Call Home

This takes place during the three-day return trip from Avalon to Medusa Station, before we set after the pirates.

Volatility Smile was lying on her bed, resting her side on a pillow propped up against the ship’s bulkhead. Her suit jacket was draped over her shoulders against the slight chill of the ambient temperature. She quickly tapped at her laptop keyboard, pulling up the videochat software and then her brother’s contact. Her hoof hovered in a moment’s uncertainty before starting the call. Her brow furrowed.

Her niece Soda Pop picked up, a minuscule, vibrating ball of energy, green curls fighting to cover wide golden eyes.

“Hi auntie!”

The mare gained a sparkle as tension left her face.

“Hey sweetie. How’s it going?”

“I’m drawing a picture. Wanna see?”

“Of course!”

The filly fidgeted around the edges of the screen and a wild explosion of colour and shapes blew up in her place.

“That’s so good! I love it.”

Soda Pop giggled.

“It’s Captain Blastoff fighting the Rainbow Menace. Each colour is a different power, see?”

“Looks like the Captain is in some trouble.”

“Yes, but she always wins. She’s really, really brave.”

There was a stallion’s voice coming from the background.

“Who are you talking to, honey?”

“Auntie Smile!”

Quick, sound hoofsteps.

“What did I tell you about staying so close to the screen?”

“Sorry.”

The drawing disappeared to show a deep blue crystal hoof landing on top of the filly’s head. A very sarcastically nonplussed face then showed up behind her.

“Hey sis. Good to see you.”

The tone of voice agreed with the expression.

“Hey Pinion. I know, sorry.”

“Honey, daddy needs to talk to auntie Smile. Why don’t you go play with your brother?”

“Okay.”

“Say goodbye now.”

“Bye auntie Smile!”

“Bye sweetie! Love ya.”

The filly left.

“Gimme a sec, Vola.”

Pinion and the camera moved out of the foal’s room into a corridor and then settled on a desk in a study. A door stood in the background beside an imposing bookshelf. Pinion closed it and sat at the desk. The room was dimly lit.

“You took your damn time.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Mom and dad are worried sick.”

“I told you I’m sorry! Just–”

“It’s inexcusable that you would turn down our calls all the time.”

“Just let me–”

“No I won’t ‘just let you’ because I’m worried sick too! We all are. What were you thinking disappearing like that?”

They paused. The mare put a hoof to her mouth and looked to the side, brows furrowing, nostrils flaring. She breathed deeply and turned back to him.

“I know. A lot of stuff has been going on and I… I needed to collect my thoughts. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

“You better.”

She put up a hoof.

“Before I start, though, I need you to promise you’re not telling mom and dad.”

“What?”

“In fact, don’t even tell Parasol. Not everything, at least.”

“I can’t tell my own wife? She’s right there in the living room, you know. Soda will tell her you called.”

“Just… wait till you’ve heard me out.”

“Come on, what’s with this drama bullshit?”

She looked straight at him through the monitor.

“I’m serious, Pin.”

He stared at his screen for a moment and passed a hoof through his mane. His cheeks puffed up as he exhaled in irritation.

“Alright, fine. But… you’re making me extremely nervous, Vola.”

“Please don’t worry. Everything is going great, I swear. But… it’s gonna take some unpacking and I’m calling you first because I know I can trust you. I need to see how you’ll take it. Then I can judge how much I can tell mom and dad.”

“So you are in trouble.”

She inhaled.

“No. Like I just told you. Just let me start from the top. You know I took the shuttle to Saphiban, for Medusa Station?”

“Against everypony’s advice, yes.”

“Well…”

She pursed her lips.

“The trip went well, right until the end. Then… we were boarded by pirates.”

“Pardon?”

“Yeah. It was pretty surreal. It happened all of a sudden, just as we entered Saphiban.”

Pinion’s eyes went wide, his mouth agape, his muscles tense.

“And you were– what happened?”

“I’m not sure what they did but they attached their ship to the shuttle somehow. Then they poured sleeping gas into the cabin. We couldn’t really do anything about it.”

His gaze started bouncing all over.

“Sleeping gas?! Just– fucking–”

He gripped his device with both hooves, tightly, manically, sending the picture on his sister’s side rocking all over.

“Are you alright? Is this– is this a ransom request?”

The mare spoke slowly, in a low tone.

“Everything is fine, Pinion. Like I told you. Believe me. It took some effort, but we got out of it all safe and sound. This was weeks ago.”

Pinion exhaled and gulped, closing his eyes. Abruptly, furiously, he threw them back open and slammed a hoof on the desk.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“And there we go.”

“Is this a joke? Is this your idea of a fucking joke?”

“No Pinion, it isn’t. In fact, I need you to take everything that I tell you very seriously.”

“Very seriously!”

“I know this must be very upsetting but, please, just… breathe.”

“Fuck you, Vola! Fuck this. This is crazy!”

“I know. I know, I won’t argue with that. But I really need you to bear with me for a bit. Please.”

Pinion was looking at her wide-eyed, almost shaking. His answer amounted to a disbelieving scoff.

“Thank you. So, we got kidnapped. But there was this filly… later on she turned out to be the sister to Medusa’s owner… she managed to hide from the pirates and break us out.”

“I thought you were all put to sleep?”

“She hid in a crate somehow. Evidently before the gas took effect on her.”

The stallion exaggerated a smile.

“Oh, thank Celestia there was some random kid to save your skin.”

The mare’s brow twitched. Her speech took on more of an edge.

“Long story short, she got us out. We dealt with the pirates and eventually managed to escape onboard the shuttle.”

“You… dealt with the pirates?”

“Pin, you can’t interrupt me every other sentence or we’re gonna be here forever. Yeah, we tried to just leave… against my recommendation, honestly… but they caught us, so we had to defend ourselves. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who knew how to use a gun onboard.”

Pinion raised his voice again.

“Wait, wait… guns? You mean there was a firefight?”

“There… yes.”

“And you actively took part.”

“It was inevitable. We were assaulted.”

“Assaulted? Assaulted?! I can’t believe this.”

“Pinion…”

“Celestia’s sake, Vola!”

Volatility Smile groaned. There was a knock at the door on Pinion’s end and he got up to see to it. A voice, too muffled to make out clearly, asked something the stallion dismissed brusquely. He sat back in a somewhat more collected state.

His next question still came out of his teeth.

“Did you get hurt?”

“A bruise or two, nothing serious”

“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”

“Please.”

“That was Parasol, by the way. She says hi.”

“She tell you to calm down? You’re doing the thing where you shout a lot.”

“Oh, sorry. I wonder why that is.”

“Pin, look. I’m fine. Okay? I’m all right. But things are different out here–”

“No shit.”

“–and, really, I need you to just shut up for a few minutes and let me talk. Then, when I’m done, you can cover me with insults and disown me.”

“Oh you can count on it.”

“Right. So, as I was saying, we ran away from the pirates and we got to Medusa. We decided, most of us passengers, to celebrate with a drink. We’d barely sat down and a pony from Medusa’s owner came to us with a message. Turned out she already knew what had happened and was impressed by how we dealt with the situation and kept her sister safe. She wanted to hire us… and she offered us a loan of one and a half million credits.”

“Is that a lot?”

“Three hundred grand, give or take.”

“Huh.”

“And hear this: she only wanted half of it back. But it wasn’t hard cash, it was tied to the purchase of a spaceship from the station. And until we paid back we were officially employed to her, which meant we could still move around freely, but she could call whenever and we’d have to drop whatever we were doing and run over. At which point she’d have some task for us to carry out.”

“Task? Like what?”

“Deliveries, mostly. Deliveries of goods, information, people. Sometimes she’d want us to look around a place or talk to somepony. Sounds sketchy, I know, but it’s pretty much run of the mill work as far as it goes around here.”

“I know that. That’s been my whole fucking point the whole fucking time, in case it somehow isn’t clear to you yet.”

The mare’s jaw tightened. She closed her eyes and hung her head, taking one deep breath, in, out. Another. Inhale, exhale. Full, steady lungfuls. Pinion frowned, his expression a mix of perplexity and concern. He was about to say something, the very tip of a vocalization starting to emerge from his throat, when Volatility Smile beat him to it with a jerk of her head.

“You’re going on mute now.”

His protest, delayed by an instant of surprise, was cut midway on the mare’s side as she pressed a button on her laptop, her gaze fixedly locked on his on the monitor. “You fucki–”

A wide, devilish smile spread from her lips to her eyes to her whole person as she regarded the spectacle of her brother silently mouthing off to the camera, violently gesticulating in vain.

In truth, it lasted all but a few seconds. Soon enough, he had settled down and she spoke again.

“In case it isn’t clear to you yet, I’m doing everything equinely possible to avoid arguing. And that’s because you have every right to be angry. I’m well aware I’m the one being a selfish ass, here. But before we can discuss it all, like I told you, I need you to have the full picture. So, at this point, you either sit there and listen or I hang up. It’s up to you.”

Pinion was seething. It looked like there were a million other things he’d rather do than reach for his device, bring up the chat box and tap even the tersest possible reply. But sure enough, in a few moments a little bubble popped up on screen:

“k”.

“So there you go. Right now we’re coming back to Medusa to ask Alyssum about Whisper Step. She’s bound to have some ideas on where they’re holding her.”

Volatility Smile fiddled with her computer and unmuted her brother.

“And you can talk again now. Sorry but that was necessary.”

Pinion was looking visibly fatigued, almost stunned. His sister had submerged him with all that’d happened to the Space Jammers till then, a deluge of events coming one after the other. He was holding his head with both hooves, his eyes closed, gently massaging his temples. He hummed for a moment before speaking and, when he did, he sounded absolutely bewildered.

“It’s… Celestia. What are you even doing, Vola? Why? What are you getting out of this?”

He stopped on the question as if catching himself just in time about to fall off the edge of a cliff. The mare on her part sighed and shook her head.

“I’ve had to think about that myself. I came here with the notion that the news we get back home about what happens in Periphery are just too absurd to be true. Cherry picked for the sake of a catchy tv segment or something along those lines. I admit that… I was too careless in that judgment.”

Pinion rubbed his eyes.

“No shit. You should have listened to us when you were leaving.”

“I did. It’s not like I came here unprepared, I brought a kevlar vest for crying out loud.”

“Don’t be childish.”

“You know what I mean. I’m taking my precautions and I don’t think I’ve done anything needlessly reckless, when you consider the circumstances. It’s more a matter of things… getting more and more out of hoof. It’s just been one thing after the other but, really, plenty of people out here make an honest living not too different from what you could back home, or anywhere else in the galaxy.”

“It’s the real pros that actively go looking for trouble, am I right?”

Volatility Smile paused, looking at her brother straight in the eyes through the monitor.

“I get that you don’t approve, Pin. And I appreciate it, because it’s the reasonable point of view. But the truth is… the truth is that I’m loving this, Pin. I’m as astonished as you are, I never even imagined myself in a situation like this but I’m loving every single minute of it. The crew are all incredible people, we decide everything among us, we travel all over the galaxy… it’s only been a short time but we’ve already seen so many awesome places and made so many experiences… and we’re making money as fast as I was going to at Manticore, if not more. There’s an opportunity at every corner, always some challenge to overcome, something new to learn. It’s amazing, Pin. It’s not what I thought I wanted but… it is.”

Pinion just shook his head, his expression still a tired blanket of disbelief.

“I don’t really know what to say.”

“Well, –”

“YOU’RE A WHITE COLLAR, FOR CELESTIA’S SAKE!”

The mare physically recoiled from the screen, ears pinned back, eyes wide.

“I don’t know what sort of delusions made their way through that thick skull of yours, if it’s midlife crisis come early or whatever and I don’t care! You’re a white collar worker, you hear me? You work a desk job!”

“Pinion you’re–”

“You’re not a secret agent, you’re not a mercenary, you sure as Tartarus are no Celestia-damned action hero. You? You push pencils. On a good day, you swim.”

“Please s–”

“You’ve worked so hard your entire life to land a job in finance and that’s because you adore the whole thing! It’s what you talk about all the time, what you think about all the time! It’s in your given name, heaven’s sake! Have you forgotten that? Am I wrong in any way?”

“YES! Yes! You are.”

This time Volatility Smile met her brother’s fury in turn. She lowered her voice immediately after her outburst, but her deflagrated outrage kept its focus.

“Did you listen to anything I just said? At all?”

“With the patience of a saint, Vola.”

“Could have fooled me. For once in your life, will you even try and think like maybe you don’t really know better than every other pony around you?”

He guffawed theatrically.

“That’s rich coming from you of all people.”

“Excuse me? I don’t recall ever telling you your life decisions were worthless.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the one who decided to gamble with their life just because they’d gotten their ass fired from their dream job.”

The mare’s mouth gaped open. She was stunned, breathless.

“I ask again: am I wrong in any way?”

Her next words were all of a breathy, venomous hiss.

“You asshole.”

“You got that right. Because if it takes an asshole to call you on your bullshit, Celestia help me, I’ll be that asshole. You got set back big time and wanted a change of pace? That’s fine, that’s normal. Healthy, even. But usually it means something like moving away, changing jobs, taking a sabbatical. Whatever. Not getting involved with a crime syndicate!”

Volatility Smile just kept looking, bewildered, her head shaking slightly.

“This is not healthy, you understand what I’m telling you? And I don’t mean that you quite literally risk getting shot everyday, even though you definitely do. You’re still in rebound from a huge blow, okay? And anybody –anybody!– with just an ounce of salt in their brain can tell this whole thing is a ridiculous power fantasy for you. If you’re telling me you’re surprised you enjoy it then you definitely need to think about it more. Think about yourself more.”

Pinion sighed and looked away.

“Fuck’s sake… I know that I’m out of line, damnit. But I mean everything I’ve said, everything! I was worried that you weren’t calling and now I’m…”

He returned wide, almost haunted eyes towards the screen.

“I’m scared. I’m scared for you, Vola.”

The mare kept staring, her jaw clenched enough to send her teeth creaking.

“Will you please come back?”

The corners of her mouth raised visibly, her brow furrowed, the crystal of her coat seemed almost to harden and cool like tempered steel.

“No. I don’t think so.”

She said no more and just kept glaring. Pinion searched her face for a few, long seconds.

“Alright.”

He sounded resigned and exhausted.

“Then I’ll come and get you.”

“You know that would be pointless. Don’t bother.”

“Then… then what am I supposed to do? You have to stop!”

“Why?”

The stallion started a reply but didn’t put any words out. He blinked once, his mouth open, twice. Finally he hung his head.

“Alright. Alright. Do whatever you want.”

He looked up.

“But I don’t accept this. This is stupid and irresponsible and I know you know it, you’re just refusing to acknowledge something you don’t like. Like you’ve always been doing since you were little.”

Pinion straightened up and cleared his throat, wet his lips. Volatility Smile kept her silence.

“At least call once in a while?”

“No promises.”

“Please. Please, Vola. Don’t leave me in the dark again, not after I know what you’re up to out there.”

“Take care, Pinion.”

He could only throw his hooves up before she closed the connection.

The mare remained staring at the application on her laptop for a few instants. With a short, incredulous laugh she closed the lid and hopped off the bed on her hooves, swapping the jacket over her shoulders for a towel quickly grabbed from a drawer. She let her mane down and snapped it back in a ponytail, snatched her multiband from the top of the dresser and stormed out her cabin.