Twilight sighed. It was the beginning of the second day of their watch, and so far everything was going according to plan. Of course, for some reason that just made everyone else in the team tense, nervous, and anxious.
They kept insisting that something was going to happen, but at this point, Twilight wasn’t sure. Their insistence that something was going to go wrong was bordering on paranoia, and it was annoying her to no end. This was for a hoofball game, ponies. There was no way anyone was going to risk lives for a game. They probably figured that Go Long was being watched, and decided he wasn’t worth it. That’s what she would have done.
She floated, not five feet above the earth pony in question, watching from the astral as he laughed, ate, drank, and enjoyed himself in Pounder-funded party. Go was happy, satisfied, and unaware that anyone meant him harm, according to the aura that shone around him, while the patchwork of servers, both augmented and otherwise milled around him to serve him whatever he wanted.
Looking around, she could faintly see the awakened aura of Web and Wingmare, the former sitting next to her body and Gem’s, while the latter was on the outside, on the top of a neighboring building, armed with a sniper rifle of some kind. Steel was walking through the building somewhere, her faint, weakened aura was practically invisible to the astral, and certainly not so through the just-as-dead walls that surrounded her.
Why anypony would subjugate themselves to that much cybernetic augmentation, Twilight would never know.
Candy’s roto-drone hovered around the building, keeping an eye out, while “Rocky” and “Balboa” both waited on standby, ready to rush in and fill any scout that got too close with holes, while Gem scanned the Matrix for any sign of a cyber attack.
She astrally sighed, sending a gust of silent, immaterial wind blowing through the mirror plane, and turned to the spider-shaped water elemental that floated beside her. The elemental stared at her blankly, before continued on, making the rounds that Miss Web had set up for him.
Then there were her own elementals.
Twilight was an initiated mage, after all, she could bend mana to her will in ways that most could never dream of doing. She was far better than anything these Runners had seen before, and this time she was going to prove it. It wasn’t going to be like last time, where she stayed in the back and let a conjured elemental do all the fighting for her.
She was fairly certain that the first job she had may have altered the team’s perception of her. Along with the insistence on calling her “Rookie” there was also the fact that they kept repeating “the first three rules of Running,” like it was some kind of mantra. “Shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never make a deal with a dragon. Shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never make a deal with a dragon.” They were on repeat.
Well, not anymore. She was going to show them that she was nothing to be coddled. Along with Web’s Water elemental, Twilight herself had four fire elemental patrolling the expo grounds, and a powerful air elemental watching the perimeter for anything funny.
Not that it would matter, this kind of show of force would dissuade anypony.
Between the seven of them, the six spirits and herself, there were enough eyes in the astral that they were going to see everything in the mile around them. There was no way anything could sneak up on them. At this point, she wasn’t sure that any team of enemy Runners would be willing to move on this.
And that’s when she found him.
A spirit, hovering in the astral, probing the area around the expo, and searching for something.
Disguising her astral signature as a wild, wandering elemental, Twilight began to watch as the spirit hovered around, passing through walls, and hovering through floors.
There was definitely a mage snooping around, and he wasn’t being immediately turned away by the sight of the elementals wandering around.
She watched him go, growling to herself in that special, silent thought that wouldn’t echo across the astral. “No...go away. You don’t want to deal with us. We aren’t worth it. Go away.”
The mage did not go away, despite Twilight silently willing him to. He floated around, checking and double-checking the walls, layout, and looking for anything else he could exploit.
“No, you want to go away…”
He still searched the building.
Sighing, Twilight began floating back to her body, grumbling to herself as she did so. The idiot mage couldn't leave them alone, couldn't keep this easy for them, he had to make a move on her and the team.
At the very least she had decided not to say this was going to be easy out loud.
She slipped back into her body, her projected self taking back control of her nerves, muscles, and more, quickly shifting back to the material plane. One moment, she was floating in the sea of mana that was the astral plane, the next, she was lying with her back against the cold floor of the room, her eyes closed as though she were asleep.
Twilight sat up, and immediately spoke into her comm. “We have a mage snooping around in the astral. He’s going through the walls and checking things out.”
“Did you really just say ‘snooping,’ Rookie?” Wingmare asked, while Twilight was busy typing the message out for Gem.
“Well what else do you call it?”
“Snoopin’s fine, Wingmare. That's a proper word.” Steel said.
“Says the ex-farmer.”
“I like it,” Candy said.
“It’s not a matter of liking,” Wingmare said. “It's not cool. I see a pony approaching, sending a pic to Gem for confirmation.”
“My elemental has found the snooper,” Web said. “He’s dealing with him right now.”
“It being cool don’t matter,” Steel continued. “It’s a real word, and there ain’t anything wrong with sayin’ it.”
“Target confirmed,” Wingmare said, before a faint, almost indiscernible shot rang out over the comm line. “Scout down, and yes there’s something wrong. If it ain’t cool, there ain’t a point in saying it.”
Steel groaned. “Sure, whatever Wingmare. Whatever you say.”
“Um…” Twilight began. “What happened to the whole ‘they’re coming and everything’s going to be awful?”
“Oh, it’s still going to be awful,” Web said in a humorless deadpan.
“That’s just the level we normally operate on!” Candy chirped happily.
“Huh…” Twilight said. “I thought there was going to be a lot more freaking out than this.”
“It’ll come,” Steel said. “Speaking of, Candy, can I get Balboa down here? I might need some backup, and a robot with a heavy machine gun sounds like some great backup.”
“Be right there,” she answered.
A message appeared on the group text from Web. “What about you, Gem? How’s it on your end?”
There was an immediate response. “Hang on, darling. There’s a cyberattack I’m dealing with right now. I’ll be right back.”
A single second later, Gem continued. “There we go, the poor boy thought he knew what he was doing, but he really wasn’t ready for the black IOs that the MODs leave around.”
Twilight did not know what that meant.
“Everything’s fine then?” Web asked.
“Peachy, darlings. We’re not going to have a Matrix problem from this team.”
“Good!” Steel said. “Because they’re coming from the back right now!”
Web nodded. “Rookie, go back up Steel. I’ll watch Gem.”
She sighed and nodded. “Alright. I’m on my way.”
She rushed down the back stairs, heading for Steel’s location as fast as her legs could carry her. “Yeah, I see how it is, I have to go rush down the stairs, directly into gunfire, while you get to watch our comatose leader.”
“Your comm’s still on, you know,” Web said.
Twilight shut up.
The stetson-wearing pony chuckled, and Twilight could hear her smile through her comm. “Don’t worry, Rookie, We’ve all been there before. Somepony always gets ta yell order from cov—You call that a hit? I’ve seen sharper blades on a six-week-old disposable razor! Anyway, it happens ta all of us.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” the mage responded with a snort.
“Now,” Steel said. “When ya get down here, ya know what to do, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said it a dozen times just yesterday.”
“And? I need to know if you know, cause there’s some lightning down the way.”
Twilight sighed, before she turned the corner, turning into a hail of gunfire as she raised a shield long enough to cross to the large plastic and steel crate on the other side of the hall. “Geek the mage first,” she answered, before a fireball traveled down the hall, and engulfing Steel.
The Streetsam watched as the flames exploded around her and Balboa, leaving them unharmed as the fire vaporized the three ponies that were trying to stab her. A second later, it was her, the drone, and ash standing in the middle of the hallway, with a shocked, hooded earth pony staring at her, lightning crackling from his hooves.
“So you going to get that mage or not?” Twilight asked from behind cover.
Steel looked back and frowned. “Well ain’t you a quick study,” she said before her cyberhoof fished out a handful of bullets that were dumped into her left leg, before she racked the lever that popped out of her elbow, filling the hallway with the bark of lever-action fire.
The earth pony mage dived for cover, before a fire elemental leaped out of the floor to defend its master.
Steel skidded to a halt, running the second she saw the creature manifest. She knew better than to shoot an elemental. It literally only made them mad. “Rookie! Any day now!”
“Hang on,” Twilight said.
“Hang on? You’re a mage! Turn it to goo or something!”
“Turn to goo is a physical spell, it would only affect and actual body, not a thing made of mana, I need a mana based spell to—”
“Just kill it already!” Steel said, running past her with the equine fire beast following after her.
Twilight sighed before she began to cast manabolt.
She pulled on her inner flame, focusing on the heat found on the molecular level to excite atoms and force compound bonds to become unstable. Just like melting ice, the bonds that hold the spirit to the material plane would also break down once it came into contact with the increased energy that Twilight was providing to the world around her.
All this happened in a practiced split-second, and a ball of white-hot mana shot forward, slamming into the elemental from down the hall. It screamed in pain and shuddered as foreign mana ripped through its body.
And then it turned its eyes to Twilight.
“Oh...frag…” she muttered before she decided it would be best to be somewhere else. “The mage is all yours, Steel, have fun!”
“Thanks, you too!” Steel said, before unloading her mare's-leg-leg down the hall again.
Twilight ran down the hall, flinging a much smaller, and far weaker manabolt behind her, as the drain of quick-slung spells began to build. If she kept this up, she could wind up knocking herself out.
The elemental, on the other hand, barely slowed in the face of the raining mana bolts that showered him as he ran after her, chasing her down before throwing streams of flame after her, coating the walls in fire that burned mana like firewood.
Still, her manabolts tore at the elemental’s spirit flesh, doing the damage that bullets could not as she tried to run.
Twilight briefly considered conjuring her own elemental, but she knew it wouldn’t work. Fighting the will of another elemental would drain her faster than the spells, and though she was keeping ahead of her own fatigue, it would not last long with the mental battle going through her.
Luckily with the mage fighting both Steel, and keeping the elemental under control, he couldn’t force it to use its speed to overtake her in an instant. It could, it had the speed, the super-equine tenacity, strength, and stamina to overtake her without even getting winded. Outlasting it and outrunning it simply weren’t options.
Turning the next corner, she felt her hooves nearly slip out from under her, and rushed for cover, breathing heavily, as she tried to suppress her aura.
She had two options. The first, wait for Steel to “geek” the mage. With him dead, the liminal connection with the Material plane would be severed, and the elemental would be sent back to the astral, free to do as it wished. The major issue with this was the time factor. Between Steel’s numerous cybernetic astral-dead zones and the mage’s draining energy, Twilight had no doubt she would kill the mage, the problem was when.
The second was to kill its body first.
You cannot kill an elemental, you can only inconvenience it hard enough that it leaves the material plane. And that was her best bet.
Focusing back on her inner strength, Twilight began to take the mana around her and realign it, rearranging it into crystalline structures like diamonds. A cubic crystal structure began to take shape in her mind, and across the hallway, as she formed her Spirit Barrier Spell, making a wall that would hold back the conjured beast while leaving her free to move.
With that, Twilight took another second, combining the elements of the world around her as she began to add a layer of pure entropy. The heat and wild atomic movement of her offensive, fire-mana spells were carefully being mixed with the structured earth-mana wall, making exactly what she needed.
The wall was up in a second, just in time for the elemental to run face-first into it.
And then the drain hit her. Exhaustion blew through her like a sledgehammer, and a second later, she felt her legs drop like they were made of lead.
Twilight looked up, to the side, where the elemental was screaming, slowed as it moved through the barrier like he was trying to walk through water.
That's when she realized she couldn't run. She didn’t have the energy. She’d get maybe three steps before she would be back on her butt, unconscious.
The elemental was pushing closer, snarling as it tried to push through the barrier with its long, grasping claws that it had instead of hooves.
Oh...Oh, sweet Celestia...This...this was how she was going to die.
She was going to die. She couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, at her last, best defense was being overcome by a very angry elemental, who would rather live with pain just to kill her. She had one last spell in her, one last chance to fight back before the drain knocked her out.
She could let her body take the drain, where instead of sapping energy, it ripped her body apart. It would be better than dying, sure, but the mana flowing through her would tear her insides to shreds. Her own personal leylines would be torn to pieces, she might never cast magic again if she pushed it.
The elemental was pushing through. It was closer now, so close.
And all this for that fragging hoofball player could enjoy some hors d'oeuvres without being bothered. That was who she was going to die for, that little punk who was standing a floor up from her, chewing on some real food. Food she hadn’t had for weeks now, only soybean-substitutes that were infuriatingly almost what they were supposed to taste like. That was who she was dying for.
Twilight raised a hoof, concentrating on enthalpy and kinetic molecular motion.
No, no she wasn’t going to die today, not for him. If she was going to die it’d be for something important, Celestia damn it!
A Death Touch spell was coursing through her arm, coming up, ready to end the spirit, even if it broke her. She raised both arm and voice in defiance. Twilight stood there and dared the world, fate, the elemental, and everything else to try her, to give her just a chance at tearing them down, before the elemental popped away, and was gone.
Twilight blinked, staring up at empty space where her invisible barrier of mana sat there, waiting.
“Hey, Rookie, you alright?” Steel asked. “I got the mage.”
Twilight dropped her arm, the spell, and everything else as her exhaustion overrode her muscles. “Yeah, I’m alright. Just tired.”
“Good. I hope you gave that elemental a run for its nubits.”
“Yeah,” Twilight said with a sigh. “Yeah, I did.”
“Good. And did we learn anything today?”
Twilight gave a small smile. “Geek the mage first.”
Steel simply nodded. “It ain’t just good advice, it’s a way of life, specifically how to keep living.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“More importantly, until you earn a real street name, do what we tell ya, and don’t get cute alright?”
“Got it,” Twilight said, too tired to do anything other than surrender to the Streetsam’s lecture.
“Dang it, Steel, why’d you tell her we’d get her a different name…” Wingmare muttered over the line.
“Now ya need meet back up with Gem and Web, keep an eye on our friend upstairs.”
“Right…” Twilight said. “I’ll get right on it.”
There was a moment of silence of the line.
“Can you move, Rookie?” Web asked.
“No…” came the sullen reply.
Web sighed. “Steel could you get her for me?”
“Alright, alright, I’ll be right up,” Steel said with a sigh. “I should charge her for it, though.”
<><><|><><>
Steel carried the nearly unconscious mage back to their observation room, where Web was waiting for her. The moment the pegasus saw her, she immediately slapped a patch on her, checked for injuries, and then let her sit once she found none.
Twilight simply found the corner of the room opposite Gem, and enjoyed the feeling of the cold, hard, yet comfortable drywall behind her. Looking down at her arm, she saw the patch that was slowly bringing her back from the brink of exhaustion.
A stim patch. Twilight remembered her little affair with the energy in a patch she had back when she was studying for her first initiation. She spent four days hopped up on energy drinks, coffee, and stims, with maybe three hours of sleep between them. That had messed her up pretty bad, actually, she couldn’t cast a spell right for a week after that.
Still, she could move now, so that was a step in the right direction.
“So did we do it?” Twilight asked.
Web looked back at her, clearly unimpressed. “That was one team. There’s another three coming at us right now.”
“What?” Twilight asked. “But...but I…?”
“You blew all your remaining spells in a record twenty minutes, Rookie,” Web said. “That, and some bad luck with your drain today has pretty much left you useless. That’s why you carry a gun, it’s your fault for not using it.”
The Harmony Roc that hung by her chest felt heavier just being mentioned, and Twilight blushed.
“You know the first three rules of Running, Rookie?”
“Shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never make a deal with a dragon,” Twilight recited.
“Those apply to spells too. You can't put up wards, summon guards, and get in a fight without wearing yourself out. Conserve ammo. Understand?”
Twilight nodded.
“Good. Now get your gun out. I’ve had to convince your air elemental to stay, but your two fire elementals are long gone.”
Twilight groaned as she got to her hooves, and reached into her robe for the Roc, the heavy-caliber revolver felt heavy in her grip, but she knew this weapon well. Spikarunz had taught her well, after all. “Alright, I...I got it.”
“Good, now stay here, and shoot anypony that tries to get to Gem.”
“You’re going out there?”
“You’re useless right now, and someone has to back up the team, so now that’s my job. You just watch over Gem and make sure her body’s still here when she gets back. She’s doing her job, so we need to do ours, alright?”
Twilight nodded.
“Good, in the meantime, try to move as little as possible. It’ll help with the drain.”
Twilight nodded, shifted herself to face the door, her Roc out and ready to shoot, and watched as Web walked out the door.
<><><|><><>
The second day was long, very long for Twilight, who spent most of her time staring at the door to their little room.
Gem popped out for a few minutes to eat a protein bar, and guzzle water from a bottle she had, before jumping back in the Matrix to continue defending them from the deckers whose bodies were a mile away. Beyond that, nothing happened to the room.
The night was even longer, but at the very least, Twilight was able to help toward the end. It required far more brass, lead, and gunpowder than mana, but they were well-placed shots, and they did the job.
The third day was the longest yet, six teams were all rushing to get the job done, and they would have overrun them if not for Wingmare’s careful shots, and a more restrained attempt by Twilight to put up traps rather than blast everyone to pieces.
Despite the flying lead though, everything went...well.
Go Long was never aware that there was a Runner team shadowing him, and even though one enemy team did manage to get into the expo room where he was enjoying himself, they were weak enough at that point that the normal, on-site security was able to bag them.
It was the most exciting day of Go Long’s life to date.
When the Ponyville Pounder scout finally arrived, the team had a total of six scouts killed, collected, and accounted for, and all three days worked.
Gem, who was exhausted from three straight days of being in the Matrix, smiled. “Good job, everypony...now all we need to do is collect…”
“Are we going now?” Twilight asked.
“We can,” the decker replied, “although I’d much prefer a shower and a meal first.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Steel said, “Let’s go, I know there’s a sandwich shop ‘round here somewhere.”
“Found one!” Candy said, staring up at her comm’s AR screen. “I’ll drive!”
“Wonderful, dear. I don’t think I can drive myself,” Gem said.
Piling into the van, they began to head out, driving across Ponyville for the meal, talking about how the job went. “Yeah, the Rookie didn’t do half bad. She got me out of a pretty bad spot,” Steel said.
“She was still reckless. Could have gotten herself killed,” Web said.
“I’m right here, you know,” Twilight said.
Web turned to her, stared her dead in the eye, and repeated. “You were still reckless. You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Thanks…”
“She did alright, but she’s still a rookie,” Wingmare agreed.
Candy nodded. “Yuppers, it was still super awesome to watch Balboa down there, being covered in a fireball like Fwoosh! And still be alright.”
“Sounds like I missed some impressive work,” Gem said.
“Impressive enough,” Steel said. “Course, if I’m honest I…” she suddenly trailed off. “Stop the van.”
“What?”
“Candy, stop the van,” she repeated.
Candy stopped, and the van obeyed, coming to a halt in a second before Steel lept out.
“Steel? Steel what’s going on?”Gem asked.
Steel stared up at a plascrete and plasteel gate, beyond which was the most green many of them had seen in their lives. The others began to pour out of the van, their eyes following Steel’s gaze to the words that were written over the gate in forged letters. “Sweet Apple Acres Country Club,” it read, and underneath those words, written in smaller lettering was the phrase “a subsidiary of Flim Flam Incorporated.”
Steel glared up at the gate, teeth grinding together, before she growled. “A golf course? They turned it into a golf course?”
“Steel?” Gem said, as they all watched her staring up at the gate. “Steel, are you alright?”
The Streetsam stared up at the country club with a scowl on her face. “Nope. Ain’t nothing fer you to worry about. Besides...we get this job done, there won’t be a problem at all.” She turned back to face them, scowling as she did so before she muttered. “Let’s just go get paid already.”
<><><|><><>
After a shower in a public stall that some CEO started building across the sprawl for some PR stunt or another, and a “hay and tomato” sandwich, Rarity was feeling much better. Well enough to head back to their Ringo for their payday.
Twenty-one thousand nubits later, and the Decker and her team practically danced out of Ponyville, and back to the warehouse. Twilight grinned as she held the credstick in her pocket, which felt far heavier than it actually was.
As Candy pulled up beside Twilight’s safehouse-turned-home, the mage suddenly received a call.
It rang once, before automatically picking up, and Spikarunz’s fierce, purple face appeared in front of her, plastered across her AR glasses. “Twilight. It's time for your first job."