The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi


Distant Days In Ironridge

"It's going to work," an orange filly whispered, her short tail flicking as she crouched hidden beneath a break room chair. "Eventually. Just you wait and see."

"We've been here for twelve minutes," the colt hiding with her muttered, quietly checking his wristwatch. "Seven of which have been break time. I deduce the probability of anyone falling for your trap is regrettably low."

"It's not a trap, Dior," the filly giggled, covering her mouth with a hoof to keep herself quiet. "It's a gift. Everyone has been so mopey these past months, they need something to put some pep back in their step. This is a brilliant plan. You watch."

Dior rolled his eyes. "Shinespark, let us be under no illusions that we are here for the enjoyment of seeing somepony be pranked and for no reason other. Call it a noble goal all you like, but as the older of us two I would at least expect you to be-!"

"Shhh!" Shinespark clasped his mouth shut with her aura, sticking out her tongue in concentration and scrunching her face at the door. "Someone's coming!"

The door burst open, no doorjamb to stop it from clanging against the corrugated metal walls and exposed support boards of the break room. Heavy hooves stumped in, each the size of Shinespark's head, moving with a speed that suggested they were in a hurry.

"Look at him. Parched, clearly," Shinespark mouthed. "Come on, use the water cooler... You know you want to..."

The stallion sat down heavily in an adjacent chair, scooting it slightly with his force. Shinespark winced. Her hooves would have been crushed had that been the one she was under.

Dior looked at her for a moment, until both of their ears were drawn by the sound of quiet sobbing from above.

Frowning, Shinespark crawled out from a direction the stallion couldn't see her, moving to the door and pretending to enter through it. "Gasket?" she asked, staring at the stallion from the doorframe, his head in his hooves on the table.

"Who the...!?" Gasket's head snapped up, a brown-and-chartreuse worker's vest covering his muscular shoulders. "Oh. You're that filly they let hang around. Must feel good, having the run of the place. Bet no one's told you to get lost in your life."

Shinespark curled her lip. If only he knew... He probably did. She sidled to the water cooler, her horn glowing a pleasing sapphire as she filled him a cup. "I've heard it here and there. Why the long face?" She blew on her bangs, causing the teal streak in her mane to wave slightly.

Gasket took the cup, but didn't drink from it. "They let me go, for your information. So much for Arambai and his promises."

Shinespark squinted. "I'm not familiar with the turn of phrase..."

"Fired!" Gasket turned to roar in her face, blowing back her mane and flecking her with spittle. "Let go! Released! Told they don't need me anymore! Seven generations of my forefathers working here, and it all means nothing and all ends with me."

He stood up and faced her. Shinespark had just started her growth spurt, and her legs were noticeably longer than a normal filly's, but even if she had been as tall as a full-grown mare he still would have towered over her. She blinked once and wiped her face and mane dry with a hoof.

"Are you sure?" Shinespark blinked slowly and skeptically. "Arambai knows how to run a factory. Even if the rest of Sosa is a mess, he never fires his own."

Gasket glared at her, and a vein twitched near one eye. "Sure does," he sighed, deflating. "Means I'm not only not good enough, I'm the least good enough. Doubt that'll comfort whoever comes next..."

He threw back his head and chugged the glass, marching toward the door, but dropped it and sprayed water halfway through, hacking and wheezing. "Bwaaaaah! What the-!?"

Shinespark's eyes widened, and she darted for a wall, slipping inside an open ventilation duct he had no hope of following her through. Her horn glowed for light, and several bends in she bumped nose to nose into Dior.

"From the sound of that, spiking the water cooler with chili peppers did not give him the kick he needed," Dior dryly remarked.

"Dior." Shinespark wasn't listening, grabbing him hard by the shoulders and staring him in the eyes. "When was the last time we checked Father's payroll records? He says he was fired, and that's preposterous. We need to get proof that he's lying and show it to someone who can expose him, or he'll hurt our factory's reputation and make Father's job even harder! He's probably a spy paid by the Sky District to-"

A hoof to the muzzle interrupted her furious whispering. "Shinespark," Dior admonished. "Those are serious accusations all around. Father does business ethically and we must trust that the Sky District would do the same to him. But these signs of the times are dark indeed. Perhaps we should make for his office."

"Agreed." Shinespark slipped past him, scurrying off down the air duct, leaving the spiked water cooler to its fate.


Shinespark spread her forelegs, blocking the passage and forcing Dior to stop. Ahead was the grate to Arambai's office, properly secured courtesy of keeping up appearances. From the voices coming from ahead, he was in the middle of a meeting.

"You drive a hard bargain," Arambai's voice growled, as scratchy as ever. "But price cuts on the materials for Skyfreeze aren't on the table. I need to keep up a strong showing for Sosa's involvement in the skyport project if you want the public to stay happy with these changes. If the numbers don't say it's good for Sosa, the public will know."

A high-class stallion chuckled. "Who cares what the public knows? You're the elected official, sir. Tell the ponies it's a time of national hardship when they all must buckle their belts to out-compete parts and materials shipped in from Yakyakistan! Besides, there's nothing like a common enemy for driving up approval ratings. Work with me on this price cut, and you could profit from it too!"

"You say that." Arambai took a long breath. "Profits are a thing of history. We've been in free-fall through the red for the last three years, and you know it just as well as I do. I'm less concerned about making money and more about spending it to preserve my workers' dignity."

"How remarkably forward of you," the other stallion replied. "I wish you luck in your... ahem... altruistic endeavors. So long as it doesn't complicate mine. It would be a tremendous logistical hassle to switch our coordination systems to managing shipments for outsourced materials, you see, one I'm afraid my superiors don't quite understand, so I could be persuaded to throw in a bonus if it meant taking the deal and skipping deliberations altogether..."

"A bonus for me?" Arambai growled. "Or for the first wave of stallions I had to let go thanks to your shenanigans two weeks ago with that defaulted contract on the power grid?"

The other stallion started making patronizing excuses, but Shinespark didn't stick around to hear it. She silently backtracked, pulling Dior with her as she slunk away into the maze of the ventilation system.


"I can't believe it!" Shinespark huffed, pacing violently back and forth in a safe room had set up just for her and Dior to use as a hideout. "I thought he got those stallions reassigned after they seized the south dam power routing station! Is there nowhere for them to go? We still have growth in defense research and conduit infusion-"

"The conduit infusion enchantment team is flooded with Mobius's decommissioned omega hull alloy division," Dior replied softly. "And there were twice as many as Defense was able to take. They mostly needed safety experts who knew about the ways mana currents interacted with bodies, so many of the console experts seem to have been extra. Last I checked."

"But there are other terminal teams!" Shinespark loudly protested. "Why not assign them to encryption and storage, or peripheral development, or..."

"Operating at maximum capacity," Dior answered. "The equipment used to build the research equipment was decommissioned thirteen years ago, and there was an explosion last month that took out the one they were trying to bring out of retirement and back online. Nothing for more engineers to do."

Shinespark glared, spinning and flinging a gangly hoof at him. "Well, so much for you saying the Sky District would treat us equitably and fairly, then! What kind of business do they have taking over a power routing station with armed guards the moment we finish building the power conduits to Skyfreeze?"

Dior sighed. "Strictly speaking, it makes business sense because now we can't cut their power when they refuse to pay without blacking out half of the Stone District. But perhaps I misspoke."

"I'll say you did," Shinespark grumbled, angrily pushing her mane out of her eyes. "Father isn't supposed to have to fire anyone! There's always been something he can do! And those foreigners from that yak hole keep cheating when he's done so much for Sosa, and they don't respect any of it at all!"

Dior tried to rest a hoof on her shoulder. "Shinespark-"

She brushed it off. "How high up do you think their corruption goes?" Shinespark whirled on him. "Contractors? Managers? Project leads? Their ambassador? Church? Heads of church? Yakyakistan is a theocracy. Their religion is supposed to be about harmony and treating one another with respect..."

"Perhaps it is their point of view." Dior shrugged. "The workers here have dozens of generations of history set in Sosan ways. The yaks have zero. To them, our stubborn refusal to move up the mountain must seem quaint or even frustrating. After all, they are apparently short on physical labor."

"In the Sky District, where it's cold and Sosans have no business being." Shinespark aggressively slumped. "Come on. Are you with me?"

Dior gave her a skeptical look. "With regards to what?"

"We're going to pay them a visit." Shinespark flicked her tail, heading for the ventilation ducts. "Skyfreeze, the skyport, their construction headquarters. They'll be heartless and kick us out for being two random kids, obviously, but I want to see who's responsible for this at the top with my own eyes."

Dior sighed and followed along. "Well, you've never been one to commit to anything in half measures..."