//------------------------------// // Damage control // Story: Equestria Glitch Techs // by Kaliann25 //------------------------------// Damage control Mitch was at the employees room, combing his hair with a smug smile. The doors opened; and Zahra, Haneesh, Miko and Five came in. Mitch grinned at the newcomers. “Where were you, losers? While you were stuck helping this noobs to clean their own disaster, I went ahead and took care of all the important missions. The four of them were too tired to argue with him. Instead, they just put their bracelets on the machine to exchange their experience points. Mitch’s jaw dropped when he saw the tremendous amount of EXP that each of them had. And his score dropped from top performer of the day, to the very last. “What?! How is this possible? Where did you get all of those experience points?!” shouted Mitch without believing it. Zahra gave him a condescending smile. “Being nice have its reward Mitch. You should try it too. Now, if you excuse us, Phil is waiting for us. See you later!” Mitch stayed behind, mumbling something about how they just were lucky as the four walked to Phil’s office. But he showed them the way to the conference room. He seemed a bit more serious than usual, and that was a bad sign. They just hoped they were not in trouble. Barbara, or the Inspector Seven, was already waiting for them looking as serious as Phil. “Are those all the Techs involved in the incident?” asked Barbara. Phil nodded. “Yes.” “Good, please take a seat.” said Barbara. The four did as they were told as they exchanged a nervous look. But Barbara gave them a calming smile. “It’s alright guys. First of all I would like to congratulate you for how you handled the situation. If it’s true that things were already out of control you were able to contain the glitches in one place.” The guys sighed relieed. Phil took a sip of coffee. “However, we still have to talk about this energy source that you came across. You called it ‘Magic’, right? We have to do something about it.” Barbara nodded. “And believe it or not, this is not the first time Hinobi faces a situation like this, and this is why we called you here. Before we give you the details, I want to be completely clear: what you are about to hear is highly classified. If you reveal this information to anyone, you’ll be immediately fired and your memories erased. Am I clear?” “Understood!” said the four Techs in the unison. Barbara looked at B.I.T.T. “Project File BC-8402 please.” “Understood, projecting video file!” said the Tech Bot. He projected an aerial view of what it looked like a peaceful beach town, with some strange ruins at northeast. “This is Beach City. A small town at the state of Delmarva. Looks like a regular town, right? We thought so as well. But the problems started at the very first moment we sold our first Hinobi games to the owner of the local arcade, Harold Smiley.” The video showed an amusement park under attack by Chomp Kitty, Funky Kong, Asteroids; and of course, a Team of Glitch Techs trying to control the situation. Phil rolled his eyes. “We checked the machines, exchanged them more than three times and the problems continued. There was nothing on the hardware or software that could cause the machines to glitch out but almost every day we had to go back to the town to take care of the glitches. And they weren’t just three or four, but dozens each time.” Barbara nodded. “But we had some bigger problems to deal with.” The video changed to show four strange women fighting against the Glitch Techs. They were armed with a pink sword and shield, big gauntlets, a spear; and a whip. “Cool design! Which game are they from?” asked Miko. Phil shook his head. “No game. Apparently, Beach City is built near an alien settlement.” “Wait, wait, wait…!” said Haneesh. “Are you telling me that aliens are real?!” Zahra shrugged. “We just were in a dimension where magic is real. This sounds less weird.” “Not to mention we hunt videogame monsters for living.” said Five. “One day when we were taking care of the daily glitches, they attacked us. At firs we thought they were glitches too but when our weapons didn’t do anything but make them mad, we started to think they may be something else.” Miko and Five exchanged a look, this sounded familiar. Barbara continued showing clips of the Glitch Techs from that time shooting blasts to the aliens, and they responding with blasts on their own, or crossing swords and using their forcefield to block a powerful attack from the one with the gauntlets. “It was a massive fight, but we ended up realizing that their tech was the source of all the problems. Alien tech and Hinobi tech are not compatible and when you put them near each other you’ll end up creating a glitch. And if the aliens try to defend themselves from the glitches with their tech, the glitches would take it as an energy source and multiply.” Phil then showed them a clip of a Hinobi employee shacking hands with the woman who had the sword and shield. “In the end we were able to talk things out. Apparently they thought Hinobi was misusing their tech, as much as we thought that they were glitches. But we realized we were dealing with two different things.” “Yup, that sound familiar!” commented Miko. “After clearing the misunderstanding, the alien leader and Hinobi executives ca,e tp am agreement, and the entire town of Beach City was permabanned.” finished Barbara. Miko gasped. “What? No! what about all the online accounts and saved games? So unfair!” Phil sighed. “Those were the early eighties, so no online accounts. The only person who had access to Hinobi games was the owner of the arcade, but we wiped his memory. It was for the best in the long run. Nowadays if you go to Beach City and you have some Hinobi Tech with you, it will automatically die. Disable, finished. But it would work again as soon as you leave Beach City. It is for the best.” Barbara then showed some pictures of different places around the world. “Unfortunately this alien race have tech settlements all over the world so Hinobi International had to intervene to permaban every single one of them. It was a long process, but we managed to control the situation.” With that Barbara finished the presentation. “I think you see where we want to go, right? We would have to permaban the school and all the areas with magic influence to avoid an infestation for happening again.” “But what about the online accounts? Saved games? Think about the children!” cried Miko dramatically. “Accounts and saved games are perfectly safe!” explained Phil, patiently. “But if one of the students bring their consoles to school, it would be automatically disabled as soon as they are at school. But once they leave, the consoles will be back to normal.” “Oh, just the school? It’s okay then!” said Miko. Phil sighed. “Now, the difficult part. We have to talk with the magical creatures in order to make the proper arrangements. But we have to bring them here, I don’t want to take the risk that their magic messes up our tech again.” “Oh, what we can do is talk with the magical girls we met the other day.” suggested Five. “Magical girls? Inhabitants from the other side?” asked Barbara. Five shrugged. “No idea. I only know that they have magic powers. We met during a glitch attack, and when we tried to erase their memories, they used their magic to block the memory reset. Then they used their powers again to escape.” Miko nodded with a smile. “Yeah, what a crazy couple of days! We tried to chase them thinking they were affected by a glitch and wanted to bring them here to be cured but they didn’t show up in our radars and, you know; one thing led to another and we learned that magic and Hinobi Tech don’t go well together.” Barbara frowned, and went back to the video files Phil sent her. She finally found the one where the Glitch Techs and some girl came back to the human world through the portal, and freeze the image on Sunset Shimmer. “Is this one of the Magical Girls?” “Yes, but she has some other friends.” said Five. Barbara smiled. “Good, since you already know them please contact them and explain the situation. Tell them about the Hinobi resolution, and please; ask them if they know another area that may have magic to permaban it as well. Let’s make today’s incident a one-time incident.” “Understood!” said Miko and Five in the unison. With that, the they were sent home. The Techs were relived that no one was fired, and that they found a solution for the magic stuff. When they left, Barbara smiled also relieved. “Perfect! A possible crisis was avoided, thank you for telling me so quickly Phil. I’ll take this under consideration for your next evaluation.” “Hey, don’t be so harsh. You know I only did my job as a manager.” Barbara gave him a friendly pat on his shoulder and the two of them shook hands and went home. Inside her car, Barbara opened her laptop and videocalled her superiors. “The situation is under control. The subject and her partner have made contact already, so they’ll take care of the next part of the process. In the meantime, I sent a team to put the school under the strictest surveillance.” “Good. We cannot lower our guard now. This so-called ‘magic’ would definitely catch Bolypius attention. Keep your eyes open, Seven.” The next day: Miko and Five were in the middle of their round, driving around in their van. But before start chasing glitches, Phil have gave them an especial mission. To find the Rainbooms and tell them about the situation. “I knew we should ask for her phone number!” complained Miko. “Where are we suppose to find them?” Five pulled his phone. “I can ask Sonata for their phone numbers. Give a moment… oh wait! What about the cafeteria we met them the other day? Sonata says they use to hang around in there all the time!” They parked in front of Sugar Cube Corner, and went inside. If they didn’t find them, they would just grab something to go. Luckily they found them at the same table from the last time, chatting. … In the meantime, Sunset have finished telling the girls about her little adventure in Equestria. “And then the other Twilight and her student created a dirt wall to trap the ‘glitches’ inside Ponyville, much to everypony’s horror. But we could not stop to calm the ponies down, we barely had time to warn them about not using magic. It was a nightmare!” “And then they came with the backup?” asked Fluttershy. “They did. Other two Glitch Techs. On the bright side, the infestation didn’t left Ponyville. But on the other side, the Glitch Techs had to tell their bosses all about Equestria to take further action.” “But Equestria is a secret! They can’t do that!” complained Applejack. “That’s what I told them, but the other two told me that they had to or we would be risking to have another one of those glitches entering into Equestria. And there’s no guarantee that they would be able to contain it a second time.” “And, think about it! They erase memories, meaning that Hionbi doesn’t want anyone to know about glitches either!” “Still A’ don’t like it!” said Applejack. “And what do you think Hinobi would no now?” asked Sci-Twi. “Permaban the school and the surroundings!” said something behind the girls. The Rainbooms turned, only to see Miko and Five approaching. “Hey, mind if we joing you?” asked Five. “Oh, sure come on!” said unset. Miko turned to Miss Cake. “Hey! Two chocolate milkshakes to go please!” Miss Cake smiled to the girl. “Sure! One moment please!” Then Five proceed to explain everything about the plan to permaban the school and any place that may have some magic influence. Also he had especial authorization from Phil to tell them about the situation at Beach City as a reference. “Wait a second! Are you telling me that all the nonsense from that blog Twilight likes to read is actually true? Is there an actual alien colony at Beach City?” “Amazing!” cheered Sci-Twi. “I have to go to visit as soon as possible!” But Sunset’s attention was focused on the resolution. “So permaban the school? Sounds reasonable, yeah reasonable. So, no Hinobi Tech would work inside the school? That would be great!” “We should also permaban Camp Everfree” mumbled Fluttershy. “And your home!” added Rainbow Dash. “What? No! I paid good money to have my games, and all I have to do is to remember not to touch them with my magic. And believe me, I haven’t do it until now!” “That’s the spirit sister! Gamer girls forever!” said Miko making a high five with Sunset. “Great! So Camp Everfree and the school? Is there somewhere else we should now about?” asked Five. “Not for the moment, but will let you know as soon as we find a new one.” said Rainbow. “Great, s now we’re ready to leave all of this behind!” cheered Sunset. The only thing that worried her was that now Hinobi knew all about Equestria and Magic. At least they took action to prevent for a Glitch to go to Equestria again, but she better warn Princess Celestia about it. “Yeah she can keep an eye open in case Hinobi try to use or abuse Equestrian Magic.” mumbled Sunset to herself. In the meantime, Sci-Twi finished sending Five the geolocation of Camp Everfree, who forwarded it to Phil. “Okay, is all set! We’ll permaban your school and this place, and we won’t have any issues with glitches and magic ever again!” “Hopefully!” said Sunset. Miss Cake brought the two shakes, and they closed the deal with a toast. “Hey, wanna join us at Joystic Junior’s when we end our shifts?” asked Miko. “No, we’re too old for that place!” said Rainbow. “Okay, hey Five why don’t you invite your friend to come? She’s the heart of the party!” “Sure!” said Five texting to Sonata. “Anyway, it was a pleasure guys. We’ll see you on the next glitch attack. But hopefully not!” “Yeah, hopefully!” said Sunset, ready to get all of this Hinobi issue behind.