues.

The earlier crisis dealt with, I accessed the mental link between Hash and I and tried once more to get her attention even as I headed back into the washroom. While I wasn’t in need of her assistance or her advice on how to handle the other unicorn, I should still probably update her on what had happened anyway. A scant few seconds after I returned to the washroom, Hash’s body spasmed and she took in a deep breath of air through her nose. For a brief moment, I was concerned that something had gone wrong with the mare’s dive, given the suddenness of the action. However, she merely opened up her pink eyes and gave no other signs of distress as she sat up in the tub. It seemed that she had ended her dive.

Hash spent her initial moments after resuming her corporeal existence reorienting herself to her physical surroundings. Only once she’d regained her bearings did the mare seem to take notice of what was surely a very anxious look on my face. “What’s wrong; did something happen while I was out?” She projected over our link.

I recounted my earlier brush with the lilac unicorn which had very nearly resulted in our discovery. The smaller pegasus’ brows creased, the more looking more than a little annoyed. “Does that mare not check her own messages or something? I know I spoofed her a text,” she grumbled in my head. “Whatever. It all worked out. Let’s get out of here.”

Hash Stack extracted herself from the tub of ice water and started it draining. I helped her dry off with my magic, averting my gaze as the smaller mare decoupled herself from the cable and then picked up her face and clipped it back on. The network cable that she’d used was rolled up and tucked back into her saddlebag. She then extracted the ‘icebreaker’ shards and returned them to their case. In just a few minutes, there was no sign that we’d ever been in the washroom. We took our leave from the apartment, pausing in the hallway outside only briefly while Hash glared at the access panel. It issued a sour warble followed by a chime, at which point the mare smiled and nodded. “Access logs deleted. No record it’s been opened since he left.”

I nodded absently, scanning the hall for signs of any creature who might be paying enough attention to us to identify us to the apartment’s owner. A question popped into my head that, think back, I probably should have asked long before now. “Who’s place is this anyway?” I was really asking more to distract myself. Light City played host to millions of creatures, and thousands lived in buildings like this. The chances that I’d actually know the owner were slim to none.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hash said with a dismissive flick of her wing. “Just some asshole who could stand to have fewer gibbies in their account. Trust me.” Those last couple of words carried with them an edge in the pegasus mare’s tone that left no doubt as to the level of animosity she felt towards the victim of our actions here tonight. This was either a pony she knew personally or whose reputation she knew of and did not particularly care for. Either way, it struck me that this job was something personal to her.

As we headed for the lift that would take us to the ground floor of the building, I silently weighed how worthwhile it would be for me to press for additional details about the job. Not that it wouldn’t probably have been a better idea to ask for that kind of information before getting myself neck deep into all of this. However, Broke Pel hadn’t been in much of a position to turn down high-paying work. About To Be Paid Pel, on the other hoof, was feeling a little more antsy. If I was going to indeed live through my next meeting with Grinder, it would help to know if I was going to have to be worried about other ponies coming for a piece of me.

As though she’d been aware of some of my thoughts, the moment the elevator doors closed behind us, Hash Stack flashed me a broad smile. “Speaking of ‘gibbies in accounts…’” Her taliman glowed briefly as she accessed her more conventional arcanetic systems. A moment later, I noticed an update flash across my field of view from my bank, registering that a deposit of twenty thousand gryphusbits had just been made into my account.

Any lingering doubts or questions I had vanished in an instant the moment I saw those zeros. It might have been the lift descending, but I suddenly felt as light as a pegasus floating on their levitation talismans. I could afford to pay off Grinder. I could finally give Hash my full share of the rent and pay her back for all the food she kept buying me. I could afford some drinks at Gary’s bar―a real meal on my own!

I could live like a normal pony, if only for another few weeks.

My hoof reached up and wiped a tear from my eye that I hadn’t even known that I’d shed. It was just such a relief to know that I could look forward to tomorrow morning. That I didn’t have to worry about whether I’d even be able to eat that day or not―and that it could be something more substantial than a vitamin-enriched bar of sawdust. I could get a salad! With croutons!

It would probably have seemed really silly to a lot of ponies that the idea of eating a vegetable was all it took to move me to tears, but…here we were.

Hash shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, seeming a little unsure of how she was supposed to react to the mare happy-crying in front of her over getting a little bit of money. She cleared her throat. “Hey, the night’s still young. If you want to celebrate a little, I think I know a place you’d love.

“Want to check it out?”

As emotionally exhausting as the last hour had been, I’ll admit that I did feel like I wanted to revel in my good fortune. Especially now that it looked like I could afford to have a drink or two. Heck, I could even afford to get drunk! “Sounds good. Where are we going?”

Hash Stack grinned at me. “How do you feel about rock music?”

Author's Note

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