Tantabus, Chapter 10 (Applejack) · 3:43am Jan 11th, 2016
Tantabus
10 - Applejack
Author’s Note: This is the first chapter where I have to leave stuff out so I don’t give away which story this plotline actually belongs to.
Update: Not anymore! Stuff that used to be left out is now in square brackets.
September 24th, 12:55 pm
Well, here I am, and I’m still alive.
As I expected, Sunset Shimmer loudly declared revenge on me as soon as she saw that little poster of mine. She got a video up on the ‘Net before First Period was even over—I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that she put it together months ago, “just in case”. It included all of the obvious stuff, making fun of me for the way I talked and implying that the accent alone proved I was stupid. Also between periods, I managed to pick up the rumors she put out about not only me, but Bloom and Mac and to be honest, they were so dumb they weren’t worth the effort of fighting against them. I mean, Big Mac as a cyberterrorist? There’s nobody who’s going to fall for that.
I saw Sunset after Second Period...she got one look at the Trixie poster and started running—she looked to me like she was kind of haunted by it. Although I don’t actually think she had anything to do with Trixie’s disappearance.
Oh, right. Trixie’s missing. It’s only been a day, so I’m not willing to rule out that she’s hiding over some made-up humiliation she thought had happened to her at the party yesterday. If she’s still gone by tomorrow, I’ll take Bloom and her friends to make a statement for Vice-Principal Luna.
Just before lunch, Pinkie Pie gathered up Rarity and I for a talk. She told me that the feel she was getting from the other students was that maybe a third of the students was behind me, a third didn’t care enough to risk voting for either of us, and the last third were definitely going to vote for Sunset, either because she had them too scared to do otherwise, or because they thought they could get what they wanted from the less honest of the two candidates.
I suppose I’m making it sound like the Fall Formal Princess was more important than the Student Body President. That’s because that’s exactly what that position became under Sunset Shimmer. She never bothered to run for president, because she could get everything she wanted as princess.
Waiting just outside the lunch hall for us was Twilight Sparkle, hiding behind a potted plant. After I introduced her to the others, she told us that she had called in sick with the swine flu at Crystal Prep in order to meet us, so she had to make this fast—she had two things to tell us.
The first thing was part of her magic obsession. Apparently, there was something in the bottom of the crater that acted like mercury, only it turned solid when you touched it. She claimed that this “something” was part of the statue. She pulled it out of her backpack to show us--it looked like a mirror that somebody had melted and then cooled off again, about the size of her head. She had some complicated doohickey that told her that the mirror was supposed to be soft enough for her to stick her hand into it, but that clearly wasn’t so. She got into some really complicated theorizing about somebody having to put it back together “on the other end” before it would work like it was supposed to. This was about the time I was finally able to get in a word edgewise, to suggest she get around to telling us the other thing before she ran out of time, as I was hoping that it would be more useful to us.
Boy, was it ever! Diary, do you remember that email address that somebody named “Shredder” had texted to me yesterday? Well it turned out that the address was run out of a machine programmed to impersonate all sorts of other people’s addresses. Twilight couldn’t prove that Sunset had set up the machine and the address, but it was pretty obvious that it must have been her. You remember those times in Freshman year when I thought I had been sent to detention, Diary, only to be told by Vice-Principal Luna that I was the victim of a prank? That was Sunset testing out her machine. But that was only the beginning.
Every time I had asked one of Rainbow Dash’s teams to help me out, and she had flaked, it was because Sunset had gotten in there, sending texts designed to make the two of us hate each other. (And seeing the texts that Rainbow got, I couldn’t blame her in the least for thinking that I was letting her down.) The same for Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. And Rarity and Trixie. And Lyra and Sweetie Drops. In fact, pretty much any time members of two different groups tried to be friends, Sunset broke it up. Once she was done, it was Fashionistas for Fashionistas, Eco-kids for Eco-kids, Dramatists for Dramatists, and so on, so that everyone was isolated into their self-centered group, so nobody would care enough about what Sunset was doing to the others, until it was too late.
It was diabolical.
I asked Twilight if she could come up with some way to send all those fake texts back out to each pair of people that had been impersonated, with the real address revealed. Twilight told me she already had a program set up to do just that, and just wanted to know when to start it.
I said that right now would do just fine.
Needless to say, lunch got really interesting.
Sunset meanwhile was eating a bag lunch in the center table, loudly telling anybody that asked that the “Apple Family products” that Granny was serving made everybody who ate it sick, and that it turned boys into girls, and girls into boys.
“Horse hockey,” I told her in her face.
Then I climbed up on her table and asked for a show of hands as to how many people had ever gotten sick on cafeteria food. I reminded them that this was an open campus, and if the food here was no good, why did so many of them prefer Granny’s food over any restaurant lunch? There were some grumbles from Sunset’s crowd, but most students agreed with me.
Rarity then climbed up to join me, and told the students that what she had just found out: that Fluttershy had been suspended for blowing up the Wondercolts statue...with Sunset as the lone witness.
“If we’re still in a democratic mood,” Rarity then said, “let’s see a show of hands: How many of you think that Fluttershy could have blown up that statue?”
Maybe a dozen people had the nerve to raise their hands, far less than had been supporting Sunset Shimmer in the last question.
Now it was Sunset’s turn to join us up on the same table. “And does that mean you think that I did it?” she asked. “I mean, what motive could I possibly have? And how could I have gotten the explosives on campus to do it?”
“We never said you did it,” I replied calmly. “Although for that matter, those same questions apply equally well to Fluttershy. Doesn’t she walk to school? Does she still look guilty now?”
That dropped the number of raised hands to two: Snips’ and Snails’.
Luna walked into the hall then, so we all hopped down and that was that. Lunch ended five minutes later.
There are two other things I’ll have to follow up on later, though.
First, I saw [ Apple Bloom fighting with Diamond Tiara. ]. I don’t think it’s too bad, but I’ll be sure to ask her about it later.
And second, I saw Twilight Sparkle with some fancied-up viewfinder spying on us from outside the lunch hall. Something she saw spooked her, and I couldn’t find her when I left for my locker.
Oh wait, three things: Who in the world is “Shredder”?
Ah. And the cause of Sunset's fury makes itself known. Her web of lies is being totally dismantled. This is glorious. Though I do have to wonder about what Twilight perceived. Sunset trying to influence the student body, perhaps? Magic coming off of Applejack and Rarity as they resisted said influence? Most curious.