//------------------------------// // Chapter 16 // Story: The Runners // by DungeonMiner //------------------------------// The end of the second day was quiet for the team, as the Gutter King’s hospitality kept them safe from Yakks, though there was the occasional burst of automatic fire through the afternoon hours. Luckily the concrete of the old parking garage was thick, and the wall of homeless ponies willing to sacrifice everything for the Gutter King kept the intruders at bay. By the time dusk came around, everything was perfectly silent. Sven was the exception. He paced most of the day, keeping an eye on concrete walls and pausing whenever he heard the sounds of fighting. Once every hour, he would step away, only to return to the parked van and pace. “Y’all right, there, Mr. Ringo?” Steel asked as she cleaned her shotgun on the roof of the shot-up van. He jumped at her question, before grumbling. “A-are you sure it’s safe here? These ponies look like they want to—” “Ya better be careful what ya say there,” Steel said as her cyberhoof carefully held the pieces of her gun in the light, “ya don’t want to be insulting the hospitality of our host none if you like to keep yer tongue in yer mouth.” Sven hesitated. “I...I just feel like I have a lot to lose here.” “Oh, lighten up, Sven,” Coloratura said as she sauntered across the concrete floor, dressed in a rough-and-tumble leather jacket with her hair done in a ponytail. “AJ thinks they’re cool.” “Steel, please,” Steel gently corrected, before replacing the spring in her shotgun. “Right.” “I just...I don’t like it here,” Sven said. “Well, I ain’t the biggest fan either, but we’re keepin’ ya safe, and that’s the important thing.” “I mean...I suppose, but...how confident are you this place will hold up?” Sven asked. “I mean, look at it! There has to be a weak point in it somewhere, right?” Steel shrugged. “Heck if I know. I’ve never been here before. You’d have to ask one of the ponies that live here to be sure,” Steel said. Sven sighed before he checked the time on his watch. “I’ll be back. I’m going to the bathroom.” “You really should have taken it easy on the caffeine,” Steel yelled after him, as she slipped the last pin in place, and built her beloved shotgun back into one piece of blued steel. Sven grumbled and muttered to himself as he found the small, secluded area that he had been retreating to. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a cheap, plastic, disposable commlink, and placed a call to the only contact programmed into it. He grumbled as it rang, checking behind him as the patrolling homeless ponies slowly circled his niche of debris. The comm rang once before it was answered by a hard-faced earth pony mare. She had a glare that could cut through steel and a frown as sharp a razor. “Mr. Svengallop,” she greeted simply. “Look, I’m trying Miss LeRoot, I’m trying, but—” “I was not aware I was asking for excuses,” LeRoot stated simply. “I don’t know where to look for a back entrance!” Sven whispered. “I’m trying but I can’t find anything.” “Are you telling me that you aren’t prepared for this job, Mr. Svengallop?” LeRoot asked. “Because I was under the impression that you were a competent pony. Is that assessment incorrect?” Sven shook his head, and tried to desperately hide the sweat forming across his brow. “What? No, no, I’m competent, I just—” “Good,” LeRoot interrupted, her voice slicing through whatever pitiful placation Sven was about to offer. “Because the Yaks have very particular tastes when it comes to who they work with, and they do not work with worthless failures.” “Y-yes ma’am…” Sven said. “I just wished you weren’t shooting at me.” “That’s the point, Sven. That’s why you hired Runners in the first place. Either we capture you and Coloratura alive, and we make her sign, or she is so indebted to you she signs with you anyway. The only failure along that line was that you had to pick runners that actually care about the asset.” “How was I supposed to know—?” “I don’t want to hear it, Sven,” LeRoot growled, biting down on his argument. “You messed up, and now we can’t risk it. If those runners figure out what we did just to get you in contact with her, then this whole plan is ruined, and you will owe us quite the sum of money.” Sven nodded. “And you know how Yaks are when someone doesn’t hold up their end of the deal.” “Hey, hey!” Sven said, putting on all his bravado as he gulped. “Don’t worry, we’ll get her, we’ll get her. The Runners may suspect something, but they don’t know. There’s no way that they could know about the planted chips. Coloratura didn’t tell them anything. We’re in the clear. No reason to worry.” “Oh, Mr. Svengallop,” she said, her smile cold and malicious, “I’m not worried at all. We’ll get our pound of flesh. One way or another.” The comm went dead, and Svengallop nodded, holding his confident smile for a second or two. Then he threw up. <><><|><><> Sven started looking for a way out. Or rather, a way for the Yakkuza teams to get in. He wandered along the back walls of the parking garage, where a wall of concrete car barriers and broken concrete columns lay blocking all the windows. Without a team of pullers or heavy machinery, it’d be nearly impossible to open up a path inside. The gate, guarded by the homeless and made of more concrete, rebar, and steel than he cared to think about, was also nearly impossible to move. The derelict garage was a fortress, and when combining that with the fact that the neighborhood was bad enough that the corps couldn't move in without making a stink, there was not a lot of chances for him to secure being captured. Nervous sweat was pouring out down Sven’s forehead. This wasn’t supposed to be how this happened. The Runners were supposed to suck, die, and he’d be the strong, suave hero, and Coloratura would be so thankful, she'd sign on to his contract, he’d milk her for cash, pay off his gambling debts, and even cut the Yaks a deal of another 20% going forward. This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He nervously searched the edges of the garage, looking for any weakness he checked a second and third time. Tough, pitted concrete was the only thing that met his search, leaving nothing for him to exploit. “Come on,” he growled to himself. “There has to be something…” A homeless pony, armed with a gun made from some old copper pipe gave him a curious glance as he walked by, and Sven quickly closed the distance between them. “Hey, hey buddy, look, I’ve got a question for ya.” The homeless stallion just barely resisted the urge to raise his gun on the manager. “Look, I’ve got a deal for you. I’m...uh…” he stopped a second, his brain trying to process the best possible excuse for what he was about to do, “Scared. Yeah, I’m scared, and I just need to know if there’s a way out that’s not through the main gate.” “Right...look, I don’t know you, and quite frankly, I have a hard time trusting anypony in a blazer.” “Look, how does a hundred nubits sound?” Sven asked as he opened a wallet filled with empty credsticks. The pony with the pipe gun gave Sven a look, before sighing. “A hundred’s not enough.” “What?” “On a bad day, I make three hundred begging. You’ll have to do better than that.” Sven blinked, grumbled a quiet “I knew it,” and said. “Five hundred.” The pony with the gun shook his head. “One thousand.” “A thousand?” Sven asked, clutching his chest. “You’re going to give me a heart attack with those kinds of demands. Take two hundred.” “Two hundred? I just said you need three to get my attention.” “Fine, three fifty.” The pony glanced up at him and began to walk away. “Frag,” Sven muttered, before loading a credstick. “Fine, here’s a thousand.” “Thank you very much!” the pony with the gun said with a smile. “There’s a hallway on the second floor, that leads into the apartment behind us. Nobody living in there except some dreamers and Novaheads.” “Thank you, thank you so much.” “Yup, a pleasure doing business with you!” the guard said, pocketing his money, and walking away. Sven smiled, and rushed back to his niche to make the call. He found a way to make this work. <><><|><><> The day continued to pass slowly by, and the attacks were slowly progressing. Still there was no progress into the garage. Finally, the evening came, and the night slipped past them. “Alright ponies, we have a less than an hour left on the job,” Gem said. “Once we hit midnight, we can get this contract signed, and we’re in the clear!” Sven nodded. “And not a moment too soon. I don’t know if I can take waiting here much longer.” “No, we all want to go home at this point, don’t we?” Steel asked. Rara nodded in agreement. “A night in my own bed would be nice.” “Now, it’s time to move out,” Gem said. “What?” Sven asked. “Well, we’re in the last hour, if the Yakks are going to try to pull anything it’d be right now, so we need to leave.” “Okay, so let’s climb into the van—” “No, they’d be expecting that. We know the back way out, so we head that way, go on hoof for a bit, and then wait the rest of the night out in a different building.” “Oh…” Sven said before a smile grew on his lips. “Sounds brilliant.” “Glad you think so,” Gem said. “Yup, I’m just going to run to the little colt’s room real quick, hope you don’t mind.” “Nope,” Steel said, hopping off the van. “We have to leave now, we don’t got time for potty breaks.” “Um...but…” “But what about the van?” Rara asked. “Yeah! The van! We should wait a moment and make sure it—” “I’ll just call it back later,” Candy said with a grin. “Now come on, Ringo, we need to move.” “Um…but I…” Sven offered before he was shoved forward by Wingmare. “Go man, we don’t have all day.” “But I—!” “Go!” Wingmare said. Pushed forward by the team, the runners led Sven up onto the second level of the parking garage, despite his many protests. He tried and failed to stop them on two separate occasions, but the mares simply pushed him forward. “Honestly, I just need a few minutes.” “Do you hear that?” Web asked. “I think I hear the Yakks coming!” “They’re not going to break through the concrete that fast! We have a few minutes!” “Nope, can’t risk that," The rookie said. "We have to keep you two safe, and that’s final," Wingmare said. Finally, they made their way to an open breezeway that straddled the alleyway below, before leading into the rundown building on the opposite side. “Alright, Ringo, you and Rara go first,” Steel said. “We’ll cover you in case they follow.” Sven gulped. Sure, having six mares cover your retreat was great, but the Yakks weren't coming at him from behind. A terrible choice now faced him, lead, and get possibly shot down by the Yakks, or let Coloratura get shot instead. He could either get shot and maybe die, or risk getting his only meal-ticket, his only chance at getting out of incredible amounts of debt, shot and killed. She had to live because if he didn’t deliver on the money, his death would be long and painful at the hooves of the Yakks. So, with little choice Sven took the front, and prayed that the incoming team of armed ponies wouldn’t shoot him down. He stepped into the building and was quickly met with the smell of pony refuse. Many of the walls on this level were knocked out, making more room for the thirty or so nearly-desiccated ponies that littered the room. Coloratura gasped as she saw them, and Steel could only offer a hoof in comfort. “Fraggin’ Dreamers,” Sven muttered under his breath, before kicking a leg away. “Just keep moving, Ringo, we can’t afford to wait around,” Wingmare muttered. They began to move forward slowly, through the building, shuffling through the ponies around them too lost in the better lives they mantled to notice the runners walking by. “Oh, Celestia…” Coloratura muttered. “Oh, Celestia…” “We gotcha,” Steel said. “We gotcha.” Sven kept walking through the mess of ponies, covering his mouth with the edge of his sleeve. “Oh, this is disgusting,” he said before he glanced back up to the door at the end of the room. The Yakks could be walking through that at any moment, and he’d be swiss cheese. Moving past the half-lucid Dreamers, and slowly picking his way through, Sven led the team into the building, before coming up on the stairs. The long, twisting staircase descended down into the depths of the foundation but more importantly led out. “I found the stairs!” Sven yelled, hoping that one of the incoming Yakk teams would hear him and know not to shoot immediately. Chances are it didn’t help, but he had to do something. “Good! Start heading down!” Steel yelled. “To the first floor?” “The basement,” Gem said. “Alright the basement,” he said, trying to decide whether this was good or not. Down the stairs they came, slipping through the otherwise silent halls until they finally came to the basement door. The cheap door had come off two of its hinges a long time ago, and after a little maneuvering, the runners managed to spin the door open and crawled inside. The basement was somehow worse than the upper floors, covered in a thin layer of gunk and slime that threatened to make Sven lose what little of his lunch remained, while only two ponies wandered around, muttering about their fancy parties or their latest album. It wasn’t until the ponies had all crawled in did they notice a third figure, curled around themselves, half-starved and filthy. “Forward,” Steel said, “through there.” She pointed to an old, nearly-rusted steel door along one of the far walls. “D-do you...money?” one of the more lucid ponies asked the group as it passed, staring up at Rookie as she stood beside them. Wingmare came up behind her, and shook her head.“If we did, do you think we’d be down here?” The poor dreamer looked up at her before his eyes lost focus again. “...was I doing?” The team walked past them all, and up the steel door, that Steel’s cybernetic strength barely managed to creak open. “Alright, let’s get inside everypony.” Clambering in, the team shut the door behind them, encasing the collected ponies in darkness for a brief second before Coloratura and Steel had the eye-light systems in their cybereyes flood the room with four pairs of white light beams. “Can somepony get an actual light?” “I’ve got it,” Web said before a magical ball illuminated the room. The concrete cube they found themselves in was surprisingly dry, a blessing counted by everyone there, and Sven finally had a moment to relax again. He was in the back, behind the wall of flesh and steel he hired. If the Yakks were going to kill anyone, it was the runners. He was safe at last. And then, Gem turned the deadbolt, and everypony turned to face him. “So we’re safe here right?” Sven asked. “Well, Mr. Ringo,” Gem said. “Why don’t you tell us, since you’re the one sending the Yakks after us?” Sven’s heart skipped a beat. “Wh-what? That’s crazy! Why would I call the Yakks after us? That could get me killed! Besides, they’d take my star, and I can’t have anypony—” LeRoot’s face suddenly appeared in front of them, projected in real space as Gem’s Cybereyes began to replay the previously thought-to-be-private conversation. “That’s the point, Sven,” LeRoot said to the room. “That’s why you hired Runners in the first place. Either we capture you and Coloratura alive, and we make her sign, or she is so indebted to you she signs with you anyway. The only failure along that line was that you had to pick runners that actually care about the asset.” “I…” Svengallop gulped. “I’ve never seen that mare before, in my life! I have no idea who—” “How was I supposed to know—?” Sven’s voice whined on the call. “I don’t want to hear it, Sven. You messed up, and now we can’t risk it. If those runners figure out what we did just to get you in contact with her, then this whole plan is ruined, and you will owe us quite the sum of money.” The call clicked away, and Sven was left in the room, surrounded by Runners, and one very angry Starlet. “And what did they do to get you in contact with me?” Coloratura asked. “Well...I mean...nothing crazy…” “Did you frame Rouge with Dreamchips?” “What? No, no, never! I’d never do a thing like that.” “Did you frame him?” she asked again. “I told you, I’ve never done anything like that!” “I’d tell her the truth at this point, Mr. Ringo,” Steel said as she double-checked the shells in her shotgun. “It’s not like it’ll keep her from liking you.” Sven shook his head. “No, no, I’m perfectly innocent, I assure—” Coloratura closed the distance and glared into his eyes. “If you don’t tell me, that’s fine. I’ll find out anyway. That’s not why I’m asking,” she said, her voice low, and threatening. “I’m asking because whether or not you tell me is going to decide what I do with you.” “Pardon?” Sven asked, his voice squeaking. “You know what a Dreamchip does, Sven?” she asked. “Most of the time, it lets you live a new life, you run a little simulation in your head that’s just better than what most ponies have. Others just change how you perceive the world, rose-colored glasses of euphoria, anger, or sadness. Others still change your actual personality, and the next thing you know, you think you’re the biggest big shot this side of Canterlot, but do you know what makes them so unique?” Sven didn’t answer as Coloratura’s cybereyes glowed red. “They feel real. More real than reality itself. Sweet tastes sweeter, warm feel warmer, pleasure, and pain both become realities you’ve never been able to imagine. And that’s why, if I find out that you stood here and lied to me, while you planted that garbage at Rouge’s hooves, then I will be sure to find the one thing that will make that pain your reality.” “Easy Rara,” Steel said. “Easy. There ain’t no need to sully yourself with that kind of talk. Besides, we’ve got our own solution for this.” Wither shotgun prepped and leveled at their Ringo, she gave a nod to Gem. Gem nodded, and dialed the one contact on Sven’s burner Comm. “Hello, Mrs. LeRoot?” “And who might this be?” The earth pony responded. “We’re the Runners your ‘partner’ hired.” “So he failed?” “Spectacularly,” Gem responded. “Now, our contract with him lasts another hour or so, but I’m fairly certain he’s going to back out of paying us, so we are currently open for negotiations.” “Really, now?” “Yes, I think we can work out a deal,” Gem said. “After all, if he doesn’t pay out, and we complete the job then whatever happens to him is not our concern.” <><><|><><> The second the clock ticked over, a team of Yakkuza ponies came to collect the now incredibly fearful Svengallop away to be “talked to.” “Well, Ms. Gem,” LeRoot said over the comm. “I’m happy to see you’re a mare of good business sense." "It's a gift," Gem replied. LeRoot nodded on the other end of the call. "It helps that we want to make an example more than earn the money he promised." "As I would expect of your reputation." LeRoot smiled. "We will, of course, take him in exchange for the Yakkuzan lives you’ve taken over the past few days, so we’ll count this as even.” “And, that will suffice for now,” Gem said, “Though I do ask you keep us in mind if you need some work done.” “That sounds agreeable, Ms. Gem,” LeRoot said. “Again, your business acumen is impressive.” The call ended a second later, and the ponies were left in the basement room, with their charge. “Thank you so much for this, AJ,” Coloratura said, as Sven was carried off. “I’ll make sure you’re paid for this.” “Thanks, Rara, that means a lot.” “Don’t mention it, AJ, I’m just happy I can go back to Rogue. I need to call him.” Gem held up her comm. “I have his contact on here, Darling,” she said. “We need to let him know about the job well done, anyway.” Steel motioned her head over, and Coloratura gladly followed. The two quickly made the call and tried talking to Rogue, who was so incredibly relieved to hear the voice of his fiance again. “Well, I reckon that gives us a happy ending fer a change,” she said with a smirk before she turned to leave. And then she froze. One of the dreamers stood in front of her, barely on her feet as she looked at Steel with dulled, orangish-yellow eyes. Her mouth hung slack, barely moving as she mumbled about cash for a new chip, still not lucid enough to know better. Her pale, yellow coat was covered in filth and clung tightly to her thinned frame, speaking volumes of a poor diet, and cold nights on the streets. Her red mane hung wet against her coat, but even then it was obvious to see the terrible knots and long, overgrown strands that were beyond control many years ago. “Got...got som bits...juss...juss need som bits,” the young mare muttered, not even properly seeing Steel. But Steel saw her, she saw her and she knew who that was. She knew exactly who this mare in front of her was. “Ap-Applebloom?”