Safety Off

by Daemon McRae

First published 24th of December, 2013

The antics, rambling, and downright nasty-not-niceness of two career criminals as they live out their lives in Manhehatten.

Some ponies think that a life of crime doesn't pay. That it's all getting shot and doing drugs and spending time in jail. The reality?

It's like any other job. Tedious, meticulous, and rarely as exciting as it looks.

Sometimes the most exciting things that happen when you're a career criminal aren't even on the job. And sometimes, even in the midst of explosions, bank heists, and drug deals, you still have time to yawn. Or crack a few bad jokes.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Middle of the day, Manehatten. Not much going on. some ponies walking down the sidewalks. Shops are open, most everypony’s at work. And the ones out walking around are most likely either unemployed or doing something job-related. It’s a Wednesday. Nopony has Wednesday off. Here, we find two stallions walking down the street. A rather particular street. There’s a specific building on this street. That’s where they’re headed.

Not that they’re in any hurry, mind you.

“Hey, you know that scene in the first part of Pulp Fiction?”

“Where Samule L. Buckson and John Tracolta are talking about Prance?”

“Nah. The part after that. When they’re raiding the dudes’ apartment and Samule’s got a gun in that colt’s face?”

“Oh, yeah. What about it?”

“How come we never do that?”

“Do what? Point guns at ponies? You know why.”

“No, not that. The witty thing. Where he’s all like ‘Do they speak English in What?!’ Stuff like that. How come we’re never witty?”

The two stopped just outside a magazine stand while one, a pegasus with orange fur and a brown mane and tail, forks over some bits to the stand owner for a pack of smokes. “Why would we need to be witty?” He asks.

The other, a grey unicorn with a dark blue mane, continued: “Cause like, it’d be fun, wouldn’t it? Get out a one-liner or something?”

The pegasus raised an eyebrow at him while he lit a cigarette. “Jobs, when would we ever need to be witty? Like, what kind of practical applications could humor possibly have on the job?”

Jobs, or Inside Job, formally, shrugged. “I dunno. I just think maybe it’d be cool. Like when we shake a guy down or something, and we say somethin’ funny.”

Taking a puff, the orange stallion kept walking, not waiting for the unicorn to catch up. He did, anyway. Exhaling, the pegasus reasoned, “Listen. The only thing you’re gonna get out of that is maybe makin’ yourself laugh. And you don’t wanna distract yourself when you are putting somepony in a situation of great duress. They could sneak up on you or surprise you with somethin’. You gotta stay focused. And it’s not like anypony else in the room is gonna laugh. You’re there to take their stuff. And even if they do laugh it’s because they don’t wanna make you mad by not laughing. And that kinda ego-inflatin’ bullshit is what crime bosses and bullyboys do. We ain’t neither of those.”

“Man, Powder, you’s a buzzkill. Fine. Hey, when does this place open, anyways?” Jobs asked, looking down the road at their destination, which was fast approaching.

Powder gave the unicorn a sideways glance before taking another puff. “Does it even matter?”

“Well, yeah, kinda. I mean you don’t wanna get there during the rush, do you? I mean, if they don’t open till the afternoon then everypony who’s got shit to do is gonna be in there all at once at like one or two o’clock.”

“My friend, it’s a bank. They open at nine. Every bank opens at nine. You know this, I know this. Nine. O’clock,” Powder added. Powder Burns, formally.

“I’m just sayin’ what if it’s different?”

“Why the hell would it be different? Don’t be a fucknard.”

Jobs stopped walking. “The fuck is a fucknard?”

Powder had to stop too, to think about the question. “Well, you know, it’s like... you. Right now. You’re being a fucknard. That’s a fucknard.”

“How am I being a fucknard?”

“See! You’re doing it again! Stop being a fucknard.”

“...you have no idea what a fucknard is, do you?”

“Shut up, we’re here.”

“Oh,” Jobs said, looking up at the large brick building. He glanced over at the frosted glass window by the door. “Let’s see, they open at... ten! Ha! I fucking told you!”

Powder, having closed his eyes to enjoy a particularly long drag, opened one to glance at the window, then at Jobs.

The unicorn looked from his partner, to the window, to his partner again. “I’m being a fucknard, aren’t I?” he asked, his triumphant expression diminishing to sullen realization.

“Yup,” Powder said simply, flicking the half-smoked fag into a side alley next to the bank.

The two continued walking, crossing the street at the nearest intersection, and entered a small boutique.

Meanwhile, a small, half-smoked cigarette caught a bush on fire.

-----------------------

“It’s like I’ve been saying,” Jobs explained, grunting as he heaved a large burlap sack over his shoulder, into the trunk of a car. The two were currently located in an empty lot behind the bank, or what was left of it. Emergency services escorted ponies to safety, as large fire hoses tried to put out the flames that had, rather rapidly, reached the second floor. He took off his new fireman’s hat and swept a hoof across his brow to clear some of the sweat away. “Nopony pays any attention to you if you look like you belong there.”

Powder pulled his pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his new police uniform, taking out another cig and lighting it. His cheap Griffo lighter flared for a moment, and he inhaled with great satisfaction. “Yeah, I know. ‘Look the part, and all that.’ Listen, we should get out of here. Wind’s gonna change soon and I don’t wanna be downwind of a three-story blaze, ok?”

Jobs nodded, pulling off his uniform and revealing some tattered old work clothes underneath. He shot a look to Powder, who rolled his eyes and disrobed into his cheap white t-shirt. “Right, right. Hey, do we want to leave the new uniforms in the fire?”

Powder thought for a second. Nah, throw ‘em in the spare burlap. I met this girl the other night that looks like she’d love playin’ cops and robbers.”

That got a chuckle from the unicorn, who levitated the two discarded uniforms into a brown sack and tossed it in with all the others in the trunk, shutting it after. The two got into the car, and started off out of the lot and away from the bank. Jobs looked over to his partner. “Hey, how did you know the place would catch so quickly? It’s a brick building.”

Powder shrugged, giving his answer around the cigarette in his mouth. “They’re doing construction on that side. You can’t see it from the street but there’s light scaffolding farther back in that alley. Next door’s a papercrafts shop so they got all kinds of fire insurance and wards and stuff. Wasn’t worried about it goin’ up. Besides, the banks on a corner with that empty lot behind it. So once all the scaffolding catches, which it will cause it’s been dry for like three days and they have tarps to keep the rain from soakin’ the workers anyway, and keep ‘em in the shade, it was only a matter of time before something in a window went fwoosh.”

Jobs nodded. “So anyway, I was thinking about what we were talkin’ about earlier.”

“...what, the Canterlot thing?”

“No, the Pulp Fiction thing.”

“Oh, that. Why?”

“Well, I was thinkin’ you were right. ain’t a lot of point in just bein’ funny to amuse yourself. I mean, nopony else is gonna laugh except maybe your crew, and that’s just distracting.”

“I literally said all of that like twenty minutes ago.”

“I know, but hear me out: what if we had a gimmick?”

Powder almost stopped the cart. “A gimmick? Who the fuck has a gimmick?”

“You know, like, a thing we do. It’s the same on every job, and ponies in the know will be like, ‘Oh shit, it’s those guys-’”

“I know what the fuck a gimmick is. Why do we need one?”

“We don’t need one. I’m just saying what if we had one?”

“...”

“...I’m being a fucknard again, huh?”

“Yeah.”

------------------------------

Jobs and Powder sat in their loft apartment. Powder was sprawled out on the couch while Jobs was counting the money from the burlap bags. The pegasus looked around the room for a bit, reaching over and putting out his spent smoke in a small ashtray, and looked at his partner.

“...why do you wear that thing?”

The ticking of the abacus Jobs was using stopped. He looked up at his partner, then rolled his eyes and returned his attention to a small piece of paper and a pen, where he wrote down a number. “Ok, I’ll bite, what thing?”

“That... thing. On your head. The green and white thing.”

“...you mean the visor?”

“Yeah, that. What the fuck is that?”

“I just said it’s a visor.”

“I heard you. What the fuck is it for?”

Jobs raised his eyebrows. “Well... it’s a visor. It... vises things. Like my eyes. It vises my eyes.”

Powder rolled onto his stomach, and lifted his head up to get a better look at the unicorn. “What in Celestia’s sweat-stained strap-on is ‘vising’?”

Job smiled awkwardly. “It’s like... you know. Looming over stuff. Like how a supervisor is always looking over your shoulder and shit. Yeah. It looks over my eyes.”

Powder seemed a bit thoughtful at that. “Ok, yeah, I can see that. But why do you need it?”

“...what?”

“Why do you need it?”

“I don’t need it.”

“Then why are you wearing it?”

“I told you: it’s vising my eyes.”

“I heard that, you fucknard. I mean why do you need it to vise your eyes?”

“Well, would you rather I go all day unvised? I mean, what if I have a vising emergency and I need my visor? I’d rather have it and not need it then need it and not have it.”

“...Jobs?”

“Yeah Powder?” the unicorn asked, returning his attention to counting the money. With each stack he rifled, counted, stacked and sorted, he set it aside in a waiting briefcase, on top of a stack of no-longer-waiting briefcases.

“What the fuck is a vising emergency?”

Tick tick tick ti-. “What?”

“What the fuck is a vising emergency? Like, what possible scenario could you come up with where you would need your eyes vised?”

Jobs shrugged. “Well what if it’s bright out? And I wanna not be blinded or something? Vising emergency.”

“...but it’s green.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s like, clear plastic. Well, green clear. More like see-through green. Wouldn’t you just get an eyeful of green light? That sounds like suck to me.”

Jobs thought about it. “Well, it would be darker green light. Like, not as bright as normal sunlight. So, it would help. Maybe not in a vising emergency, but it would be better than nothing.”

“So why don’t you just hold your hoof over your eyes?”

“Well what if I need my hooves? For like moving stuff? Or walking?”

“...you can do magic.”

Jobs opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. “Well... what if I don’t want to?”

“Why would you not want to?”

“Like what if I have a headache? And I want to keep light out of my eyes so I don’t make the headache worse? You know how my magic gets when I have a headache.”

“Ok. Ok, I can see that. So that’s a vising emergency, huh?”

Jobs nodded. “Yeah.”

Powder rolled back over, staring at the ceiling. “You still look like a douche with it on inside.”

“Powder.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be a fucknard.”

----------------

The two stallions knocked on the door of a really run-down apartment in a dirty-ass building. “Hey Powder?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do these guys always live in shitholes? We’re here to give him like, a fuckton of money. Couldn’t he maybe get a better place?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I will.”

Powder was going to tell him not to do that when the door opened. “What?” said a really burly blue Earth pony with a trashy green mane.

Jobs lifted the case up with magic. “We got the money.”

The Earth pony looked them up and down. “Get in.”

--------------------------

“Talledega Heights, huh?” the blue stallion said. Bum Rush, formally.

Jobs nodded. “Yeah. They’ve got some really good rent options for unemployed. You could play that system like a fiddle. I know a guy. Gret view, too. They don’t have a pool, but there’s a gym nearby.”

Bum nodded. “Yeah, sure. That sounds good. Where did you say it was?”

“It’s on the north side. You know where that old gas station with all the hookers used to be? Like a block from that.”

The Earth pony nodded. “Oh, yeah, I know the place. There’s a good school up there. My kid would like it. He keeps getting bullied here.”

Powder raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. He can’t fly yet. Has his cutie mark, though. He’s gonna be a writer, like his granddad.”

Jobs smiled. “Your dad writes books?”

“Used to. He retired a year ago. Mostly noir and crime novels. It’s why I got into the business,” Bum said with a sense of pride.

The pegasus looked ready to say something when Powder tapped his shoulder, then nodded to the door. “Right.” Jobs nodded to the blue stallion. “We gotta go. Guys, things, you know the drill.”

“Yup. Hey, tell your mom I said thanks for the cookies!”

“No problem. She loves ponies talking about her cooking.”

The two stallion walked out of the apartment. Powder was quiet until they got into the elevator. “Jobs?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re weird,” Powder said, as the elevator closed.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“This has to be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Powder muttered to himself, holding the small coin in his hoof.

“Right?! Who does this?! I mean, how is this even remotely acceptable?” Jobs complained, waving his hooves at the item Powder was holding.

Behind the two of them, a small line of masked ponies were hauling large black bags out of the vault they were sitting in, while the two criminals, their ski masks sitting on top of their heads, stared incredulously at the coin. More specifically, the arcade coin that Jobs had noticed in a spilled pile of quarters, and immediately shoved in Powder’s face.

“This... it’s not even worth anything. Like, this is the cheapest metal you can actually use to make coins. What’s more, this place went out of business years ago,” Powder mused alound, tossing the coin from hoof to hoof while he spoke.

Jobs tilted his head. “Where was that?”

Powder looked up at him. “Oh, it’s that old shitty arcade that closed down because they were running a prostitution ring out of the back. Not even a good one. I mean, yeah, the mares were cute, but the guy had no business sense whatsoever.”

“Wait, isn’t that the place that had that original model of Concrete Warrior II? That impossible to find machine?”

Powder shrugged. “Hell if I know. I was too busy fucking to play.”

Jobs paused. “Ok, fair enough. Man, that game was the shit, though. I kinda wish I could play on the old machines.”

“Why not play it on the computer and emulate it and shit? You can do that, right?”

“Nah, it’s not the same. The original machine had this hardware issue that if you knocked the screen hard enough the sprite layers would get all jacked up, and you could play on really weird-ass level designs that they programmed in but never actually used. Like, a bunch of junk data in the background. It was super trippy. Gave me nightmares,” Jobs mused. He was about to continue when one of the masked ponies tapped his shoulder. He turned, nodded, and lowered his mask. Powder did the same, as they all filed out of the hole in the wall and climbed into the back of the van.

One of the colts was about to close the door when Jobs stopped him. Grabbing the coin, he jumped out of the van, ran into the room, and ran back out. Powder raised an eyebrow. “Left it behind?”

“Yeah, fuck ‘em.”

“...you’re not gonna let that be a gimmick, are you? We don’t need a gimmick.”

Jobs gave his partner an incredulous look. “Who in their right mind would use a fucking arcade token as a gimmick?!”

-------------------------

“Earlier today local bank owners were astonished when they arrived at their bank, only to find a large hole in the wall of their vault, and all of their money missing. Police have few leads, but many suspicions about the robbery.”

“We suspect they used the sound of nearby construction to disguise the sound of the explosion that took out the wall. There is some security footage, but all of the culprits wore masks, and the internal security was disabled. The only clue the culprits left behind was a single game token to a closed video game arcade. Any information anypony has on these events will be immediately addressed. Please bring all concerns to your local police station.”

“That was Officer Longarm from MPD. The game token left behind by the culprits has led authorities to label these thieves the “Arcade Bandits,” and are suspected to be connected to the prostitution ring that led to the closure of the Fun Times Game Arcade several years ago. Authorities have yet to comment on whether or not similar tokens have been left at any other crime scenes.”

-----------------

Powder turned to Jobs, both of them sitting in their apartment as the news blared on the TV in front of them. “I fucking hate you sometimes.”

Author's Notes:

This popped into my head.

I intend most of the chapters to be about like this. Just a scene or two where the guys yap a bit about inconsequential stuff.

I'm gonna have fun with this. If you're looking for an overarching plot... you're fucked.