Cyberpony Y2K

Octavia let out a long, slow breath as she put the phone down. "Well, that is done," she said. "Twenty-seventh."

"Good," Adagio said, from her nearby position against a nearby wall. "Soon. Soon is better."

"Easy for you to say, darling," Rarity scoffed. "I am in charge of her wardrobe."

Adagio gave a half-hearted shrug.

"Aren't I in charge of my own wardrobe?" Octavia put in. "Really, Rarity, it's a vacation. I want something casual."

"Casual?" Adagio snorted. "You are going to be playing on a stage in front of our patrons, Melody. Casual will not do. Fancy would not do, either. You must be nothing less than divine."

"I already have some designs," Rarity said.

"I would very much like to see them," Adagio said. Rarity pulled out a small set of paper sheets, which Adagio took and quickly flicked between them. "Acceptable. Acceptable, barely. Ooh! That one's actually good. This one would have Adagio Number One personally throw you out, or worse."

The casual insulting of her designs didn't phase Rarity in the slightest—or, perhaps, she took it as a compliment...? "Ah, yes. Simple, but elegant. I was hoping to get the chance for that one."

Octavia reached over, taking the design. "If this is ball gown," she growled, then paused.

It was, for the most part, a normal tuxedo, though as true to all custom-tailored ones, it had her Cutie Mark on the left breast. She noticed a few adjustments to standard design—probably to allow her to carry things beneath the jacket more efficiently.

"This...is acceptable," she admitted. And, coincidentally, exactly the kind of thing she liked to wear when performing.

And then it hit her. She was actually doing this. She was, against all odds, getting that chance to perform.

Of course, it was a working vacation, so she couldn't get her hopes up. But...maybe she could still have a little fun...

"I suggest exagerating the bosom," Adagio said. "Then she could hide a weapon in there."

"Ooh! Good thinking!" Rarity said excitedly.

"No," Octavia said, all hope for joy whithering and dying. "Why would I even need to hide anything in my...you two realize I'm supposed to be laying low here, and not picking any fights?"

"It's not about what you start, darling," Rarity put in.

"Honestly, I didn't even think twice," Adagio replied. "That's just what I do." She reached down her shirt, then pulled out a butterfly knife, flicking it open in the same movement.

"No, no, just...no!" Octavia folded her arms over her chest.

"So...then you might want to leave the Drake here," Adagio said pointedly.

Octavia hesitated.

"Forty-fours aren't legal for civilian carry, remember?" Adagio said. "I don't know whether Discord got that from a black-market dealer, or built it themselves...but it doesn't matter. If you have it, it's confiscated, and you're fined. If you use it, which you have, then it's jail time, or, worse, you get shipped off to Gryphon slavers. You'll have to drop down size—I'd reccomend ten-milimeter, but a thirty-eight might be more like you're used to."

Octavia considered, then pulled the Drake out of its holster.

It was not a small gun. As far as handguns went, it was quite large.

"Dammit," she said, reholstering it. "Until I get back, fine. But I can't leave it in my house, unattended."

"You can leave it at the castle, darling," Rarity said.

Adagio twirled her knife. "We can supply a gun for you," she said. "I have extras on me...though, personally, I use a much smaller gun."

"Discord has spares," Rarity said. "We make them here, but we also buy some so that they can be legally traced."

Octavia sighed, taking her seat back.

"Stress getting to you?" Adagio asked calmly.

"Just a little," Octavia admitted.

"Well, look at it this way," Adagio said, "this is the smallest amount of work you've had in recent times."

"Yes, all I have to do is dodge a half-dozen accusations from a pony who is fully allowed to up and kill me on every level," Octavia replied.

"Octavia," Rarity said, "you haven't really done anything illegal, darling. There's a reason we divide the missions like we do, and this is part of it. Actually attacking you would be fully psychopathic. Besides, they know that the Dazzles are quite vocal about arrests made on their patrons."

"Last I heard, Aria One was writing up a complaint in advance, just in case," Adagio put in, twirling her knife.

"That won't help me much after the fact," Octavia said slowly.

"It'll give you and your cellmates something to laugh over," Adagio said with a laugh of her own. "Oh, just think-k-k-k--"

Rarity and Octavia both looked to her as she cut off, optics narrowing as she looked away. "Sorry, speaker glitch. It's been on the fritz for a bit. Anyway, I'm going to go and get my stuff packed up." Adagio stood up abruptly, stuffing her knife back into her shirt with a light tink! that Octavia didn't want to think about. Adagio strode off briskly, seemingly pretending the other two ponies weren't drilling holes in her back as she did so.

"What was that about?" Octavia asked.

"No clue, darling," Rarity said, pulling out a file and beginning to do her fingernails. "She had some sort of problem that she went to Fluttershy to fix."

"And...I know they have a half-dozen android medics at the Dazzle Den," Octavia said slowly. "You'd have to with twenty-seven high-ranked androids going all over the place."

"Well, I don't half the faintest clue about androids, darling," Rarity said, "but do you want to ask Flutterhsy to talk about patient confidentiality?"

Octavia hesitated. "Good point," she said.

"I'll start working on your wardrobe, you'll want to fix everything you need to do before you leave for a couple weeks," Rarity said. "Lock up your house, find a pony to check on it. And say goodbye to Vinyl."

"What? Why would I do that?" Octavia said.

Rarity stared at her.

"Oh, don't give me that look. We're hardly friends."

"Even if I believed that, darling, you're the closest thing she's got," Rarity said. "She's friendly with the rest of us, but mostly she just asks questions. You're the only one I've seen her open up to at all. And you are legally her owner, too—which might not matter to you, but it could be the last bit of familiarity in her life right now. She'll want to see you before you leave."

"Oh." Octavia looked away. "I'll, ahem, do that then."

Rarity shook her head. "Darling. You're in need of some more friends yourself, you know that?"

Octavia scoffed. "The fate of Equestria doesn't rest on me making friends, Rarity."

"No, but the fate of your mental health does," Rarity put in.

Octavia sighed. "Fine. I'll tell her goodbye. Will that make you happy?"

"For now."

Turns out, Fluttershy's assistance involved neither nitro cores nor fusion couplets. It simply involved some very heavy boxes that needed to be around eighty yards away from the courtyard they'd been left in.

If Vinyl had harbored any doubts that she wasn't a real pony, it was cleared by the burning sensation in her muscles as the two of them pushed the next crate into its spot in a storage room. "How can I even feel my muscles straining?" she gasped, falling onto her back. "I don't have muscles!"

"Actually...you do," Fluttershy panted. She'd ditched the lab coat today—it was cut-off shorts and a tank top. She pushed her unruly hair out of her eyes, then opened the crate, peeking inside.

"You want to run that by me again, Doc?"

"You may not have sinew," Fluttershy said, "but you do have your own equivalent to muscles. Like the rest of your senses, it is artificial, but in this case, the burning sensation is more of a 'hey don't damage the servoes' kind of thing."

"Right. I do have a maximum lift capacity..." She quickly ran a scan. "'No more than three hundred pounds or warranty is void'."

"Thank goodness these crates are only two-hundred-and-fifty each," Fluttershy said with a chuckle. She catalogued the crate's contents, then taped the list to the lid.

"Is upgrading that cheap?" Vinyl asked.

"Labor aside, it would just be the steel," Fluttershy said. "You look light, so I don't think you're particularly reinforced anywhere. That would mean to really upgrade how much you could lift, you'd have to reinforce your back, legs, and arms." She paused. "Hmm, if I could get the steel-bones cheap, it would probably only be around seven hundred bits."

"That's half what I'm worth," Vinyl muttered. "And a quarter what Fancy originally paid," she added with a groan. I can see it now...'used android for sale'. Ugh.

"Well..." Fluttershy nudged the crate a little. "Depending on who you ask, it'd be worth it."

Vinyl laughed, getting up. "Oh, yeah. Next crate?"

"I need a minute," Fluttershy said, sitting down. She leaned against the wall, eyes closed. "I'm...a little out of breath."

"Oh. Well, not having lungs somehow makes it easier."

Fluttershy chuckled. "I can say for certain that it does not," she said, very quietly.

"Hm? You alright?" Vinyl sat down next to her.

"Fine. I just...I used to do a lot smoking, so...even with an augment, my lungs are not as good as they once were."

"Augment? Low-end, I'm guessing?"

"I mean, not high-end," Fluttershy affirmed. "Couldn't be any worse than what the salt-licks did to me, anyway."

"Oh. You actually did that stuff? I've heard it's really bad."

Fluttershy opened her eyes, looking at Vinyl. "Well, I more than did it, Vinyl," she said. "I made it. Sold it, too."

"What?" Vinyl exclaimed. "You said your backstory was boring!"

"No, I said how I joined Discord was boring," Fluttershy said. "Sunset literally just walked into my office one day and asked if I wanted to actually make life better rather than pretend to. I said yes. That's how I came here."

"Yeah, yeah, but hold the friggin' phone for a minute—you were a drug dealer? You?"

"Weeeeell...yes?"

"Was it even half as much money as I'm thinking you made?"

Fluttershy hesitated. Then she chuckled. "Probably twice that, Vinyl. It's at least going into good causes now, and not...salt licks."

"Is that why you got the lung upgrade? So you could smoke more?"

Fluttershy nodded. "I was...kind of a monster back then," she said quietly. "Anything for the next hit, the next high. Anything that made the high go higher went in, consequences be damned." She looked at her hands, sighing.

"What happened? I feel like Sunset didn't come in while you were in a good spot."

"The Prohibition happened. Making salt-licks without a license became illegal. Doc Flutterwonder had to close up shop. All the ones I'd been making were now considered illegal, so...I had to get rid of them. And my patrons?" She looked down. "Well. I'd always considered myself close to them, even though...I probably don't have that right."

"You like who you like. It's not about whether or not you have a right to."

Fluttershy cracked a smile. "Yeah, that's true, I guess." She looked up at the ceiling, then let out a sigh.

"My former customers...were desperate. All of them were poor, at least after I was done with them. And horribly addicted to salt-licks, each and every one of them. And black-market salt-lick dealers were now charging five times as much. My friends...my brother...they tried to rob an office to get the money they needed."

"I take it they failed?"

"An Inquisitor had figured out their plan ahead of time. Three Wonderbolts and Inquisitor, versus a bunch of stoned, unarmed stupid kids. It was a hopeless, and...because this inquisitor was second class, she had the Right of Expediation. She...she executed them. Then and there."

Fluttershy's voice cracked. Vinyl wrapped her arm around the doctor's shoulder, pulling her in close.

"They needed help...it wasn't their fault, it was mine. They didn't need to killed, they barely needed to be arrested...and...and...it was all my fault."

Vinyl hugged her tightly, listening to Fluttershy weep quietly. "I don't know what to say," Vinyl said. "I don't think there is anything to say, either, but I'm still gonna try. I'm sorry that happened to you. Those kind of people need to be helped, and...it sounds like the Inquisitor didn't try to help in they way she should have. It sounds...like a real shit show."

Fluttershy gave a bitter-sounding chuckle. "I mean, yeah. It kind of was."

"I guess that's really we're fighting for," Vinyl said. "To stop them from hurting any more people that don't need to be hurt."

Fluttershy frowned. "Since...when are you part of that 'we'?"

Vinyl hesitated. "Sometime between your story and when the Inquisitor I met was a dick to me," she replied earnestly. "I'll work that out when we're done moving these boxes--"

"Eh, don't worry about that," Rainbow Dash said, stepping into the room. She had one crate held up on her shoulder, supported by one of her wings, and two more carried on a wheeled cart behind her. She dropped the first one down by the one Fluttershy had finished cataloguing, saying, "I finished up my patrols, Shy, so I'm bringing in the rest of the boxes."

"Oh, thanks, Rainbow Dash." Fluttershy wiped the last tears from her eyes. Rainbow Dash, perhaps politely, didn't mention them at all. Vinyl looked at Fluttershy, then looked back to Rainbow Dash.

"Hey, what's your carrying capacity?" she asked.

Rainbow paused, presumably to check. "Twelve hundred pounds, and that's just the warranty void. I could probably do about fifteen hundred before it actually causes damage."

"What am I made of if I can only do three hundred?" Vinyl exclaimed.

"Well, if that's hyper-response paneling, it's, uh...one of those ceramo-plastic thingies." Rainbow shrugged. "Some fancy name in a foreign language with thirty-plus syllables."

"Well, she's not wrong," Fluttershy admitted.

"Okay, another question for ya. I've decided I want to help you guys, so...where do I start training?"

Rainbow Dash dropped the next crate down, then stood up fully, dusting her hands. "Well, mostly training happens at the other bases," she said, "but we do have a combat-instructor. Fluttershy teaches medicine, and the Pies teach electronics. As someone who's had to patch up her own holes mid-flight, I strongly recommend you attend that last one. Combat is taught three times a week; two days devoted to firearms and one devoted to close range. Tomorrow's a firearm day, I'll let Drops know you'll be attending."

"Thanks," Vinyl said, standing up. "Anything, uh, I should bring?"

"Guns and ammo are provided, but I strongly suggest you bring your common sense with ya before you ever touch a gun," Rainbow said. "I've known a couple of recruits who ended up shooting themselves, or a buddy. Furthermore, Drops is usually only passably nice, but she can be a hard-ass and a royal bitch about guns."

"I bet it's easier if it's pre-programmed into you, eh?" Vinyl chuckled. Then she paused. "Wait, where's your gun arm?"

"Back in my room," Rainbow said, nodding in a direction that meant nothing to Vinyl. "It's horribly inconvenient for most work purposes."

"Got it. Will...you be there?"

"Probably not, but you can expect a couple other ponies there. Most ponies here know their way around a gun, but a lot of them like to practice with others." She then reached over, and clapped Vinyl on the shoulder. "We're glad to have you, V."

"Thanks. But didn't you give me a death threat...like, yesterday?"

"I what? Oh, right. Nevermind that, V, I tell that to all the rookies." She waved it off, then put dropped the last crate down. "Gotta finish my work now. Catch you later!"

"Later," Vinyl said as Rainbow Dash left.

Fluttershy stood up, then stretched to the sounds of joints popping. "Thank you for helping," Fluttershy said, "but let's leave Rainbow Dash to the last of the heavy lifting."

"Heh, yeah, that's about right. Anything else I could help you with?"

"Do you know the difference between a nitro core and a fusion couplet?" Fluttershy asked.

Vinyl shrugged. "Fifty-fifty right?"

"Since you probably don't want to explode, I'm going to tell you, 'no, thanks for asking though'," Fluttershy replied.

Vinyl sighed. "Figures."