//------------------------------// // Work // Story: Dawn of the New Day // by QueenOfTheSilence //------------------------------// The first thing Sunset Shimmer noticed about Hard Hammer was that he was a stern, gruff looking man. The man that stood in the waiting room that was shared between Celestia and Luna's office was a middle-aged individual who stood easily a head taller than Celestia and had a large build, clearly built up from years in his profession. He had stern watery-blue eyes that were small yet sharp. His light blue skin was rough and the back of his arms were covered in thick purple hair flecked with white that matched his short, messy hair and his goatee. His clothes, which were clearly meant for working, consisted of a pair of steel-toed leather boots that were worn from use, a pair of denim overalls over top of a simple wrinkled black shirt and a belt that held many tools hanging from his waist. He carried a yellow hard hat underneath one of his arms, the other raised to his face in order to check the time on the cheap metal wristwatch. Sunset felt a wave of unease as the man looked her up and down when he noticed her approach him from behind Celestia and then stood perplexed as he let out a loud laugh. “So this is my new employee Celestia? Can't say I was expecting someone who looks like they can barely lift more than twenty pounds on any given day. Much less a little, frail girl like the one behind you, Tia.” Sunset blushed angrily and looked down at the floor. She wasn't that weak! Celestia smiled at the man and chuckled. “Oh Hard Hammer, don't be so quick to judge. Sunset may be a girl but I am confident she can pull her weight. Besides, I've seen and met some of your employees in the past and I can honestly say she'll do better than some of them. Like your nephew, Trevor, perhaps?” Hard Hammer scowled. He liked his nephew but he made it no secret that he was a poor employee, always late and always finding some reason why he couldn't complete a certain task whether it was because he was “sick” or one or more of his tools were “faulty.” If it wasn't for the fact that he was family, he would have fired the boy. Hard Hammer sighed. “Fine, fine. I get it. So, how about you introduce me to your little shadow Tia?” referring to Sunset who was hiding behind the woman still. Celestia stepped aside and motioned the girl forward a few steps. She placed her hand on Sunset's shoulder and smiled. “Sunset, this is Hard Hammer, an old friend and classmate of mine. Hard Hammer, this is my eldest daughter.” Hard Hammer looked surprised at this statement. “Now, I know we haven't seen each other in the last few years but last time I checked you only had one daughter, by the name of Scootaloo. Now correct me if I'm wrong, this is clearly a high school student while Scootaloo I think is only in middle school now, correct? Did she change her name, dye her hair and have a growth spurt or something? Or have you been hiding this one away?” Celestia laughed. “Oh no, you're right but not about hiding her away. I adopted Sunset a few years ago.” The multi-colored hair woman paused and smiled at the girl beside her who stood awkwardly. “Unfortunately though, Sunset here is in a bit of trouble as she is responsible for destroying a part of the school.” “Right, well congrats on that. Now, this damage…How bad is it and how exactly did it exactly occur?” Sunset and Celestia shared a brief glance. Honestly, mentioning that Sunset had destroyed the wall whilst as a magical demon with powers in an attempt to enslave another world was out of the question yet Celestia knew she needed an excuse which would be reasonable so she pulled the same one she gave to Superintendent Faust. “Part car malfunction, part her fault. She…err...left the car in um…drive while she was grabbing books from her locker and the car suffered a malfunction where it thought the break was being pushed.” – “So, what type of car was it exactly?” asked Hard Hammer as he surveyed the damage from the Friday night incident. While a car could cause a lot of damage to a school depending on just how fast it was going and the size, there were scorch marks on the walls which were a little odd. The damage which had been partially cleaned up by Sunset and by the school janitor over the weekend had been sloppily covered up by large tarps; it did little to keep the fall chill out of the school. “Mini-Van” stated Sunset Shimmer, looking away from the wreckage. Hard Hammer grunted and muttered something indecipherable under his breath. “Huh. Well, I assume since I see kids milling about that you're not going to close down the school during renovations?” stated the construction worker, pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket and blowing his nose before shoving it back in. Sunset scrunched her nosed at the sight but ignored it. “Yes, while I have no doubt more than half my student body would absolutely love to have school off, we just can’t afford too. So yes, I will need you to do construction alongside classes however, If possible could you try and kept it to a minimum? I know construction is loud and what needs to be done will but with classes I don’t want to cause more problems than needed for the teachers and students.“ said Celestia, explaining the situation. Hard Hammer mumbled under his breath and stroked his beard. “Well we can try but don’t be surprised if you get complaints. Now, on terms of the actual project; clearly the damage is pretty bad; in fact it’s dangerous. You got rebar sticking out of things, some of the support beams are cracked as well as one or two which have been snapped in half. On top of that the hole is so wide that it affects both the main and second level of the building. For both legal reasons and for the safety of students and the faculty, we’re going to need to stop students from using this as a front entrance as well as prevent those areas from being accessed. Those rooms up there, which I assume are classrooms, should not be used for the time being as well as that particular hallway and that nearby ones. We don’t need a collapse and some kids getting hurt or worse. Is that going to be a problem?” “No, we do have a back and several side entrances we can use. As for those classrooms, I get it. We do have spare classrooms that aren’t used for other than clubs or groups and if it’s really a problem we can combine classes temporarily.” “Well then, shall we get to work?” -- Celestia had left Sunset in Hard Hammer’s hands, telling the teenager that she had errands to run. In truth, while she trusted her old friend, she wanted to see how the encounter would go so she went back to her office and watched from the window. As soon as she left, Hard Hammer’s construction team arrived, consisting of five people, and he put her to work. “Now, obviously, the rubble needs to be cleared away first. Your mother says you're good so let’s get right into it. You’re going to be helping my nephew, Trevor with that. However with renovations, that means more debris will need to be cleaned up in the coming days. So while you and Trevor clean rubble, me and the rest of the team will be assessing the foundation and what needs to be done. Now, that’s him over there. Get to it girl.” Sunset sighed internally but made no outward attempt to show her disdain. Awkwardly, Sunset made her way over to where the young adult who Sunset assumed was Trevor, was standing; by the large horse statue on the front lawn of Canterlot High School which also doubled as a magical portal on occasion. Trevor, if Sunset was to guess, was in his early twenties and something about him said that he would rather be at home but anywhere but here. Trevor had long black hair that was pulled into a messy ponytail; his skin was a light yellow as well his eyes were a darker shade, nearly an amber color. He wore a pair of ripped jeans and dirty t-shirt underneath an even dirtier orange safety vest. He was leaning against the statue, smoking and flipping through his phone. Upon hearing Sunset approach, he looked up. “Oh, you're that brat I’m supposed to babysit.” Sunset instantly snarled, her inner demon coming out to play. “Really? Because from the way your uncle described you, it seems that it’s the other way around. Now, does will the ‘ittle baby need hwelp finding the way to the bathroom?” asked Sunset in a sickly sweet voice, batting her eye lashes. A part of her berated herself from acting like an asshole and in fact felt guilty however another part of her didn’t care and countered that he had started being an ass first. Trevor scowled at her and glanced over her shoulder towards his uncle. “Whatever, let’s just get this over with. The faster we’re done, the faster I can go back to doing something more important.” “Like giving yourself cancer and pretending like someone would actually call you?” Trevor said nothing; he just tossed his cigarette to the ground and started towards the wreckage. Sunset followed after him, dragging her feet behind. They worked for a good two hours, filling and dumping the wheelbarrows with debris from the wreckage site and bringing it to the garbage with to be thrown away. After a few hours, the debris was mostly cleaned up. Sunset wasn’t surprised, it was just one wall and a lot had already been cleaned up. Still, it would be at least a month before the wall was fixed completely; longer if there were foundation issues or something similar. During this time, neither Trevor nor Sunset really said anything to each other, both preferring to keep to themselves and just focus on the task at hand. Sunset could honestly say she wasn't going to be friends with him anytime soon, not for his age but his attitude. Eventually though, Hard Hammer came over and told them to take a break from hauling the garbage and to help him with another task. “I need you to go check out the boiler room. Apparently, there have been some issues with the plumbing and the best place to start would be there." -- To get to the boiler room in the basement, one had to actually go through the teacher lounge. The reason why was because the staff didn’t students going down to the basement so they had locked close the other stairwell to the basement and left only the one that was attached to the Teacher’s Lounge unlocked. However, since Teacher’s Lounge was also locked up for the night, they had to find the janitor, while suspicious of Sunset, grudgingly handed over the key. “Don’t mess anything up and I suggest staying away from the old furnace. “ While CHS had a modern day heating and cooling system which was located on the main floor of CHS, next door to the Staff Lounge, the basement still had an old coal furnace that hadn’t been in use for a number of years. However for some reason despite upgrading the heating system, they still used the old boiler instead. The stairwell to the basement was next to the main stairway leading up to the second floor. The door connecting to the stairwell was actually four, large connected doors that had multiple, and heavy locks to prevent people, mainly students from going down. Sunset put the key in one of the worn locks and after a few minutes, the door was unlocked. Sunset nudged it open and was greeted by a large stairwell descending to the basement along with a familiar musty smell that came with a room being locked up. Wrinkling her nose and coughing as dust hit her in the face; Sunset took the lead and switched on a lightswitch located next to the door. The lights flickered on and revealed the cracking and chipped, yellow paint that covered the brick walls. If Sunset was to guess, those walls had been white once upon a time. She descended down the stairs with Trevor behind her. When she got to the bottom Sunset was greeted by another pair of doors and once those had been unlocked she door gave way to a hallway which spanned in three directions, a head, left and right. “So which way kid?” Sunset ignored the man behind her for a second and instead approached an old worn floor plan layout on the nearby wall. She scanned it quickly. It seemed the area a head was mainly used for storage; the old furnace was down the right hallway, the janitors’ office was down the left hallway and yet, it gave no indication on to where the hell the boiler would be. “Right” decided Sunset, deciding that the boiler would most likely be near the furnace. They headed down the right hallway and Sunset’s guess had been correct as a large heavy door with the words ‘Boiler was right next to another door that read “Furnace.” When they approached the room however, they realized they had a problem. Water was seeping out from a door, into the hallway. How had she not noticed the water before? Upon opening up the door, they realized that one of the many pipes in the room, a large one, had come slightly unattached to the connecting pipes allowing water to spurt out the opening in a small, steady stream. “Worse than we thought. This is clearly recent; I think the janitor would have noticed otherwise and there would be a lot more water.” ‘Probably an aftermath of the battle, I guess the explosion rattled the school enough that these old pipes were pulled apart. They look like pretty old pipes.” thought Sunset, standing behind Trevor as he surveyed the leaking. “Yeah, we’re clearly going to need to replace all these pipes if they are any indication of how the entire system is. I’m surprised these things haven’t been replaced before; they look at least a few decades old. Anyway, I need to grab my uncle. Stay here brat and watch the pipes; don’t do anything.” Trevor trotted out of the room leaving Sunset in her devices. Not wanting to stand in the water any longer then needed, Sunset made her way over to a desk that was for some reason pushed into a corner and sat on top of it. -- Sunset sighed for the fifteenth time in the last three minutes and pulled her phone to check the time. The guy had been gone for like…thirty minutes. The basement was not that large and shouldn’t be hard to navigate. ‘He should be back by now’ Bored, Sunset removed herself from the table and made her way over to the loose pipe, suspended from the ceiling and pulled the desk’s chair over with her to step on. The chair swayed dangerously as she stepped on it; clearly not meant for anything other than sitting but Sunset steadied herself and ignored the swaying. While she knew better than to touch the pipes lest she worsen the situation, she was bored. And when she was bored she had a habit of messing with things just to pass time. Honestly, Sunset had only meant to look however the chair’s swaying should have been a clear indication that she shouldn’t have been stepping on it. Not surprising to anyone but Sunset, the chair gave a loud crack as the old seat succumbed to the weight on top of it. The chair started wobbling uncontrollably and Sunset was thrown forward in surprise and in an attempt to stop herself from falling she did what most people would do in this situation. Grab on to the nearest sturdy object like a table in an attempt to stop herself from falling or to lessen the fall. Unfortunely for her and for the school, she subconsciously grabbed for the protruding pipe and as she fell off the chair, she pulled the already loose pipe with her, along with the connecting pipes. What sounded like an explosion filled the air as the water which had been mostly contained began bursting forward from the now empty pipe sockets. At that moment, Principal Celestia, Hard Hammer and Trevor walked into the room, confused and alarmed as they saw the amount of water that was filling the room and the hallway. ‘Crap’ was all Sunset could think. -- Sunset sighed as she waited in Celestia’s office, her ear pressed against a wall. Both Celestia and Luna’s offices were right next door so they shared a wall. Both women were in Luna’s office and the younger woman did not sound happy to learn that they now had even more damage to deal with. A few harsh words were tossed between sisters as they discussed the matter. Luna clearly wanted her sister to add on more detention due to her causing more damage while Celestia claiming that the pipes probably would have blown eventually anyways and that not only was Sunset’s punishment her business only, that it was most likely an accident. ‘It had been an accident’ thought Sunset. It wasn’t like she wanted to fall on her ass and cause more problems for herself but it seemed Luna didn’t care. “Whatever, fine. See if I care. But if these problems keep happening, you know the superintend and board of Education is going to want to investigate the situation and we don’t need them to find out about you-know-what.” “Oh yes, because Faust is clearly going to believe that my kid turned into a demon and destroyed the school. I’m sure she’ll alert the news and the government when she finds out. I mean clearly, a woman of her intelligence and stature is going to believe instantaneously from some high school kids that magic exists.” “She could.” “She will most likely laugh or ask us what we are feeding the students. Regardless, this story is pretty farfetched for anyone sane to believe in this day and age little sister.” Sunset pulled her ear away and made her way over to Celestia’s guest chair and waited for the women to return. She didn’t need to wait long as a moment later, the door to Celestia’s office and Celestia stepped inside with Luna behind her. “Sunset, can you tell us what happened?” asked the Principal, calmly walking over towards her. Luna snorted and mumbled something which only Celestia seemed to hear as she gave Luna a deadly look which caused the younger woman to pout and shut her mouth. “I know it looks bad, but I didn’t mean to cause more problems. I was looking at the pipe and the chair I was standing on broke so I grabbed on to the first thing I could find. I didn’t mean to do it. “ “I doubt that.” “Luna.” Luna whined slightly as she was ordered to be quiet by her sister who tossed her a look. “Why were you even looking at the pipe?” “I was bored. That guy, Trevor left me for thirty freakin’ minutes and I thought there would be no harm in just looking. I didn’t stop to consider the chair would break. I'm sorry, okay?” Sunset sighed and looked down at her wet sneakers. Celestia reached forward and lifted her chin. "It's okay; most of the pipes are in need of a replacement anyway. Maybe this will finally convince the board to give us funding to replace the damn things. Besides even if they don't, it's a quick and easy fix. Hard Hammer is already on replacing the pipes in the boiler room and the water is being cleaned up." explained Celestia. The woman paused for a second to think over the matter. “I see no point in adding on more detention; I think we can both say it was an honest accident. Now, Hard Hammer and his crew are going to leave soon and will be back in the morning. I think it’s time we go home; besides Scootaloo is probably wondering where we are. Shall we?” So the trio left; heading for home in Luna’s car. When they arrived home, Luna almost instantly headed down to the basement, shouting over her shoulder as she did. “Call me when dinners ready.” Sunset was starting to think Luna was a teenager rather than adult given how much time she spent in the basement. Shaking her head, Sunset directed her attention elsewhere, more importantly to the younger girl who came around the corner and stopped to glare at her. The two girls stared at one another, silently passing along a message to the other. Sunset’s was one of seriousness and gave Scootaloo the impression that the girl wanted to speak about the incident that had happened earlier or something similar. Scootaloo’s expression read: Fuck off and say nothing. “Hello Scootaloo. How was school sweetheart? I’m sorry we're home so late.” said Celestia as she noticed her young daughter; Scootaloo however just grunted in response, her eyes locked onto Sunsets. "Everything okay girls?” asked Celestia, who noticed the two girls staring at each other. Sunset’s face went blank and Scootaloo decided to retreat to her bedroom, not saying anything. “Everything is fine” said Sunset, turning to face the older woman. ‘At least it will be after I talk to that girl’ Sunset thought. Celestia gave her an odd look before seemingly accepting the answer. She had noticed the odd exchange of looks; which gave her a feeling of uneasiness but she pushed it aside. It could wait. “Help me in the kitchen?” she asked Sunset, as she took off her boots and placed them on the shoe rack. Getting the impression it was non-negotiable from the look the woman threw her. Sighing, Sunset followed the woman. Her plan of following Scootaloo and talking to her would have to wait till after dinner it seemed.