The Thin Line Between Love & Hate
Six months earlier.
Metal teeth the size of cars tore into the hillside from below, the bucket they lined being followed by another, and another: an endless cycle each lifting away tons of chalk and dumping it onto the conveyor belt. The scale of the devastation as the bucket wheel swept from side to side had to be seen to be believed, but up in the cockpit the titanic forces involved barely registered, awe at the colossal machine having long since faded past even the point of just being statistics on volumes of material handled per hour. Even the screaming industrial metal through her headphones faded into the background despite its volume.
That was just her life, that moment no different to the previous seven hours of her day, and they much the same as the four years before that. Since she’d fitted air conditioning in the cockpit to stop it becoming a greenhouse during summer, she barely even noticed the seasons passing.
The touch of a button halted the turning of the superstructure, and another began the lowering of the bucket arm for the next pass in the opposite direction. She rubbed a hand over her ear, soothing where the headphones were pushing against her piercings as usual. She couldn’t take the stupid things out or they’d seal up; the only solution really was to install proper speakers in the cockpit instead. But her mom or dad would be in the cockpit running the machine anytime she wasn’t, and there was hardly room for two in there, so she’d have to do it while on the job, and that was risky and would take a while.
She ran an eye over the next strata of rock while the wheel arm lowered towards it, checking for any visible irregularities which might damage the buckets and take her hours to fix. It all looked clear, so– Wait! Was that a person on the ridgeline? Her hand lashed out towards the emergency shutdown button, but hovered above it while she leaned forwards in her seat and peered out, trying to be sure.
Definitely a person. She let out a sigh as she stabbed her finger at the emergency shutdown, and then a growl when the vast machine halted as requested, quickly spooling down the cutting wheel. What kind of idiot goes wandering near the path of a bucket wheel excavator? Trying to work here!
The halfwit showed no sign of moving as the bucket wheel ground to a stop, like they had no idea the money they were costing every second they stood there. She screwed her eyes shut for an exasperated second, then pulled off her headphones and grabbed her orange hard hat from behind her, jamming it on her head. They are getting a piece of my mind. And if they’re gone by the time I get down there, it’ll be even worse for them. Pulling herself out of her seat, she opened the cockpit door and stomped down the walkway beyond.
Two minutes later her heavy boots hit the dirt, loose stones crunching under her feet. Without a pause she strode around to the front of the machine, letting out a fresh growl when coming around the front corner of it revealed the idiot to still be standing in the same place. She stalked up the sloping rock towards them, picking her way easily after years of practice.
The details drawing closer revealed about the cretin were not those she expected. First there was the hair: two enormous pony falls reaching down to the waist, and being silhouetted in the afternoon sun made the colours hard to make out. In fact the image looked rather lonely, outlined with hair and long coat swaying loose on the windswept ridgeline. Any sympathy was short-lived, though, as the realisation sunk in that not only had work been halted for a idiot, it had been stopped for an idiot cybergoth; the worst kind of social plague. If they mention a single word about EBM or that other feel-good drivel they listen to, then that’s it: I’m turning the excavator back on and taking out the whole hillside with them still on it.
“Hey!” she barked as she drew nearer, “you got a death wish or something?”
Only that got the idiot to notice her, despite the noisy strides she was taking up the stone slope. She – definitely a female idiot, which the hair had suggested but getting closer had confirmed – stopped staring into space and blinked, focusing but without much apparent awareness.
“Maybe,” she said, her voice rough but quiet enough that it was almost lost amongst the wind.
“Well you came to the right place.” Without pausing her stride, she closed the distance between them and grabbed the strange girl by the front of her jacket, lifting her off the ground. “Gaze into the eyes of Limestone Pie.”
“They’re very pretty, but you’re not really my type.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.03 seconds
Total duration
667 users online
1,070,437 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Violence: the basis of any relationship.
... ouch
Hm! Interesting developments, in the past but new to us...
(Also, I wonder if she had to install the air conditioning while the excavator was running, too. And how exactly that was done. I can think of some possibilities, though, and we don't have much in the way of details.)
It does sound like a pickup line as much as a threat. And dang, this has some distressing implications for Adagio and Sonata. Who's to say if they ran into anyone in their despair?
10407505 No relationship more embodied punk than Sid and Nancy. Just don't ask how that ended
10408680
Sid and Nancy makes Joker-Quinn look like the Cleavers!
10407515 Thanks! Even at her lowest, Aria doesn't pull her punches.
10407534 I think it'd be like putting on/taking off a jacket while driving a car. You can do it, but it's a bit risky, so you want to be careful it's at a calm moment when the road is clear and easy, that sort of thing. Yeah, the Machine runs 24/7, and I don't think her parents would be amused if she shut it down just for something as frivolous as music.
10407822 It so does! Think how different Hearthbreakers would have been if Big Mac spent his time mooning over Limestone rather than Marble.
That's a good question!
It mentions in the second chapter that Aria still lives with Adagio and Sonata, and that they're at least not too depressed to lose their sex drives.
I think Aria took their defeat the hardest of the three, so I suspect the other two are doing ok
10408745
Aye, though a lot depends on just what sort of air conditioning system she put in, I'd imagine, and how integrated into other systems it is.
And also aye, while I do wonder if the air conditioning was viewed as practical enough to warrant at least a brief shutdown (which I could see going either way), I didn't think her parents would consider a speaker system good enough for that either.
(Though, another thing I wonder, if it really is 24/7, is how the night shifts are handled.)
10408806 I agree, air conditioning might be important enough to warrant a shutdown. Or it might have been a case that the parts had arrived and then another incident like this one with Aria occurred, and Limestone thought that since it's shut down anyway, might as well take advantage.
Yeah, I spent a while figuring that out myself. It's a three-way split between Limestone, Cloudy and Igneous, and generally works out as Limestone pulling a 10-hour shift, Igneous an 8-hour one, and Cloudy a 6-hour one, since she also takes care of most of the housework. Their hours can be flexible where necessary, but obviously switching them between night and day shifts needs staggering over a week or so of pushing an hour later each day, so sleep patterns adjust. It's not really a job one should do tired, but Limestone burns the candle at both ends when necessary. Although Limestone is on a day shift in this chapter, most of the time she's doing the night shift of 8pm-6am. My thought is that Igneous would be the one who's up at the crack of dawn to relieve her, and then Cloudy gets the afternoon shift, but those two swap around more frequently as required. Most of the time it's probably more important Cloudy is at the house in the mornings to make sure everyone gets to school on time, but sometimes it's better she's there for dinner. Pinkie is trained too so she can stand in in case any of the main three are too ill. I'm not sure if Maud would be too, since she'll be disappearing off for her rocktorate soon.
10408867
Ah, thanks for the information. :)
10408671
Ok, yeah, I can see where you're coming from, but if we're starting with the Offspring, I'd go with Smash. If I was introducing Twilight to punk rock, I would want to show her the likes of Dexter Holland and Greg Graffin, both PhDs, to show that punks aren't just dumb junkies.
You are killing me here. Was this in a blog post or comment? I know I've read it before.
10409052 That is a seriously good point about bringing up the educated punk musicians, yeah. One could see her like, ok, Come Out & Play is catchy, a cutting look at gang violence, and a bizarre but effective integration of an Egyptian riff. But then when she learns the 'keep 'em separated' line came from an experiment Dexter was doing with two volatile compounds, then yeah, she'd certainly see it differently.
Smash is a phenomenal album, no doubt about it. To me it feels maybe a little less punk than those either side of it, but I can't argue with the attitude of Bad Habit, It'll Be a Long Time, the title track etc, it's definitely a punk statement. There's something about the cynicism of Ixnay though that makes me feel it's more appropriate here and more punk, even though I know musically it blends in a bit of rock influence where Smash is more straight punk. Disclaimer, Meaning of Life, All I Want and Change the World are the songs Twilight needs to hear, I think
10409084 Well spotted! I wrote this chapter years ago to be in a later chapter of TSTMYLI, around chapter 11 or something. But that was always years away, so I get tired of waiting and published it on the siren shipping group as a suggestion for an Aria x Limestone story. No one took it up, of course! So I figured it fit pretty well here, it's the backstory/setup I'd been imagining for Limestone anyway, and it serves as a reasonable start to their relationship I think.
10409489
You should also include Evanesence in that list of avoid, haha!
~Skeeter The Lurker
10409519 So, so true.
I mean, I adore Evanescence, I think Amy Lee is one of the most underrated songwriters of the last 20 years, and I listen to all three albums quite regularly. Had the guitar solo for Haunted in my head yesterday.
But the first album definitely carries the hallmarks of its era, and two singles in particular were very overplayed. I'll stand by Bring Me to Life, but it's hard to take My Immortal seriously these days.
10409489
For female punk rockers, or at least female fronted punk bands, there's the Interrupters, Bad Cop Bad Cop, the Bombpops, and the Distillers to start with.
Post edited and removed because I replied to a comment on the wrong chapter
The good thing is that I am now all caught up. The bad thing is that means there is no more for me to read. Big fuckin' heck.
10759102 Oh fuck it's April already. Has it really been eight months?
10759303
Unfortunately, yes.
10759305 On the upside, the first scene of the next chapter is completed, on the downside, it's only 500 words. Might have to bump this one up the priority list. This is definitely the right point in the story for a bit of a pause, if there has to be one, but April came around again fast.
10759324
I guess you could say that April makes fools of us all.
Oh hey! This bit! I remember this from a long time ago
Glad it found a home