Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Prompt #3: Bad Run

Twilight screamed, her virtual HUD flickering as the intrusion countermeasures of the system she was hacking tried to fry her brain. Her horn lit up, momentarily making the pain worse, but yanked the wires connecting her to her portable deck out of the jack on the back of her neck. She collapsed, twitching. A few meters away, Pinkie Pie glanced up from the drone she was servicing. Abandoning the drone, she leapt over the table and moved Twilight onto her back. She issued a few last commands to her remaining drones, instructing them to make as much trouble as possible as she dashed for the door. Pinkie usually didn’t work with deckers like Twilight often-she liked a more ‘hooves on’ approach, but even she knew when they’d been hit by some bad IC. She’d seen what could happen if they screwed up-Sunset had never quite been the same afterwards, and Moondancer was a vegetable.

What mattered, beyond anything, was getting Twilight to a doc. Pinkie Pie was not going to let a runner die on her watch. She called out to the other runners that Twilight had hired for tonight’s job, telling them to get out before corporate security got there, and they began to vanish off into the shadows. She’d see them later, Pinkie knew it. Fortunately, there was a doctor that Pinkie knew fairly well a couple of streets over.

“What happened, Pinkie?” asked Redheart, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, having been woken up by Pinkie’s frantic yelling and pounding. Twilight was lying unmoving on one of the tables.

“Bad IC, I think. She just started screaming, and yanked her cords out.”

Redheart let out a slow breath, and looked down at the unicorn decker.

“Pinkie, I’m not going to ask you where you were, but I need to know. What level of security was this unicorn up against?”

“Black, I think. The tough, super smart stuff. She hired me to watch her back while she hacked something,” said Pinkie, “can you help her?”

“Maybe,” muttered Redheart, sliding a pair of electronically enhanced glasses over her eyes. “She’s in a bad way. I haven’t seen anything quite this bad since this one pegasus...anyway, she’s going to need a new datajack, at least.”

“Don’t worry about cost, Doc. I’ll pay for anything,” said Pinkie Pie.

“The infamous ‘No Deaths’ clause of Pinkie Pie. I’ll do what I can.”

******

“Well?” asked Pinkie Pie, the next day.

“I’m well. I need to get back in there,” Twilight’s voice issued from the back room, and Redheart sighed.

“As you can hear, she’s more or less healed. The damage wasn’t quite as bad as it looked. She’s one hell of a decker. Anypony else would have gotten fried. Only thing is she’s insisting on going back there,” said Redheart, “maybe you can sort her out and convince her otherwise.”

However, just then, Twilight managed to get off the table, and was bolting for the door, barely pausing to grab her gear, pulling it on as she ran. Pinkie, however, was not about to lose another potential friend so quickly, and tackled Twilight to the floor. Redheart let out another sigh from her desk, and returned to the back.

“Twilight, you can’t go back there!”

“I have to! That information is not going to sit on that server forever! This is my only chance!”

“You can’t get the data if you’re dead, Twilight,” said Pinkie, “and if you go in there now, the corps will have all kinds of totally not fun things waiting for you. Is this data really worth getting yourself killed for?”

Twilight paused for a moment.

“Yes, Pinkie,” she said, “it is. Now let me get back there!”

“Sorry Twilight! You’re going to have a nice little nap instead!”

“Whaa...” Twilight trailed off, as behind her Redheart sighed in relief, lowering the syringe of sedative.

****Time****

“Thanks, Pinkie,” said Redheart, as the two began to haul the sleeping Twilight back to the table.

“No problem!” chirped Pinkie, “I’ve seen things like that before. Some runners get so fixed on a job that completing it is worth more than they are. It never ends well. I don’t like it when they do that. Sometimes, you just have to save them from themselves.”

“Pinkie Pie,” Redheart mused, “you are a bright spark in a dim world. Never change.”

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #3: “Pangs”
The Prompt: Twilight is grievously injured and only Pinkie Pie can save her.

I've been playing Shadowrun Returns recently, and everyone needs a cyberpunk au now and again.

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

Cyberpunk improves so many things. Hope we see more on Pinkie in this world, she's very intriguing.