Chapter 1

Rain tumbled down in sheets upon the ash-covered rooftops of the Canterlot lower streets, trickling off past the rusty pipes in a torrent of filthy liquid as the water collected the gunk caked between the cracks and corners of the roof drains and gutters. The world was glazed with a reflective covering of a million rainbow hues, the creases and cracks of the concrete and brick becoming even more pronounced as water highlighted their features, dripping down in an eternal race to the earth below.

Foul vapor rose from a heavy, boxy industrial unit mounted on each building's wall. Ventilation stunk with the strong smelling scent of earthy chemicals and ill-maintenance, intermixing with the rising air from the trash piled in the back streets for a deadly cocktail of pollution. They brushed up against the few exposed parts of my face, feeling as if it almost transmitted its filthy smell even around the airtight creases of my respirator.

An old, discarded grocery bag deflated under my heavy hoofall as I trudged along, the rotted plastic squelching slightly as pooled rainwater sought to escape it. I shook it off as the plastic attempted to cling to my booted hoof, the bag quickly flying off to drift idly in the air for a few feet before falling by the wayside once again. Mud clung to my raincoat as the rain pounded on the enclosed hood and dripped occasionally over the top lip in front of my vision. My horn lit up as I drew my coat closer, sighing in silent thankfulness for protection against the elements of the street.

The alleyway seemed to go on forever ahead of me, reaching all the way into the distance where colossal monuments of glass and steel stretched towards the sky, their bright and exuberant billboards cycling their advertisements. Even from here, I could see the propaganda they blared, having me believe I deserved a good, strong alcoholic beverage with the money I didn't have, that perhaps now it was the time to take out that extra loan and get that automobile I never always wanted, or that my local CutieMart was doing a "Slasher Deal!" with up to 50% off of the basic necessities for life itself, up to 50% off of the price they asked for a full stomach and a happy family.

All of it was visible downtown, past the glistening curtain of the local storm. The blues, greens, yellows, and stylized corporate black and whites cast through the sheen of rain, and scattered among the clouds of noxious gas drifting to join the sickly clouds that covered the sky. The rays of the sun were long gone, replaced with the invisible stars of an inky black night, it too polluted by the very essence of the city lights glaring against my eyes as I gave a glance upwards.

I raked my telekinesis through my mane as water dripped off the goggles that protected my eyes, the rainwater mixing with the oily film pasted onto the cheap lenses and down onto the respirator that encased my muzzle. The plastic casing and filters glistened with a rainbow film of gunk condensed from the noxious air. The sound of the valve inside clicking made its best imitation of an old Mare Wars villain.

One would be daring to breathe the acrid air of the outdoors freely these days. Pneumochromia would have you coughing up your own blood mixed in with a rainbow-colored wad of aerosols within the hour with how polluted this city was. The ever-present layer of mist at my hooves stuck to the boots I wore, the cracked and worn rubber sporting a tide line of chemical stains, the product of many years of exposure on the streets of the city.

I checked my back, shrugging against the saddle keeping my laptop in place. The thick, plastic casing of the relatively high powered machine dripped with murky rainwater, the label detailing manufacturer and proper use having long faded and peeled off, joining the stains and scratches on the plastic casing in the form of a patch of white fuzzy, torn paper still stuck to the top with stubborn adhesives. A jungle of wires trailed from its ports, the magical optics tucked underneath the computer and stuck between it and my back.

Ponies littered the streets like trash here. At least here, next to the millions of overheating purification units and pipes, there was safety from the biting cold of the Equestrian nights. Homeless stallions and mares were curled up in bundles of misery and filth in front of the constantly cycling vents, fur matted and full of mud as they shifted away from the middle of the alleyway and towards the shelter of the rafters above them, trying their best to stay out of the constant rain.

I did not pay them any mind, pushing on through the rain as the polluted air from the nearby vents blew heated air through my mane and tail. My eyes turned to the sky, where hundreds of drones buzzed in the huge airways of swarming robots, each of them heading off to their destination as they navigated the jungle of concrete and power lines with their glassy, encased eyes.

The drones were my career.

I wished I could mean that I was one to repair them or program them, but that would require an education. That was something I did not have. No. Instead I was a drone pirate, not even one with the gall to just go up and snare them up with my own hooves. Instead one with a borrowed machine barely capable of running open source material given with a free sharing of trackers and bugs from dark web sources, used to worm into drones passing by and force their OSes to pilot them down towards me.

It wasn't a worthy crime. Not even a felony unless you took the drone with you, which was a dumb idea if you were just a script filly like me who didn't know how to get the trackers off its hardware. Most of the time, the packages themselves just carried a Haycart meal somepony ordered from across town, or a new blender worth 20 bits and a suspicious glance at the pawn shop.

However, for ponies like me... I'd take the stolen bag of chips any odd day if it meant I didn't go to bed starving.

I took a sharp turn off of the main alleyway, ducking underneath a low hanging clothesline and around the dumpsters and piles of trash. Bright, harsh lights glared off of the rainwater that was plastered to my goggles. Skinny, bowing street lights looked over the busy main street at the mouth of the alleyway, pedestrians walking to and fro in front of the gaping exit. A veritable artery of the city, pulsating with headlights and side-mounted advertisements and billboards.

My eyes glanced up quickly towards the sky above, quickly tracing through the hundreds upon thousands of drones moving in their pre-charted courses across the sky. All of them sported the bright color scheme of their various brands and companies. Any good city dweller knew the famous patterns of the hard, unimaginative, abstract paintjobs and logos that were mounted and overlaid on the mass-manufactured plastic robots.

The orange and white striped quad rotor drones belonged to the Buck Hauler company, ferrying mostly low-value garbage from their online stores to awaiting customer's windows and doorsteps. The green and yellow, compact, single-rotor drones belonged to the Starbuckers restaurant, usually moving a single cup of coffee or perhaps a wrapped baked good along with it. The pink, yellow, blue, and purple splish-splash "Crazy" quad drones were with the Sugarcube chain, loaded with candies and sweets for the next sugar addict waiting for their nightly fix by their windowsill.

All of the little plastic machines were unassuming, vibrant, and remarkably clean when compared to the filth they flew over without a care in their electronic, glassy eyes. There was, though, a bull in the herd of cattle. A big mean, dark blue painted drone that drifted at a slower rate in the middle of the stream, buzzing along as if it owned the place as the other drones swerved their flight paths to avoid it. On the side, a simple logo of a shield with a six point, pink star on it, with the word "CANTERPOL" written in bold right underneath it.

Police surveillance drones, like an escort for the convoy of vulnerable merchant drones. Its arsenal wasn't one of guns and lasers, but instead of a simple 360 degree camera view. One singular frame of at least a fourth of your face or cutie mark, and your phone would suddenly start becoming a back-pocket police informant, your BitFilly a witness to your crimes, every street camera a guard dog, and every copper the equivalent of your mother when it came to recognizing your face.

It was for that reason that pegasi didn't just fly up and rob the drones with their own two hooves. Police drones followed you home, and the fear of a significant part of you being seen was great considering the consequences. The best way to rob a drone was through the use of a computer and the most basic level of know-how. Commercial drones were weak and vulnerable to port bypasses and processor overloads. The change of one variable in its navigational systems would tell it to go and drop off its package into the awaiting hooves of a drone pirate without ever realizing that it was delivering to the wrong address.

I pulled the hood of my raincoat up further over my compressed and bunched up mane as I tried to duck into the pedestrian traffic as politely as possible, speeding up to a trot a little as the rain began driving hard, now that I was outside of the relative shelter of the alleyway rafters. Every hoofall was a tiny splash up against the sleeve of the crinkled cloth of my raincoat.

I eyed an alleyway, sat next to the grimy windowed façade of a local Sushi Stop. Closed, since today was a Griffon holy day, which meant the stench of the restaurant's trash and dumped leftovers.

In what I could only hope was an inconspicuous manner, I trotted off the sidewalk and down onto the uneven surface of the alley. The ground underhoof was worn enough to count as less asphalt and more gravel, the lumpy stone surface ground into pebbles after years of traversal without public works ever bothering to bother with the ill-maintained back roads and paths.

The cleansing matrices in my mask did nothing to mask the smell of rotting fish from the nearby dumpster. Perfuming was a thing for those who wanted to spend an extra 20 bits on spare filters for their muzzlewear. If I had 20 bits to spend, I'd be spending them on a fresh meal, legally obtained from a local Hayburger's, not on a plastic panel that'd last for a week and let me get used to the air smelling good for a change just for it to go back to smelling awful again straight afterwards.

Power cables and wiring criss-crossed the tight space above me, constantly dripping a deluge of heavy droplets. A gutter gave my raincoat-protected flank a heavy splash as I walked by, the runoff from the roof above collecting in a mouldy puddle that ran down into the ditch bordering the sidewalk. The omnipresent whirr of ventilation exhaled plumes of vapor that I simply walked through with a subconsciously held breath, giving another glance over my shoulder as the street lights became more muted and distorted through the gas.

My gait slowed as I walked up to the restaurant's FreshAir vent. I carefully unhitched the boxy yet diminutive computer from my back, giving a sigh as I fell to my haunches by the side of the ventilator. It was hot initially, but eventually the warmth of the purifier and air ducts, generated by the air pump and electric removal process, ate past the initial burning feeling as it fought off the bitterness of the rainfall.

Usually, the city was rather warm, hot even. The same pollutants that had forced the world into wearing respirators trapped the sun's heat, creating blistering hot days. Yet, on the nights where the weather companies decided to make it rain, the ice-cold purified clouds dropped tons of freezing water on the city, cooling it all right down to frigid temperatures.

I glanced over my shoulder, leaning out from behind the boxy FreshAir unit to the streets. My eyes twitched expectantly and betrayed paranoia, even though logically the worst I could expect back here was a hobo digging through rotting fish and gnawing on the bones on the hunt for nutrition for aching stomachs. This place was... familiar to me. The street gangers rarely assembled in that particular alleyway, and it was shielded from the pedestrians moving up and down the main street it was connected to. It was a perfect place to fish for vulnerable drones to pirate.

I clicked open the plastic case around my laptop, giving a sigh as adjusted the lip of my hood with a forehoof as my light orange magic pulsated at the corners of the computer's lid. Rain immediately began attacking the screen and keyboard, but trailed off onto the floor as it slicked off the waterproof plastic casing that covered the entire face of the machine.

Behind the transparent waterproof plastic, the computer's screen lit up from its offline state to its bright blank screen. As soon as the computer booted to OS, my forehoof raked heavily across the aged, insensitive touchpad as my telekinesis subconsciously came to rest on the keys.

My brain on autopilot, I opened the file directory where I kept the program I was looking for. I knew better than to pin illegal open source programs to the desktop of a borrowed computer. This was meant to be the machine I used for my odd job IT work for the local internet cafes, not for petty theft

Hidden back behind the system's core files, the simple executable named "DRONECRAK" got clicked twice. Almost immediately, the blank, featureless and utilitarian UI popped up as the computer's fans gave a long, whirring sigh. Automatically, I went to the sidebar of the Droncrak interface, putting it on the pre-set, stock broadcasting frequency and program.

Immediately, the laptop started scanning for the latent networked connection of the drones flying by above.

It was fairly amazing what the internet could do. It could tell you the time of day, why you felt a pain in your neck, and it could service you with the latest in open source hacking, cracking, jailbreaking, and hijacking applications. As long as one knew how to set up your own OS to handle the programs properly, which I did, the ponies who knew more than me were always the better options when it came to programs.

I couldn't program for shit, after all. I just knew how to copy and paste into the right areas.

I leaned back and relaxed, the hood of my raincoat ruffling around my ears as my skull thunked against the metal box, eliciting a sigh.

Eventually, I locked eyes with one as I heard a pleasant beep from the computer. A navy blue quad-rotor copter, the color scheme I immediately recognized. Haycart Meal Services. Your favorite food delivered hot right to your doorstep for a small delivery charge. The drone turned away from the stream, moving towards the computer as the hijacked navigation system told itself that my own hooves were the awaiting doorstep of the delivery location.

My stomach grumbled as the drone hovered down towards me, as if enchanted by a siren's call. Drone Piracy. Illegal, petty theft, where one stole the cargo of a drone, but not the drone itself. Worth a few months of community services and a stern talking-to from a judge. The first time I did it, I was constantly checking over my shoulder as I stood on the side of the street, practically making a tent out of a tarp over me and my computer to hide my shame. Ponies need to eat, and back then I wasn't above using my skills as a tech support worker to break into a few drones and convince them to hoof over their cargo to me.

I had stopped hiding so much when I realized that nopony cared. Misdeeds were tolerated in the Crescent. The law was only taken seriously when it was one's own belongings being taken, or their property that the baseball bat was being taken to. Not that I blamed them, I'd rather not be one to call the cops with a list of... well.. anything they could find against my name really.

The Haycart drone hovered steadily in front of me, its glassy eye staring me in the face (which I quickly responded to by covering my eyes with a forehoof) as its synthesized voice said, "Thank you for ordering Haycart, here is your Medium Cheese Fries and Tulip Sandwich," I caught the tinfoil wrapped plastic container as the drone suddenly released it, the plastic automaton flying away without a care in the world as it took the return path upstream back to wherever its distribution hub was.

My stomach grumbled as I gave the package a sniff. Ahhh... even better than home cooking...

I levitated the container to my side, before slamming the lid closed on my computer. I fumbled around a bit, struggling to wrestle two objects into my telekinetic field at once. I bit my lip, twisting my face up as I awkwardly slung the laptop around onto my back, and then gingerly placed my stolen meal on top of it.

I shuffled a little to make sure it was all secure, and then walked off into the night, breathing a sigh...

They say a good, hardy trot did well to clear one's mind. Really, as I sucked in another labored breath through my filthy respirator filters, it just reminded me of how poor my fitness was. My legs complained from the jog from Cookie Crunch street all the way back to my own part of town.

My own neighborhood... well I would describe it as a much nicer part of town as opposed to the rest of the slums. That would be a biased opinion, though. I guess there was just something different about looking up at the power lines that criss-crossed the sky above and recognizing the clothes that billowed in the wind, seeing at least one or two faces that were vaguely familiar to me passing by on the street, and hearing that old folk music that wormed its way close to my heart, despite how long I had been hearing the modern pieces of the day.

In the end, though, it was just as scum-covered and insect infested as the rest of the slums. There was no shortage of defaced buildings, ripped open, years aged rubbish bags bleeding foul detritus onto the pathways I walked. Only one or two cars moved through the backroads here, a single lane road sliced in half for a pitifully narrow excuse of a two way street was all that connected the closely stacked, sometimes half-built buildings to the rest of the city.

Still, chrome vapor streamed from the FreshAir units I walked past, blistering hot as they drifted up over my head and into the skies above. The skyscrapers in the distance still cycled their same advertisements in a now almost comforting rotation of familiarity. The rain still fell, although not as much as before. I was getting a chance to drip off some of my waterlogged fur before it got immediately flooded again from the sky as the drops lightened.

My eyes settled on something familiar. One building that stood out from its neighbors. An apartment building, not all that special, about ten stories tall and looking out on the world with dead, taped-over windows. Coral Sea Apartments, a glorified poor-house for refugees like me.

I walked up to the front door, letting my passive guard down as I sighed, releasing the tension from my shoulders. I leaned on the cheap glass door as it opened all too easily, the bolt having stopped working what seemed like centuries ago. I turned, pushing the door closed as I grabbed the side of my mask.

Sure, the air wasn't perfectly pure in here, especially after just opening the door and letting the air in from the outside, but the filters on my own respirator were long past clogged with rainbow-hued film, so I was glad to take off the mask at the first opportunity. I yanked the respirator off my face, taking a breath on my own as I let the plastic contraption hang limp around my neck.

The bottom floor reception of the building looked like every other apartment in this section of the city. All of them were public housing developments, meaning they were made out of hundreds of low lying structures hurriedly assembled back when the water levels rose and ponies fled the islands and coasts for the cities. The buildings had almost transmuted from what they had been back then, with paint peeling off and tiles popping out of place. Nopony could afford the rent necessary for the landlords to care about maintenance, so the slums slouched and fell apart as the poverty rate went higher.

A FreshAir unit hummed behind me, just above the door. The slight breeze from the unit swept to the back of the room, where a florescent light shone down on the staircase that lead upstairs. A cheap, plastic potted plant stared at me as I trotted past, and I gave a slight snort as I shook myself off a little, sparing a look over my shoulder at the rain pounding on the front door and neighboring windows.

Despite the ponies packed into each room, the entire place spoke of desolation, with rain being the only accompaniment to my trot as I made my way to the stairway. The hollow clop echoed off of the floor tiling, along with a slight crinkle of my mudboots.

Below me, the muddied hoofprints of the other residents tracked carelessly across the floor tiles. The janitor that minded the apartment complex wasn't paid enough to keep constantly mopping the floor, so the layer of dirt and grime was always common on the floor. It wasn't something we could complain about, so it was something we just lived with.

A clock ticked on one of the walls as I walked past. Its traditional hour and minute hand showed the time to be 12:40. I was going to be late to bed. Though, at least Papa would be asleep by now. I didn't wanna try and explain the Haycart package I didn't have the money to buy.

I turned a corner, eyes scanning the endless rows of cheap plywood doors leading into the various apartments. I could never forget the appearance of my own door. It was apartment number 506, with a slightly crooked number "6", the door with a knob that was slightly slackened. The familiarity of the slack doorknob as I twisted it gave me a degree of comfort as I opened the door and peaked in.

The inside of my family apartment was dark. The only light that came in was from a single, square window on the far wall, sitting above the beaten up second-hoof couch we owned. In front of the beams of orange light it produced (which came from the street lamp that sat directly outside), dust particles drifted slowly towards the ground.

The floor was covered in blue, wiry carpet with a striped pattern. It ran all the way through the house up to the kitchen. In front of the door was a black doormat, which I wasted no time in wiping my dirty boots off on, leaving streaks of mud I had collected from the streets on it. Then, I raised my left forehoof, wiggling the boot off of it with my magic and settling it down as quietly as I could next to the door, before repeating the process with my fore right, hind left, and hind right legs.

I picked up my laptop and meal from my back, cautiously balancing the meal on top of the heavy plastic case as I levitated it out towards the couch. Silently, the two objects fell onto the cushions of the couch, the now lukewarm meal sitting at a jaunty angle on top of the computer.

As I cautiously stepped off the doormat, I instinctively ducked under the low-hanging coat rack that sat beside the door. Tugging on the collar of my raincoat, I took a moment to undo the buttons holding the coat together, before pulling the entire jacket off to hang on the coat rack. I winced a bit as a small stream of water dripped off of its tails as it hung there, still left over from the rainstorm outside, running down onto the carpet below. I should've shook out most of the water out in the hall... somepony was going to be mad at me for wetting the carpet.

Oh well, that was future Sunquick's problem.

Alongside my coat I hung up my respirator and goggles combo, trying my best to squint in the dim light at the filters on either side of the mask to try and see if they needed replacing. I shook my head, deciding not to bother until the morning, and walked out towards the living room/dining room to sit down and take a load off for a while after my long walk.

As I came into the light coming in from the window, I took a moment to look up at myself in the misty, dirty glass of the window. My mane was frazzled and wetted down after my walk, but I mostly didn't have the time to care about it anyway. My tail was naturally fairly bushy and long, and tended to be unruly when I didn't trim it down to size.

My bright yellow eyes blinked tiredly against the harsh light of the street lights. I was a bright orange, with a carrot orange mane and tail. There was a small streak of yellow on the lower fringe of my mane, which I liked to play with. Overall, I looked like a scruffy, pony-shaped traffic cone.

I blinked again, moving my eyes away from the window towards the couch. With a hushed sigh, I flopped onto the couch, lying down with all four hooves up on its cushions. The springs of the couch squeaked a bit, and the wooden frame bit at my side through the poorly-padded seat. Despite the lack of cushioning, I felt comfortable, and shuffled a little before simply resting for a moment.

Blindly, I reached up for the packaged meal I had set down on the couch. I eventually probed and found it with my magic, gripping the box and bringing it up close to my chest, before unravelling the tin foil and opening the lid. Most of the steam and heat had already escaped the box during the chilling rainstorm and hour long walk back home, so all that was left was some cold hay fries and a sandwich with a bunch of squished, stale daisies between two slices of synthesized bread.

Still, my stomach growled, so I was more than thankful for a full, prepared meal. I picked up the stray hay fries, stuffing them into my mouth in a few bunches. They cracked and crunched between my teeth, with the melted cheese coating them running in a greasy, delicious flavor over my tongue.

Taking the sandwich, I wolfed it down, propping myself up with a hoof to right myself from my prone position on the couch. The bread and daisies were far from fresh or full, but they were covered in sauce and condiments, disguising their core flavors with ketchup and mayonnaise.

Eventually, I finished off the box, sticking a hoof into the inside of the styrofoam container in order to soak up any juices before licking my forehooves off. I crushed up the now empty and dried container, and opened the window a crack. A whoosh of cold wind shot into the apartment, dropping the temperature in the already drafty home. I levitated the crushed up container to the crack in the window and threw it out. The crumpled up box dissappeared from my vision as it whacked off of something below the windowsill, and eventually fell to the street below.

I shut and sealed the window before too much polluted air found its way in, before eventually shuffling down off the couch once again. I yawned, and the ticking of a traditional clock from the kitchen reminded me of the relatively late time.

Picking up my laptop, I strolled off towards the kitchen. I was mostly in the dark, since the kitchen had no windows of any sort, but my familiarity of the place along with the constant hum of the refrigerator told me what I needed to know in order to navigate to the bedroom door I knew was there.

I set down my briefcase computer next to the door, making sure to push it back far enough so that it hit the wall, before reaching up for the door, feeling around the center of it until I found the door knob at the far right.

The door scraped up against the carpet on the floor, thanks to the poor hinging the cheap contractors who built the complex did. I peeked around, trying to blink my eyes enough to gain some kind of night vision. I could vaguely see the shapes of the two bunkbeds that populated my room, as well as the lumps inside the sheets that were my brothers and sisters. I made sure to slowly close the door behind me, before walking slowly towards the bunk on the right.

Suddenly, a pain shot through my right forehoof as I stepped on something left out on the floor. I bit my lip, before lifting my hoof again. Something that I couldn't make out thumped to the floor, causing a stirr from one of the beds behind me.

I shared my bottom bunk with my little brother, since we had no space or cash for more beds. I mused the trouble of getting under the covers next to him without waking him up, which was made especially hard because he was asleep on the side of the bed closest to me, making me need to step over him to go to sleep.

Eventually, I opted to cautiously prop myself up, before reaching over and slowly settling myself onto the other side, hoping the noise or wobble of the mattress wouldn't wake up my brother. I stared at his unmoving form for a few seconds in the dark, before slowly proceeding to levitate up the sheets and pull them over me, snuggling up into a position I hoped I could fall to sleep in without stirring.

As I lay there, my mind wandered to the drone I hijacked, to the work I had done... or more specifically the work I had been unable to keep up with. However, as time dragged on, and my breathing slowed, my thoughts became more and more scattered as a cloud of darkness settled over my mind.

And, before I could even realize I had stopped thinking, I was asleep.

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