The Tales of Data Jack

by Iridescence T Wind

Log 2: Meeting at Work

Luna flipped on the virtual journal again, it had been five days since she was able to have enough free time to listen to it again. Her night court was rather busy during the last few days and it had required all of her effort to clean up the swath of problems discord had caused in such a brief time. Her sister Tia wasn't helping with the pie traps she had left everywhere in response to discords antics. Luna had spent most the morning dismantling the automaticly refilling traps. Even longer resetting them back up in Tia's room. No doubt it was going to cause a huge mess in there once she stepped in. Satisfied, Luna turned the journal onto its second log and pressed play.

All-righty this is your owner the incredibly handsome, Data Jack here. Sorry I haven’t used you in a while. Let me see here, Ah I know! I was about to tell you how I got my cute little assistant here Ms. Turner!

Who you calling cute jack!

Oops she overheard me. Forgot, Turner does not like to be called cute for some reason. Probably because I tease her about it a lot in public, never mind! Anyway as I was saying, before I can tell you about how I met the little lady, I hav-

Little?!

Oh I’m sorry, petite then! Eesh that mare gets offended easily currently; still love her dearly like a sister though. Wish it wasn’t that time of the month for her. I swear I saw her completely destroy a convoy of those empirical poster boys when they tried to flirt with her during her you-know-what. Anyway as I was saying, I have to tell you how precisely I got my specialty brand first in Jacking stuff.

When I was younger at an age that was barely considered legal, I had to go out on my own. Since I was a foal, I had wanted to be apprenticed to an awesome locksmith by the name of G.D. Big Key. Never got what the G.D. stood for, though I would bet it stood for Gosh Darn Big Key, he was a huge stallion of a Pegasus who dwarfed most of the best fit body builders. His profession was making and cracking locks of all kinds. Electronic, Manual, old fashioned, even dead bolt no problem. Needless to say, I was deeply intrigued. I thought I could provide something for him, Key was a lonely stallion on the part of being unable to control his voice, always coming out as a deafening boom and rumble more appropriate for working on the big airships engines back in the day when they made a similarly loud noise! As a result no mare was interested in such a loud talker and others of Veron’s inhabitants would take pains to avoid him unless necessary. Most ponies talked to him with earplugs in their ears as to avoid going deaf.

Luckily he accepted me after I stole back a watch of his holding a picture of his long dead mother from a swindler by the name of storm claw, a coal mutt who had lost one of his fingers in a fight against a wood wolf. I had trained five years in Key’s tutelage, and then they say he had died of old age, which is an utter lie. With nowhere else to go I had went from locksmith apprentice to a burglar and a thief. Gradually I worked my way up the popularity scale in the underworld to the point where I got my first major job. It was also this job that I got my brand.

It was a dark cloudy night of the new moon; I was in the Old-Hooven museum’s ventilation ducts ready to knockout the guard guarding my target. The Helmet and orb of the seer and third ruler, the infamous Centaro, which he had also nicknamed the “Dragons Crown”. It was currently micro-storaged into a USB drive guarded by rumored have it, an Inquistor and several dozen guards.Now I found myself going through the ventilation shafts until I arrived at the room, by passing all of the defenses entirely. No one ever seems to rig the ventilation shafts.After I had worked the grate quietly free and out of the way, I took out a nifty rope gadget that slowly rappelled me down behind the unsuspecting guard upside-down and struck him down, when he fell over my view had an unobstructed view of another pony, who was hidden in the shadows of the room staring directly at me with her mouth open, “Jack?!” came a familiar voice I had thought never to hear again.

“Turner?”

“No way how’d you get in? where had you been! Sister Peacekeeper has been worried sick!”

“Vent, bored, and Worried about me? I’m not the one dressed to scare a poor citizen to think an inquisition was going on. “

“Well…I am a newly made inquisitor… did you know that this job actually sucks?”

“Oh you don’t say?”

"Ya, well when I signed up for the inquistion I wasn't suspecting that we would have to torture so many innocent civilians and be impromptu secretarys for the higher ups. This is one of the few missons I ever get to go on."

"Huh, really now, you just noticed that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Be a thief a few years, you can see how the goverment is really bucked up. They capture children and raise them away from their family as elite guards, test on said parents into genetic warmachines, torture innocents, kill anybody who objects or gets in their way. Surprised you didn't notice sooner that we have a really messed up tyrants for a rulers."

"Huh? Since when did the government kidnap foals and test on humans?"

Casually I looked at her, rolled my eyes while disarming the various traps around the USB that was my target, "Since all those ponies go missing and mysteriously we keep getting identical guards and biological warmachines rather then magical versions mysteriously apearing out of nowhere. Nice to know your still deaf, blind, and stuipd."

"I am not stuipd, deaf, or blind!" Turner shouted back, "I just didn't know that the government did such things, assuming that our agreement never to lie to each other still holds from our childhood this changes my reasoning and perspective majorly. Why are you here for this USB drive anyway? It isnt holding anything besides the dragons crown, which is cursed since its' owner died. What do you plan to do with it?"

"Give it to my employer, use the funds to screw the government over, why? want to be on my payroll?" I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.

"Ew. No," was her reply, I face-hoofed.

"I meant as my assistant! Think about it, you have all the contacts In the empire itself at your disposal and the means to aquire more anyway! Together we could start a team of rebels in this Solaris awful country we call Veron."

"Huh, you, a leader with a plan. Somehow I already know that would turn out wonderful Jack."

Okay, I admit, I haven't had the best ideas in the long time me and Turner have known each other. It wasn't my best idea to accidently burn down an bakery trying to make our own donuts or food a aquiraium to free the fishes trapped within when several of them were predator fish. But this plan of mine I had began thinking of and revising since my mentor, 'died of old age' when an officer came by and shot him in the face for disobeying orders and giving me to him for 'reprograming'. It took a few minutes to actually convince Turner of my plans. No journal, I won't spoil to you what they are, due to the case that somepony might take my journal before It is completed. Lets just say they are impressive, Alright?

By the time we were done Turner had become my co-founder of the 'Veron battlefront', our name is still unoffical and subject to change, and i had turned in my target for a reward of seven-hundred-thousand Vernonian gold slags. Rather hefty sum that could put me in retirement instantly. Or fund a small army.

Thats the story of how Turner came into my party, as well as my brand which had apeared sometime as I was stealing that funny looking USB. My brand seems to be in jacking stuff from others funnily enough. Not something I would show off in public, Luckily it looks informative enough to be mistaken for a cutiemark in computing.

Ten minutes? It took you three days of constant bugging before I finally relented. Also you fell on that guard to knock him out, if he had been a unicorn you would of died on his horn!

Shut it Turner, sweetie. If you want to tell it your way, start your own journal. Anyway, got some plans on reducing this fortress guard count by half in a single blow and the other through a second at the same time. Maybe next time i'll tell you how we met Calm Wind, though I'll wait until I find her again. Still kinda foggy on the bit I fell asleep on.

Your Handsomely Rich thief, Data Jack.