Chapter one: Just another day
The low drone of a steamboat's horn echoed in the distance, the sound of it just louder than rumbling autos and the chatter of passers-by. From tall windows came cornflower blue light nearly as cool as the misty air swirling outside. Hello soon to another morning, another hangover, and another day's honest work. Eventually.
Eight paces from the foot of her bed sat a squat wooden table littered with cables, tools, and a particular sort of glass box. To the left and right of this box were thick metallic plates studded with switches and dials, grills and radio parts. From it came a faint ticking, then came a chime.
Lights began to flicker along the sides and cables twitched like startled serpents. A quiet hum sounded. Within the glass box a pile of gray sand began to swirl and rise up. Gray hues parted like paint unblending itself into its base colors as shapes began to manifest. The ambiguous mass took the form of a stallion's body from the chest up complete with tie and military buzz cut.
His lips began to move as a slightly distorted voice began to speak.
"Breaking news. A level green incursion in the village of Everfield was defeated as of 0500. Local juncture 5 was accessed by outside forces with fifteen drones entering before staff could properly shut the juncture down. Unfortunately for the drones, they decided to invade relatively close to the farm of none other than Lady AppleJack herself. We now go live to Apple Valley Acres with our roving reporter Silent Stride."
The sand swirled like a nest of angry bees before forming into two smaller figures standing in front of a large rustic farmhouse. A lanky mare in a raincoat stood as water ran down the yellow slick surface, a bulky microphone extended towards a taller dark-orange mare with long blond hair.
"Listen, it's the ass-crack of dawn and I got things to do. The bone-dragons are over yonder, pieces of them anyway. Get yer' pictures and get."
The smaller mare began to belt out questions as Applejack turned away. The highly toned Knight was dressed only in a thin tank top and white panties. Each clinging to her rain soaked form. Her only official comment was the back of her raised hand and a single finger. The point of view then hastily focused on the reporter who stammered out her words while shivering in the cold rain.
"Queen Regent Twilight is still offering a bounty of 5 million Bits for an active skeletal drone and knighthood for the defeat of the infamous-"
The thump of a rubber ball hit the attic floor and ricocheted off the window seal, ceiling, finally smashing into a toggle switch along the box's left side. The silence assured her the box was either off or broken. To a hungover mind both were equally fine.
Arcane's hand slowly lowered back down as her blue eyes stared up to the angled roof of her attic bedroom. Her body didn't want to move, her head swam with ache and remains of vertigo. She stirred and slowly rose up as a tangle of wavy pink hair obscured her white face.
A blurry black blotch caught her hazy eyes. She squinted and focused on the far edge of her headboard where a pair of panties hung.
She reached out and snatched the underwear up. They were not hers. For one, they were black and lacy. More importantly, they lacked a certain amount of room in the front for mares like herself. She looked them over and a small folded note fell from the crotch.
"Bless, I'm so sorry! I was with your sister last night and I think we had too much wine. Why didn't you introduce us earlier? Either way, pass on my gift for me, if that's not too weird? Is it? - Vanilla Sky."
She crumpled the note into a tight little ball clenched in her hand. Her eyes stared at nothing as she reserved herself to a life she didn't accept, but found little point in wasting her frustration against. This wasn't her first drunken hookup. It wasn't even her first this month. Stallions, mares, it honestly didn't matter when she was in that particular state of mind.
Her hand opened to let the now tightly compressed bead of paper roll into the wastebasket. No need to regret her temporary lapse of sound judgement nor feel ashamed of what she would repeat eventually.
Let the mistakes wait for a while.
Her dark grey hooves met the wood floor and legs hoisted her aching frame upright. One long stretch let out a series of pops that felt far better than they sounded. Her twenty five year old body was tested and thankfully survived another day outside of 'nag status'.
She silently thanked Celeste. Her compromised state had the mind to wash up after last night's events. The smell of sex was only faint this time. Nevertheless, she felt the need for another bath. A hot bath.
Between the path from bed to bath was a bronze Pneumatic pipe that traveled from the floor and bent up to the ceiling. At chest height was a junction box with a glass window and basket. The window popped open as a hidden mechanism forcefully kicked out one of several glass tubes with an amusing 'pop' before the window slapped shut.
She grasped the tube and twisted its rubber stopper off with yet another 'pop'. Inside was small leaflets of yellow carbon paper. One read 'leaky faucet in lab 2'. Another said 'Brownies in the kitchen', this one giving her a smirk. Finally, one that made her ears fold against her skull.
"Wonderful…"
She tore off the lower left corner of each paper and rolled them back into the tube before sending it back into the system. Whoever was on the other side would know each message was received. In the meantime, the porcelain claw bathtub, which she hauled upstairs herself, awaited.
Of course, she never could afford her own porcelain claw bathtub. This was a relic belonging to 'Lord StarPelt the third', last in the long line of shipping magnates belonging to a bygone era. In fact, everything here once belonged to a now mostly extinct lineage of nepotistic Astrals that drained their fortune and practically ruined the town they established. Arcane's boss won it in an ERS auction a year after StarPelt VII washed up along the shore, most of him at least.
On a small dressing table lay a partial gauntlet Arcane cobbled together in her early teens. Copper armor plating covered a fingerless leather glove, useless for digits yet covered the knuckles just fine. However, punching wasn't the main function of this particular sort of glove. Along the backside of the palm was a plate with three recesses, and inside said recesses were fuses.
These weren't the sort of fuses you would find in a breaker box, in fact, the likes of Edison or Tesla didn't exist in her world. These were fuses made to prevent a far more detrimental sort of power surge. A small metallic board with microscopic gears crafted from crystal within a copper capped glass tube, all made more fragile than the components within the glove so they may break before the user does.
Of course, the younger Arcane didn't make the fuses. Those were store-bought. As for the glove? That was a labor of love, a 'borrowed' Tap Glove she disassembled and reverse-engineered, and the 'permanently borrowed' parts from a rich Stallion's car radio.
She slid the glove onto her left hand before tapping it with her right knuckle. The fuses began silently whirring as diamond-like gears began to shimmer with every color. A deep breath steadied her as she remembered her studies. She imagined water in all its minute detail. Hydrogen and oxygen bonds, heat and its physical mechanics. For convenience, a long dead Astral one put the science lesson into a poem, what many would call a 'spell'. The fuses in her glove began to glow and an invisible pulling could be felt down her arm.
Her hand spread and she could see it. A faint glow with odd words floating in the air just above the bathtub. From air formed a marble of water that grew in size. It wafted steam as water poured into the bath from that otherwise impossible source. She relaxed her fingers, the fuses dimmed. She thanked Celeste that nothing exploded.
She slid the glove off with trembling fingers. Her hand would be numb and weak for a few minutes, but it beat having to boil water.
She put the glove back and used her hand to test the result. It was perfect for tea yet far too steamy to bathe in just yet. Come to think of it, It literally was tea onceh. Her mind wandered to breakfast and next she knew her bath was full of earl gray.
She passed the time by giving into anxiety and did a superficial self diagnostic of sorts. Another of Lord Starpelt's forfeited treasures leaned on a support beam near her bath. The tall gilded mirror had discolored patches on its silver surface yet otherwise cast a perfect reflection back. In the frame, a white mare gazed back with wavy ringlets of pink mane framing pale blue eyes.
Mundane blood gifted her with tone and matronly curves despite underutilizing her natural and supernatural qualities. She wasn't Lady Applejack nor did she aspire to be. No hulking muscles or legs that could crack a tree in half. Nothing that justified the belief Mundanes were all brawn and no brains.
She turned to her side and looked over her wide hips. Hanging between them was a pink length. In terms of size it was average for her breed. Unlike her ancient four-legged cousins it didn't sport a giant flare nor rest in a sheath. Behind it was her softly coated vulva, her particular chemistry sparing her from the need for external testicles. How stallions dealt with two giant weak points between their thighs she'll never know.
To her relief she was free of disease or new potential scars. Her Mundane qualities would rid herself of both in time, but it was still a gamble. Having an accelerated healing factor also meant her body was taxed higher. Every power had a price, and some didn't come cheap.
She felt the water again and concluded it was safe enough to slide in. She paused to look at that symbol on her hip and three gray gear symbols on the back of her calf. Every Mundane was born with marks on their limbs, but the symbol on the hip came with puberty. The former marked your race, the latter marked your fate in an annoyingly vague way. Her hip-mark was an eight pointed star with a swirling dark cloud covering the star's lower point, this framed within an eight-toothed hollow gear. Light and Dark in constant conflict. How damn poetic.
After a bath that admittedly took too long she covered her body, and most importantly her fate-mark, in a tan jumpsuit completed with a tool laden belt. It wasn't fancy nor did it need to be. She wasn't a doctor or anything important here, just a handymare.
-
She descended stairs onto the second floor of a once-lavish mansion. What was once an obscene amount of living space was now a series of laboratories and examination rooms. Each room branched from a long corridor of green fabric Flüer de lis wallpaper and ancient bronze sconces. Each sconce being retrofitted with amber stones that filled the space with warm light.
Mares in starched nurse uniforms escorted various patients into ten of the fifteen available rooms, most in their forties. One patient that stood out was a child that couldn't be any older than seventeen. Most of his weight was leaned onto a middle aged mare in a dress as they climbed a final step at the opposite end. He nearly tripped on his own hoof before male nurse swept in and carried the boy like a foal.
She couldn't see the kid clearly from where she stood and shamefully thanked Celeste for it. She didn't need those details. The poor male had deep scars down his arms and legs. These scars resulted in a form of wasting sickness unique to Mundanes like herself. This, and two other ailments, were common throughout this clinic.
She heard the creak of a door behind her followed by the 'click, click, tap' of two hooves and a cane heavily leaned on. The scent of musky cologne invaded her nostrils.
"He was only three when it happened."
A gravelly voice spoke behind Arcane before the stallion it belonged to walked beside her. The black male was only forty nine yet looked four decades older. His spine remained straight and emaciated face was defiant, but time and the wasting had taken their toll.
Arcane turned to look at RavenCroft's face. It's true she hated meeting another Equis' gaze, but looking at his face was preferred over seeing that bony waste of a body that was barely hidden under his a black suit.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
Her voice was faint and her throat was dry. Only after a few moments did she fully look away from him. She couldn't meet his eyes. There wasn't a hint of sympathy in Ravencroft's gaze. Every waking moment was the cure for him, and any sort of happiness or contentment was a waste of time.
"I hope you are. The poor boy had to wait since yesterday to be seen. A few hours after your shift we had a nasty power surge."
"I got the message. An intern tripped and struck the generator?"
He gave a simple nod and let silence fill in the rest.
"I'm sure she said it was an accident."
He gave a bitter little laugh, "Of course she did. Thank Celeste only one patient was being seen. Miss Summer Breeze. Poor dear couldn't handle crowds so I permitted her in after hours. She's in our overnight room if you have a moment."
She looked him over with a scowl.
"I can tell when I'm being manipulated." She said almost in a whisper.
"No, Bless. I'm absolutely transparent. Fifty thousand bits. You can tell me if you're interested later tonight. If not, be a dear and tell your friends about the offer. Otherwise, I'll just do it myself. Just use your gift to tell me how she's doing, then come to me and we'll make it all nice and official. Sounds fair?
She didn't respond. She didn't want to give the lead-hearted bastard the benefit of a straight yes or no. All she wanted to do was get lost into work and disappear while the sky was still bright.