The Runners

by DungeonMiner

Chapter 9

Grabbing the Technomancer, getting past the other runners, and getting out was easier than Rarity initially thought it would be. With Rookie and Steel grabbing the conked out body of their target, and rushing outside, all they need to do was stuff him into the back of the van and book it, sending Wingmare coordinates for a rendezvous.

When the enemy team gave chase, Candy decided enough was enough, and dropped a claymore in the road. The moment it went off, destroying the enemy van in the process, every Gold Star officer in a mile radius—not to mention Ahuiztech, which was still only a few blocks away—was called to investigate, and it was now in the express interest of both teams to scatter like roaches.

After picking up their adept and booking it, they met back up with their Ringo. He was a little upset that they caused a commotion, but seeing as how nopony had discovered the Technomancer or Rarity and her team’s involvement, he let it slide and paid them.

Twilight almost complained when she received a credstick that was a little lighter than originally promised, but honestly, Rarity was happy to see their pay had only been docked by a hundred thousand. Saddle-Krupp was known for...well, it’s draconic dealings at times, but it seemed this Emberix was a reasonable dragon who understood that one mistake did not necessarily mean she could wipe out a whole team of Runners.

Mostly.

Regardless, they were paid, a little bruised, starving, and it was good to be alive.

“So, Darlings, I don’t know about you, but I could use a meal.”

“You’re telling me,” Wingmare said. “They sent a full set of drones after me, and the rigger was built like a tank. I could eat a tree right now.”

“I…” Steel began, “I don’t like the FeedBag, but I could go for one of ‘em BagRitos.”

Web nodded from where she was, bandaging a wound on Steel’s real leg. “I could use a snack.”

“What about you Rookie?” Rarity asked, still dabbing a tissue against her nose to make sure the bleeding had truly stopped.

Twilight didn’t answer.

“Rookie?” Wingmare asked.

“Huh? What?” she asked, suddenly startled to reality.

“You alright?” Web asked. “Is there an Elemental chasing us? What’s going on?”

“Oh, no! No, nothing like that, I just...I was thinking.”

The other occupants of the van released a breath they didn’t realize they were holding. Steel slid her pistol back into its holster, and Web went back to dressing wounds as their decker slid to the back of the van. “What are you thinking about, Dear?” Rarity asked.

“Well...it’s just...we had our pay docked, and we succeeded,” Twilight began.

Rarity nodded. “I tried to convince him it was fine, but his version of quiet against ours lost ou—”

“No, no, I understand why, and I told you I wasn’t happy about it” she said. “No, that’s not the problem.”

“Then what’s bothering you, dear?”

“It’s just...the other Runners…” she trailed off and the entire cabin went quiet.

Rarity frowned but kept listening.

“W-what happens to a Runner who doesn’t finish the job?”

No one answered right away. Steel took interest in the wall, while Wingmare examined her pistol more closely. Web kept moving, working on the wound that Steel has as silence echoed in the van.

Finally, Rarity answered. “We were doing a job. It had to be done.”

Twilight sighed. “And I thought corp life was competitive.”

“So!” Candy said over the speakers, “FeedBag?”

“FeedBag!” Wingmare agreed.

“Coming up!” she said, before the van took a hard left, heading straight for the nearest convenience-store-and-fast-food-restaurant combo.

A whole ten minutes later, the van slipped up across the street from the FeedBag, and the ponies began to pile out.

“Why are we across the street?” Twilight asked.

“Candy had an experience at a FeedBag once,” Rarity explained.

“Really? What happened?”

“No idea, she’s never said.”

They crossed the street, and entered the store. A dull buzz to warn the criminally underpaid clerk that someone came in was ignored as the young teenaged pegasus met them without even looking up from his comm. “Welcome to the FeedBag, where quality is our priority,” he droned. “Today’s special is the Triple-bean Chalupa Burger, served with a free 40 oz. soda of your choice.”

Web shuddered as she walked inside, before nodding. “It’s amazing. Every one of these has the same exact feeling of apathy,” she muttered.

“FlimFlam’s good at that,” Applejack answered. “Everyone of ‘em cheap, identical, and bland.”

They pushed forward, past the disposable razor blades, the disposables comms, the disposable underwear, and the disposable frozen food before finally stopping at the “Ready to Eat” meals that were being slowly warmed into oblivion by the glaring infrared lamps.

Applejack grabbed her Bagrito, a measly, greasy attempt at a burrito that dripped with grease as she stuck it in a bag. She thought about getting another one, but decided against it, seeing as how, despite the boast of three different vegetables—even though the rice was a grain—the thing could be crushed to make a brick of condensed soy wrapped in a soy tortilla. “I’ll be back, I’m going to see if I can find any solder to work with.”

This was barely met with a nod as the atmosphere of bland began to infect the team.

Rarity grabbed a few taquitos, some chow mein, and a mess that claimed to be lasagna. Wingmare took some egg rolls, sweet and sour vegetables, a slice of pizza that looked more like grease on a crust than a fake tomato paste, and a bag of nachos. Candy grabbed, what else, candy, as well as a bag of “trail mix” and a box of ice cream, while Web settled for a hay burger and curly fries.

Twilight, the poor mare, probably took the longest time to figure out what she wanted. She balked at the Bagrito, the sweet and sour vegetables that were so thick you needed a knife to cut through the sauce, and even the lasagna, which looked like it might come to life at any moment. In the end, she chose to stick with the hay burger, whose own grease nearly soaked through the buns, making it unpleasant to pick up, even with magic.

“I’m going to see if there are any good pods to listen to,” Rarity said, before taking a step out. “Let me know when you’re all ready to leave.”

“Can do!” Candy replied, the bastion of a good mood in the vortex of apathy.

Web also muttered something, and went on her own, searching the fluorescently-lit bowels of the building.

Candy went off to get oil for her van and drones, leaving Wingmare and Twilight on their own as the group split.

Rarity went off to the Entertainment section and quickly found herself surrounded by equally-disposable media. Holozines about the lives of celebrities, a bad series of porno-sim chips whose episode count got into the triple digits, and a deluge of shovelware games that screamed of poor attempts to find the next big thing.

She shook her head before moving on, coming to the synthol and bug sprays.

As she wandered the aisles, she heard the dull buzz again and looked up out of habit to see who came in. Again the pegasus didn’t look up from his comm as a pair of unicorns, both dressed in full punk regalia, walked in, and was completely ignored by the clerk. The stallion looked dead inside, although, Rarity had to hazard a guess that he probably looked that way before he walked into the soul-sucking vortex that was the FeedBag. Meanwhile, the mare beside him talked at him, and talked, and talked, and talked some more.

After only three minutes of listening to the story of the punk mare’s completely uneventful life, Rarity quickly figured out why the stallion looked so unresponsive.

Turning back to the aisles, she found the hygiene section and curiously picked up a shampoo bottle to give it a sniff. The scent was, surprisingly pleasing, and while it certainly wasn’t going to give her mane the proper care it needed, it would do well as a supplemental post-wash for the scent alone.

“Oh Celestia…” she heard a voice groan behind her, and she turned to see Twilight staring in horror at a large, fold-up display showing off hundreds of individual purple plastic wrappers, each with a picture of a brightly-colored breezie on the front, with massive, massive eyes. An almost inaudible tune wafted from a speaker hidden somewhere in the display as the heart-shaped logo for “My Little Breezie” rocked gently back and forth.

“What?” Rarity asked. “Didn’t like My Little Breezie?”

“I...I was on the committee trying to design these dumb things,” Twilight answered, sounding sick to her stomach. “I...I never thought anypony would be dumb enough to actually try to market this crap.”

Rarity shrugged. “You say that, but first, it’s NERPS so you should have seen that coming, and second, Wingmare says the latest generation isn’t bad.”

“Really?” Twilight asked. “Also, what’s NERPS?”

“New Exciting Retail ProductS. Or garbage, as everyone the street also calls them. It’s just a general term for all the trendy trash that corps push out. In a week or so they'll be gone.”

“There’s a comforting thought…” the mage muttered.

Another buzz sounded, and Rarity checked the door.

A young earth pony mare, dressed in a torn gown rushed into the building, carrying a foal to her chest in one leg.

“Welcome to the FeedBag, where quality is our—”

“Don’t let them know I’m here!” the mare said, her voice panicked and straining.

The clerk had just enough time to look up from his comm and blink, before the mare rushed to the back of the store.

Rarity and Twilight shared a glance at each other.

“Wingmare, did you see that?” Rarity asked over her comm.

“I did.”

“Could you go check on her?”

“Already on it.”

“Twilight, get ready to start casting,” Rarity whispered.

The clerk blinked, still unsure of what happened before the front of the store exploded. Flame, sound, and light erupted at the front, tearing cheap plascrete to chunks as the clerk went flying into a cigarette display. The punks screamed, and ducked for cover, while Rarity and Twilight both took cover behind the shampoos.

“You idiot!” a voice said from outside, before two earth ponies walked into the store, carrying guns. The earth pony with a chin that made his face look like an actual flank, leveled his shotgun at the still-recovering clerk. “Ya don’t cooperate, you’re dead!”

The unicorn that followed him, equally ugly, released a burst of full-auto fire. “Listen, we’re here for a mare. If the rest of you cooperate, we might not kill you too.”

Rarity rolled her eyes from her hiding place. She already spotted by pegasus with the rocket launcher standing right next to the van, as well as the unicorn that slapped him up the head for messing it up. “Right,” she whispered into her comm, audible only to her team. “That’s why you tried blowing up the shop. Candy?”

“In first aid supplies. ‘Bout to run the one with the rocket launcher over, waiting for the signal.”

“Web?”

“Pet supplies, ready to summon. Two civilians by me, had to gag the mare to get to shut up.”

“Steel?”

“In the arcade,” she grumbled. “Close to my high score, too.”

“Wingmare?”

“By imports, found the mare they want. If she makes it out of here, this could pay off.”

“Yeah?” Rarity said, watching as the two armed guns moved forward, checking two aisles down from pet supplies. “Well then, on my signal, let’s tear them up. On go.”

Twilight was almost finished with her spell, only a single motion away from bringing it to life.

“Three.”

Rarity lifted her submachine gun.

“Two.”

The earth pony started to yell. “Don’t hide from us, Donna. We’ll find you sooner or later.”

“One.”

Steel’s shotgun peppered the earth pony, sending sparks off his subdermal armor. Pellets slammed into the shelves behind him, sending up a splash of brightly-colored orange plastic shards, which exploded into his eyes. “Fraggin’—!” whatever else he was going to say was cut off by the car alarms that began blaring across the street since a van suddenly rear-ended them, pinning a rocket-wielding pony between the bumpers.

A fireball exploded across the center of the store, throwing goop, grease, and burning disposable razors through the air in all directions before Wingmare laid down some covering fire before pulling the running mare through the darkness and around the corner.

“Wait! Take me with you!” the pony behind the counter yelled before Wingmare rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the neck.

The unicorn from outside ran into the building, wielding a katana and casting his own spell from a cheap talisman. A bolt of lightning struck through the building but was luckily grounded by the galvanized steel shelves.

Candy answered him with a grenade.

He yelped, leaped out of the way, and dove behind the clerk desk before the fragmentation bomb exploded.

Rarity popped back up and smiled as she watched the earth pony wipe his eyes clean before blades popped out from his arms. “Now aren’t you a specimen, let’s see if you’re legs will cooperate once I’m done with you.”

She pulled out her deck, ready to move, before deciding that AR would be the better option of the two. Couldn't jump full in with this mess going on. Not when a stray bullet could get her. Besides, she could hack a simple cyberlimb without too much—

A warning flashed across her vision. “Threat detected!”

She blinked before the truth dawned on her. She was being hacked. They had a decker, and he had the audacity to try and hack her.

Oh, this wasn’t going to stand!

Steel slammed into the earth pony, her own blades out and ready to rumble as they clashed. “Come on, partner, let’s dance!”

The pegasus outside pushed against the van, wiggling out of the crash and using his empty rocket launcher as a lever. He grunted and pulled, trying to get out, up to the point where he didn’t hear PeeWee, Candy’s armed rotodrone deploy. He pulled, trying his best to move before popping out between the cars with a cry of celebration.

This was cut short by a buzz as PeeWee peppered the ground around him.

Web’s beast elemental suddenly tore through the shelves, a spider-shaped thing made from rats, insects, and other vermin hidden in the store’s depth, howling as it dove into combat, slamming it’s many-toothed head into the ugly unicorn as cheap aluminum flew in a shower of debris.

“They’ve got reinforcements incoming!” Steel yelled as she and the earth pony went head to head in a razor boy battle. Blades flew through the air.

Meanwhile, Rarity searched desperately for the enemy decker’s signal. The moment she could take them out, the Razor boy was hers, but she needed to find him first. Another warning began to flash on her AR screen, signaling another attack. She ran her defensive programs, trying to stop him before raising her gun and unleashing another burst of fire into the street.

Candy’s rotodrone buzzed the pony with the empty rocket launcher, firing the smaller, but incredibly painful rounds into his flank as he ran back and forth in front of the still-flaming storefront.

A fireball exploded over the clerk desk, keeping the unicorn with the sword pinned as Twilight kept him down. Spell and shot from her heavy pistol left the far wall and the cigarette stands a flaming mess of paper and tobacco.

Another car screeched onto the road, and two more ponies spilled out, firing their pistols as they stepped out of the car.

The vermin elemental tossed the pony it was holding aside, before he rushed the open street, slamming into the ponies that were foolish enough to fire without cover.

Rarity continued typing away, activating all of her defensive programs as she tried desperately to keep her deck under her control as she located the enemy hacker. She had almost triangulated his matrix position, and once she had his IP, she was going to spike the fragger for even thinking he could take her deck.

Wingmare poked her head out of the door to the back and fired her own pistol at the ugly unicorn that Web’s elemental left behind, piercing his skull and four cans of industrial shaving cream which expanded at terrifying speed, cushioning the body as it fell backward.

Applejack threw the enemy Razorboy over her shoulder, where he slammed into cans of cat food, which pooped into chunky bits of “meat” that got into every nook and cranny.

The unicorn with the katana rallied, for some reason yet unknown, and Twilight cooked him for his trouble.

One of the ponies outside, deciding he was not going to be swallowed by a terrifying swarm of small animals, ran down the street, dropping his gun as PeeWee dropped the pegasus, still wielding his empty rocket launcher as if it would protect him.

The beast elemental tossed its prey back into the FeedBag, and he too, smashed into the shelves, throwing up milky-white and red goo that might have been toothpaste into the air.

That, or it was some kind of soup.

Rarity found him. She found his IP, and had already marked the machine. As far as it knew, she owned that piece of plastic. Every attack he made was stopped before it even left his deck, and the poor sap probably didn’t even realize it.

She thought, in an act of generosity, that she’d send the decker a warning before frying him, before deciding it’d be incredibly dumb to give up the advantage she had and cook his brain.

Besides, no one touches her deck.

With that she stood up, and looked around at the mess that was the FeedBag. Multicolored goop, plastic, metal, and more lay scattered on the ground, while her team was equally covered in the mess.

“Ehg…” she muttered to herself. “Roll Call!”

“Here, all my pieces together,” Steel said.

“A little drained from the magic, but alright,” Twilight responded.

Web raised a hoof. “I’ll be fine once I dismiss my elemental.”

“Okey Dokey!” said Candy.

“Wingmare?” Rarity called.

“Hang on!” she said, coming out of the back with the mare and the kid from behind the counter. “Ladies, allow me to introduce Donna Madonna, daughter of the don of the Belgrade Family.”

Rarity blinked. “And...how do you know this is the daughter of the local mob?”

Wingmare smirked. “You’re not the only one with contacts.”

Rarity blinked again before her face went red. “And you never used them before now!?”

<><><|><><>

The office smelled of imported cigars and old varnish. A large unicorn sat in the comfortably, overstuffed office chair as Donna stood next to him, cooing at the little bundle that lay in a crib.

“So,” the unicorn said. “Miss Dash, twice now you have saved my daughter’s life, and twice now, I find myself in your debt.”

Rarity watched, fascinated as Wingmare had become the face. Personally, she found it outright fascinating when someone else was forced to do the talking, and this was most certainly one of them.

Despite the fact that this was an infuriatingly rich resource that had yet to be tapped.

“Not a problem Don, it’s the least I can do.”

The unicorn laughed. “The least she says. You save my own daughter and grandson and says it was nothing, when it’s everything to me.”

Dash nodded sheepishly. “Well, when you put it that way.”

“When I put it that way,” the Don repeated, as he stood on his chair and pulled a box off his desk. “Do you smoke, Dash?”

“Still no, Don.”

“Damn shame. I’d love to share cigar with you,” he said, pulling a thick roll of Griffonstone tobacco from the box before lighting it. “First you pull my daughter from a burning car, then you save her from a manic ex-boyfriend, you’ve done me too many favors now, Dash. I simply have no choice but to make you family now,” he said, holding out his hoof.

Dash took it, kissed it softly. “Thank you, Don Belgrade.”

The Don nodded, before turning to the party. “Now then, let me invite you all to dinner, I cannot let such ponies leave my house without first tasting my hospitality. Besides, with Donna’s Uncles...suddenly indisposed with a visit to her ex, there are plenty of empty places at my table for you to sit and eat.”

As the unicorn and his daughter led the team down to the dining room table, Wingmare smirked. “And you said I can’ be the face.”

“Don’t push your luck dear. As it is, the only reason I’m not still angry at you is because our host is about to feed us.”

Comments

[Iron Comet]

And now there connected with the Mob. This could get interesting.

[djthomp]

Donna ran into the right convenience store.

“Hang on!” she said, coming out of the back with the mare and the kid from behind the counter. “Ladies, allow me to introduce Donna Madonna, daughter of the don of the Belgrade Family.”

Oh shoot, good call saving her even aside from just being a good samaritan.