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                  Virtual Loyalty Program                  
                      -by Faeforches-                      
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           Digital Assistance & Service Hologram           
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Digital Assistance & Service Hologram
Life, Scootaloo figured, worked in runs. Like in gambling (she assumed that was how gambling worked). Flips of coins or rolls of dice, it was always the same. Every moment of good luck had to be balanced by a moment of bad luck. More good luck meant more bad: the more sixes you rolled on fate’s dice, the more ones came up soon after.
That’s how this had all started. Somepony at Applejack’s place had been talking about a Canterlogic warehouse with a whole single guard outside it, easy to break into and filled with enough tech to outfit a whole pony in top shelf Bronze, provided you had the trucks to get out with all the goods.
The three fillies didn’t have a truck or any idea of how to drive one, but they also figured that you didn’t need one if you took something small. Canterlogic wouldn’t miss a state of the art hard drive or some experimental hacking suite, right?
Her friends hadn’t been so sure. She laid out the plan, spent a week crossing town to sneak a glance at it and was sure, sure there was a little black box through the windows of that warehouse. But the option of both a payday and a chance at a burglary cutie mark were enough to get them onboard and justify themselves into a full blown heist. After all, any risk of Apple Bloom getting her hide tanned by Applejack and Sweetie Belle getting an earful from Rarity would be a moot point once their sisters saw the bits that little small something would bring in.
And Scootaloo…
Well she’d be able to afford a month’s worth of meals for once. At the very least.
In the end they had weighed their options, realized they were pretty bored, and early that morning buzzed across to the outskirts of Canterlot City to try their luck.
It was one of the luckiest days Scootaloo had ever had.
There was a hole in the fence a filly could squeeze through, and the warehouse was locked up with just an old padlock that Sweetie was able to fumble to pieces. That was followed by a search through the aisles to find the black box that Scootaloo knew she had seen.
Then the guard had hesitated as they sped out, probably not wanting to open fire and shoot a kid in cold blood. That left the trio to speed away in their getaway wagon, Scootaloo taking them down a pipe where they couldn’t have been followed even if any grown-ups had wanted to anyway, speeding them back to the abandoned apartment hallway they had taken over and called their clubhouse.
The whole theft had been nothing but a bunch of sixes. Which meant a whole heaping helping of ones were about to follow. She hated being right.
With a well placed buck Apple Bloom had broken the little black box open, finding a small watch that looked like it was designed to wrap around a pony’s foreleg. The initial happy dance the three did fizzled out as they took a closer look, and a run through from some of Scootaloo’s basic software tools told them the bad news.
Ten years out of date.
In Canterlot City, even the best tech had an expiration point, and so the old thing might as well have been spoiled milk.
After swearing a blood oath not to mention this to their sisters and coming up with a good coordinated lie, the other two fillies had fled home, leaving Scoots alone in the apartment stairwell.
Like always. No point in her going home when she was already there. Some day she felt like they’d notice the mattress or her having a convenient place for her things here, but for now she’d count the sixes she rolled.
Morning rolled into afternoon, and Scootaloo tinkered away at the watch still. Damn thing wouldn’t be much use except for parts and maybe some old data. Ah, who was she kidding, it was junk. Rare enough junk but junk all the same.
Maybe she had figured, maybe she could take it down to Sparks’ shop and flip it for at least a couple silver halfbits. Both she and Sparks would know the thing was useless, but Sparks was nice, in her own way. A part of herself that Scootaloo didn’t like to listen to told her that she could go to the unicorn and ask her for the bits to get a slice of pizza or a hayburger, or for just some food outright.
But pride was one of the few things the filly had left besides a rundown electric scooter with no electricity hidden away in a dumpster, and she wasn’t about to pawn either off for a full stomach.
So here she was, tinkering away at an outdated watch in the hopes she’d pass it off to a mare that wouldn’t give her any lip and just pay her, and then Scootaloo might be able to fall asleep without hunger pains keeping her up tonight.
Also maybe she would get lucky. She’d been throwing enough ones on the dice of life that she was due another six, right? Maybe this thing was some experimental military targeting computer, or some hacking PDA that could send a heart attack to any pony that was even the least bit Bronzed up, or maybe it was Cloverleaf’s personal super special ancient watch that had all the cybernetic secrets of the universe encoded on it, or—
With one final concentrated fzzt of her tools and a click of the switch on the side, the watch sprang to life. Scootaloo gave a little shout of surprise that it even worked, dropping it to the ground where it, merciful Princesses, didn’t shatter.
The display on the watch sparkled a few times, before it began to project a holographic display into the dingy stairwell. The Canterlogic symbol rotated around in the air, a fuzzy half-hearted corporate tune playing as the thing flickered between various colors. Evidently that part was broken.
Finally, the thing sparkled one final time before reshaping the particles of light into the image of a pegasus mare with wild hair, colors still flickering as the projector sputtered slightly.
“Hi there! I’m your Digital Assistance & Service Hologram, but you can call me D.A.S.H. Canterlogic hopes you’re happy with your purchase, but before we begin we’ll just need to collect some personal information. Can I have your name, please?”
Dammit. And there was another 1 rolled. It was just a DashWatch: a glorified GPS and calendar that you sometimes saw company ponies walking around with. Canterlogic made these by the truckload, and with ten years out of date on this model not even a hobbyist would give it a second look. The color setting didn’t even work right.
Sighing, Scootaloo walked over to another alcove where she’d hidden some tools, still determined to salvage what she could. No money to be made, but the parts could still be recycled into some sort of gadget, she just had to figure out what gadget that would be. Turning back at the pegasus hologram watching her, she grumbled as she dug through—
Watching.
Watching her.
Slowly, trying to hide any sort of terror, Scootaloo turned back and looked at the image.
It was looking back at her. It definitely was, she could see the display of the pupils following her.
Though the self appointed computer expert of the group, Scootaloo would, after some pressing, admit that she didn’t know all there was to know about the vast digital cyberscapes around them. But she’d flipped enough DashWatches to know that they were glorified answering machines and calendars. Just a simple animated figure that could respond to voice commands. They didn’t look this unkempt, and they definitely didn’t watch you. They couldn’t.
Right?
Edging closer to the pegasus, she tried to stand up, craning her neck until her eyes met its own. She was close enough to its face that she could see the individual particles forming the image, an annoying electric crackle filling her years.
Both stared at each other. Then, the hologram blinked. “Okay kid seriously, are you going to say something or just make this awkward?”
Scootaloo screamed, kicking the watch away where the switch flipped it off again, scrambling to her hooves and backing up against the wall.
DashWatches didn’t talk back either!
Trying to catch her breath against the dingy grime of the stairwell wall, she thought she heard something over the thunder of her own heart.
In horror, she looked over at the watch on the floor, the switch was slowly sliding back into the on position.
It was turning itself back on.
With a click! The image flickered back to life. “Now hold on now—”
Scootaloo dove forward, switching the watch back off with her hoof. It was a demon! Canterlogic figured out how to put a demon from the depths of Tartarus into a computer but even the Cloverleafs realized they went too far and now—
Click! “Kid I don’t know what you think is going on but—”
Another click off. She had to get rid of it. She had to find the deepest part of a river and drop it down before it—
Click!
“Dude, cut it out!” The hologram roared, patience lost as Scootaloo cowered before it, eyes shut and whole body trembling with fear. She kept them shut, fearing the thing’s wrath, waiting for some sort of magical mumbo jumbo to finish her off.
With the electric buzzing still in her ears, she slowly cracked one eye open, and found the hologram looking down at her with a sad expression.
“You okay kiddo?”
“Don’t hurt me! Please!” The filly tried to pull into herself, keeping an eye on the demon computer thing as it just tilted its head, face a little hurt.
“Hey,” it said gently. “I’m not gonna do anything like that. Just promise me you’re not gonna turn me off again, okay? I got a… I got a thing against that. Kay?”
The filly sat there, trembles slowly dying down as she got to her haunches and regarded the thing in front of her, eyes still full of fear.
“Here, you could probably use some light. I don’t think anypony is at their best cowering in a dark smelly apartment stairwell. Boom!”
With a flash that made the filly jump, the hologram suddenly compressed itself into a little shifting ball of light, dashing inside the wall nearby her. Electricity arced off some of the walls, and with a sound not unlike that of a sigh, the building was suddenly filled with a warm, incandescent glow.
The ball re-emerged from the wall, shifting back into the form of the pegasus who stood in front of the filly waiting for applause.
“W-wha—” Scootaloo gulped, throat dry from fear. “What did you do?”
“Aw nothing much, just overrode the security lock on the cyberfusebox downstairs. Seen better days but a bit of light’s not bad right? It’s been, what, twenty years since anyone’s been in here, twenty five?”
Scootaloo shook her head, confused. “Everypony only got evicted from these apartments like, last month.”
“Last month?” It looked around in horror. “Geez, maybe there might have been safety concerns.”
“In Canterlot City?” Scootaloo couldn’t help but giggle, terror dying down at such an absurd notion.
“Yeah fair,” the hologram smiled. “See now? Nothing to be afraid of. Why don’t we try this all again? I’m Dash, nice to meet you, and you are…?”
Scootaloo hesitated. Maybe this thing wasn’t some sort of electric monster, but the Canterlogic symbol was still emblazoned on the side of the watch, even if the paint was a little chipped. A filly learned at a young age to never tell a Canterlogic Anything anything about you. You never knew when it was going to come back to bite you.
“Right… How about something else then? I answer a question from you and then you answer a question from me?”
Still nothing.
“Come on kid, at least tell me what’s going on here? Or let me get a better look at you.” Dash floated closer, Scootaloo shied back. The hologram’s curious stare took on a harder quality as she floated around the filly, a look of concern that Scootaloo did not like. With the worst possible timing, her stomach grumbled.
“Kid, when did you last eat?” The holographic mare asked quietly.
…
…
“Ask me something else,” the smaller pegasus grumbled.
“Oh no no no, I’m not letting this one go, not if you’re gonna avoid it like that. You’re what, seven, six years old?”
“I’m ten!” Scootaloo protested, fighting her rising hackles.
“Yeesh, someone outgha put a few hay nuggets and cups of ranch sauce in you kid, you’re a little squirt as it is.”
“Hey!”
“Tell ya what,” The hologram craned its head upward, squinting. “Follow me squirt, I think I see a vending machine.”
Still wary of the strange computerized mare but also more than a bit enchanted by the way it had hacked the fusebox, Scootaloo picked herself up with heavy hooves and followed her up.
Dash, as it seemed to call itself, pointed to a dingy vending machine on the far end, now flickering with a bit of life. Both ponies moved closer to it, Dash giving it a sniff for some reason.
“You said this place got scuttled a month ago?”
Scootaloo nodded. “They kicked every pony out but weren’t smart enough to lock some of the upper windows. Too small for a grown pony to fit through.”
“But small enough for a squirt, huh? Guess that means the vending machine’s been restocked sorta recently, so I don’t feel risky doing this.”
“Doing what?” Scootaloo backed away a bit.
“This! Boom!”
Dash reached its hoof inside the actual vending machine, a briefly sparkling as the vending machine clanked and spat out a wrapped package of food, somehow steaming hot.
“Dig in kiddo, courtesy of Canterlogic Technologies.”
The filly hesitated still, giving the burger an apprehensive look while trying to ignore the way it was making her mouth water. Dash responded with an exasperated eyeroll and a sigh.
“Prickly street urchins, I swear... Look kid, if it makes you feel any better consider it payback for you getting me working again. Now wouldya eat? You’re breaking my heart here.”
Scootaloo perked up a bit at that, happy to mentally catalogue the whole thing as a life debt being resolved, and scooted forward, taking the hayburger (“Made with 75% real mouthwatering hay!”) and shoving it into her face maybe a bit too fast for the hologram’s taste. It regarded her, stroking its fake chin with a fake wing.
“Mmh?” Scootaloo asked.
“So last I checked I was tucked away in the corner of some old CLT black site surrounded by an army of paranoid paycheck goons. How’d a squirt like you get into something like that? Heck, how’d a squirt like you get out of something like that?”
Scootaloo swallowed her bite. “You weren’t in any secret spy site! Just a normal old warehouse, and only one guard.”
“Musta moved me then, guess they never figured me out. That’s good. Still don’t sell yourself short, takes a lot for one little filly to get past Canterlogic security, weak or not.”
“Well,” She took a bite of the burger, swallowing it with a wet gulp before continuing. “I wasn’t alone. Me and my friends got in. I’m mostly just the one that cased the joint. Apple Bloom managed to buck down a loose panel in the warehouse wall, and Sweetie Belle was mostly the one getting past the locks, I’m not good on anything too mechanical.”
“And this Sweetie Belle is, huh?”
“Yeah!” Scootaloo pulled the burger apart, pulling off an artificial pickle with a grimace. “Her sister Rarity is always on her butt about getting more control over her telekinesis so she can help her out with her Bronze work, and it comes in handy a lot.”
“So brains, brawn, finesse? You got a real heist crew going on there kid, I’m impressed.”
Scootaloo hummed, shoving the last bits of the burger in. Somehow, it was one of the better meals she had recently.
“So Sweetie Belle, sister of… Rarity huh?” The construct shimmered, suddenly pulling up the image of a unicorn filly with a dour expression. “Looks like she runs a clinic down in Trotside, so that’d mean that your Apple Bloom would be this Apple Bloom, which makes yoouuuuu…”
Images flashed up, pulling up the remaining two fillies and a laundry list of text. It looked like a report from the Canterlot City Royal Guard.
“Scootaloo, huh? Cute name.”
Scootaloo shut her mouth, face burning hot. How could she be so easily tricked? This… this thing had probably sent half her life story off to Canterlogic, there’d already be airships on their way and they’d take her out and leave her for dead next to a vending machine and—
And the hologram was just browsing down the report with a look that also seemed… impressed?
“Wanton destruction of property? Accidental assault of a Canterlogic executive? Cockatrice smuggling? Weren’t those extinct?”
“M-most of those were accidents…”
“Accidents huh?” The pegasus smirked down at her. “Nah Scoots, you know what they are?”
Scootaloo’s ears flattened, the sudden nicknaming setting off alarms in her head. “W-What?”
Dash’s smirk split into a wide grin, and it slapped its wing against the digital sheet. The text exploded into a million digital pieces, and she turned back to the filly. “They’re gone, that’s what they are.”
Scootaloo’s jaw dropped, unable to process what had just happened. “Did you just… did you just delete my entire rap sheet?”
“Yep,” Dash gave her a self-satisfied look.
“How?”
“Cause I’m awesome like that.”
“But they’ll catch you! There’ll be an edit history.”
“Not if I delete that too.”
“You can’t do that! That’s—”
“Impossible? Weird, I just did it. Want another hayburger?”
“I—” Scootaloo’s entire brain almost shut down. The watch had just hacked into the police database, remotely, and done all that. Remotely. Any lingering fear was suddenly being rapidly overtaken by a sense of awe. She trotted around the hologram, eyes wide as the digital pegasus drank in the look of adulation.
“Are… Are you magic?” Scootaloo breathed.
“Dunno. Definitely awesome though.”
“I just…” Scootaloo tried to stop the engineer in herself from vibrating. Everything about this violated everything she knew about networking and cybernetics. “What are you?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Dash was again up in the filly’s face, giving her a hard look. “Look at you, you and your little gang don’t even got a mark on your flank and here you are with a rap sheet that’d make the average cyberpony jealous. Yet here you are starving to death in a ratty little apartment hallway. You know what I’d say you are?”
“What?”
“A pretty cool little filly, that’s what,” she finished, beaming down at her, before slapping the vending machine, which spat out another wrapped hayburger. “Eat up squirt, those wings ain’t gonna grow if you’re not stuffing yourself full of preservatives.”
Scootaloo hesitated, that prideful pegasus part of her getting in the way. But she glanced up at Dash again. She was giving her a look, and for some reason she couldn’t shake the feeling that she felt like this machine was looking at her like she was a pony that mattered.
Not a lot of ponies looked at her that way.
Hunger for both food and something a bit deeper, Scootaloo leapt forward, unwrapping the second burger and shoving it into her mouth.
“Manners Scoots, that burger won’t expire anytime within the next century.”
“Arf yhu—”
“Swallow first.”
She swallowed the sandwich down. “Are you able to do that to anything?”
“I don’t think I can produce burgers out of anything,” Dash held up a wing feather as Scootaloo opened her mouth. “But yeah, in general if it’s got a port, I can work my awesomeness on it. That includes Bronze. Why? You got another CL joint you wanna heist? Because I’m down for that.”
Scootaloo began to shift nervously. “C-Canterlogic’s not gonna come after me— I mean, you? Right? I mean, do you know if you have tracking software or—”
“Hey,” Dash said gently. “Hey, it’s alright kid. There’s about two whole ponies in the world that know about me, and if they are even still alive they’d probably be thrilled you busted me out of that box. Anypony else is gonna take one look at me and see a DashWatch that’s a decade outta date, and anypony in on the fact of what I really am probably thinks I got deleted years ago anyway. You got nothing to worry about, okay?”
The filly nodded, still looking downcast and sitting down next to the vending machine. The hologram mimicked her, sitting beside her and filling her ears with that mild electric hum that seemed to accompany the pegasus. It didn’t feel that irritating, really.
“Hey kid, speaking of out of date hardware, what was even the plan with you and your buddies?”
“Crusaders.”
“You what now?”
“We’re the… we’re the Crusaders. That’s our gang name.”
“Cute. Love it.”
“It’s not cute!”
“Love it all the same. Seriously though, did you expect to flip me for a couple halfbits to some techie? I don’t even think the biggest Canterlogic fangirl would want a PDA that’s older than you are.”
“We didn’t think it’d be some piece of junk! We thought the smallest box in the warehouse had to be something cool, like—”
“A self-aware hologram that can hack into any tech in Equestria ain’t cool?” Dash raised an eyebrow, and Scootaloo huffed.
“Okay, yeah. But I don’t think I can just sell you. I thought if I fixed up the watch I could pawn it to Sparks.”
“Sparks?”
“Uh huh. She runs a software shop near where I li— Near here.” Scootaloo glanced over at the mattress in the corner of the stairwell. Sometimes she wished she could have gotten one of the apartment doors open.
“And she’d buy the cruddy hardware I’m running on?”
Scootaloo looked away. Dash made an “ah” of realization.
“But she’d pretend to buy it so you wouldn’t have to feel bad about taking handouts, huh?”
The filly nodded sadly.
“You got a real chip on your shoulder, huh squirt?”
“What else am I supposed to have?”
“I dunno? A home? Ponies looking out for you? A little help?”
“I’m doing fine!”
“Really, got that apartment door open yet?” Her eyes flicked to one of the doors, almost by random.
“How did you—”
“There’s some marks here and there. Plus again, awesome, remember? Boom!” She snapped her feathers and the apartment door wooshed open. Scootaloo gaped at her, then stopped. Obviously hacking a door would be pretty easy compared to busting into a police mainframe or even getting her a burger. Still, she scooped up the DashWatch and ran in, Dash floating behind her with another satisfied smile. It wasn’t much warmer, but whoever had left here had left behind a full set of blankets on the small mattress, and there was hardly a smell, especially compared to the stairwell.
And she had a window now! The neonic urban hellscape beyond wasn’t a lush grazeland that anypony probably would have preferred, but it was still pretty in its own electric way.
She turned back to Dash, who held out her forelegs and gave her a raised eyebrow.
“Thank you!” Scootaloo.
“Hey, she knows how to say thank you!” Dash’s face fell. “Look if this really upsets you that much, how about we make it even? I’m ten years out of date and this circuitboard’s seen better days. This ‘Sparks’ of yours good with tech?”
“She’s amazing with it.”
“I get you your little cozy slice of Elysium and you get me down to her and up in something shinier, and we’ll call it even. After that maybe I can meet these ‘Crusaders’ of yours.”
“It’s a deal! She’s down in Little Ponyville, let’s go.”
Dash frowned. “Bit of a trot for a filly, you sure you’re up for it?”
“I don’t trot,” Scootaloo squinted in disgust. “I’ve got wheels.”
“The Crusader’s own little getaway driver huh? I gotta see this.”
Heading downstairs (and making sure to close the apartment door; Dash said she’d teach her how to unlock it by herself later), Scootaloo dug behind the dumpster at the bottom, the shifting of metal giving way to a child’s electric scooter (“Canterlogic Diarch 3000: Remember if ain’t a Diarch, it ain’t worth skate!”), which she rolled sheepishly out.
“Betcha really cook on that thing, huh?”
Scootaloo gave a happy little mmhmm, pointing to her buzzing wings as if that offered explanation.
“A D3k though? That’s pricey. Betcha I can help out there, boom!”
With a flash, an orb of color vanished into the scooter. It groaned, vibrated a bit, then suddenly roared to life, headlight blazing white as the thing thrummed with a lively purr.
A shimmering ball emerged from it, somehow radiating smugness. Scootaloo, to her credit, was too flabbergasted to notice.
“But— You—”
“I did tell you I could hack into anything. Scoot’s scooter’s got a port, now don’t it?”
“But my scooter wasn’t locked! It just didn’t have juice left! It doesn’t even have a battery!”
“So?”
“You’re producing energy from nothing! That’s impossible!”
“Hah. Not if you’re awesome.”
“But… you… I?”
The rainbow Dash projection in front of her popped back into a pony form, albeit one that was now small enough to sit on the bar of the humming scooter. She chuckled.
“Look, I dunno what corporation squashed out your sense of childlike wonder, but stick with me squirt, and we’ll get it back. Now hop on and let me see what you can do when this puppy can really fly.”
At this point, Scootaloo accepted that she had just rolled enough sixes in her life to get nothing but ones for the next century. She scrambled up onto the scooter, but Dash tut-tutted her.
“Helmet on Scoots. There might be arthritis in the water and the Cloverleafs might be drinking foal’s blood to stay alive, but safety’s still important.”
Grumbling, Scootaloo dug around in the little pile of stuff next to her, fishing out an old purple helmet her size. She didn’t often wear it, but for whatever reason Sparks and Applejack would always chew her out if they saw her without it. Oh how she longed for the day when she could get some good Bronze in her. Even secondhand would be better than this.
“Why do you care what happens to me? You just met me,” the filly said finally, wings buzzing in mild annoyance.
“Why shouldn’t you be worth caring about just because I haven’t known you very long?” Dash looked at her as if she had asked her why the sky was grey or why it rained acid. “Come on, I’m eager to meet this Sparks. Heard you guys have full color projectors now, figure I wanna filter through the whole rainbow with that.”
Author's Note
Thanks to the FimFiction discord for the proofread.