//------------------------------// // Today I Make A Point Of Acting With Intention (Revised, Please Read Again) // Story: I Am Going To Save And/Or Destroy Equestria! // by Bucking Nonsense //------------------------------// Alright, maybe I haven't told you everything about my parents. There is something I kept back about them. There was one final act they performed. One final cruelty, a twist of the knife so terrible that it began a chain reaction that nearly drove me to madness. You think that there are some limits to which someone will not go, some depths of darkness that someone cannot sink to, some level of perversion that would be too extreme for anyone of flesh and blood. That there are deeds so wretched that, in a fair and just world, the heavens ought to part, and lightning should strike the perpetrator down just for imagining such evil, let alone perpetrating it in real life. And then... *Chronicler's Note: The subject took a long moment to sigh sadly. It is almost a minute before he is able to begin again. I was fifteen years, and three hundred and sixty four days, old, and all was, if not right, then at least not totally wrong in the world. I had friends amongst the other orphans at the orphanage, one of whom was so close as to be like a sister to me. My grades were fucking fantastic, and I was in line for a scholarship when I graduated from high school, and when you're in that kind of position at a freshman level, you know you're doing beyond outstanding. The world was a wonderful place and was smiling down from the heavens. And then I turned sixteen, and I learned that the world was not a beautiful place at all. I was summoned to a lawyer's office. Not just any lawyer, though: He was the kind that people hired when they wanted to use money to get away with anything up to and including murder. He was the type who would have been on OJ Simpson's legal team, had OJ had enough money to afford him. This was the kind of lawyer who had become fantastically wealthy by defending the fantastically wealthy. And he had some... news for me. I am going to tell you a secret, and it is a funny one, I suppose. Lawyers, or at least the ones who represent the fantastically wealthy, are among the stupidest people on the planet. In their minds, there's no actual thing called temporary insanity, that is just an excuse that the guilty use to get away with anything from parking tickets to violent murder. In their minds, no matter how hard you poke or prod a human being, he cannot actually snap, turn into a violent murderer, and then kill a man. No, no, this isn't quite that bad. But I assure you, when I tell you what he had to tell me, you'd be baying for blood as well. It began with legal documents: The revelation that my parents were only my parents by way of my mother having given birth to me, and my father having tried his best to raise me. That my actual biological parents were simply contributors to my DNA who had offered good money to bring a baby to term. Then the documents stating that, instead of being a viable donor for my ill-fated elder sibling, I was not a viable organ farm, and was cast aside. Worse, my birth parents were held responsible for all of the bills for everything from my conception to my birth, and the testing that followed. He didn't need to tell me that this six-figure debt was what was ultimately responsible for the deaths of my birth parents. I was bright enough, at sixteen, to put that all together in my head. But wait, we've not reached the actual punchline yet. You see, the debt did not actually end with my birth father's death. It had instead been held aside until there was a family member old enough to begin making payments on it. And in the ten years and more since my father's death, that debt had gained interest. A ridiculously large amount of monthly interest... compounded daily, just to twist the knife an inch further. And as the sole heir to my birth-parent's estate, non-existant as it was, I was responsible for paying off that unholy mountain of debt that my biological parents had used to murder my birth parents with. Technically, I wouldn't be responsible until I was eighteen, but I would begin making payments literally the day after my eighteenth birthday, or I could expect to see them in court. Yes, that's right, you heard me. They expected me to pay that debt. To them. And they didn't even have the decency to look me in the eye, but instead had a lawyer, the same lawyer who was responsible for the entire sorry scenario, deliver the news to me. So you can understand why I was overcome with an overpowering psychotic urge to grab a letter opener, a pen, or even just use my bare hands, and murder the lawyer in front of me in one of the eighty-three thousand, two hundred and eight-two ways that swam through my mind. I had the gods' own poker face, so I could have done it without any emotion showing on my face, and he'd receive no warning until he had my hands around his throat, or a pen or letter opener lodged in any number of horrible places that could bring death either quickly and agonizingly, or slowly and inevitably. And because of the documents in front of me, I could then hunt down and deliver brutal, bloody vengence upon my biological parents as well. This was The Hate, what I felt in this moment. I felt as if my rage in that instant could give me wings, give me the strength of a thousand men, and make me invulnerable. Sadly, this was not Equestria, where emotions are magical, and such things might actually happen. However, whatever happened, it would go badly for the lawyer, and provided I was swift, it would go equally terribly for my biological parents. But... If I did all of that, what would happen to Hope? Or the other kids in the orphanage? If I murdered or horrifically maimed three people, no matter how justified that might have been to me, then that would be held against the orphanage that raised me. The orphanage could be closed, the little pseudo-family there broken up and scattered to the winds. With out a big brother like me to watch over them, who knew what would happen to them? It was that thought which kept me from going off the deep end and violently slaughtering this lawyer, my parents, and anyone who got between me and them. Instead, I politely requested copies of the documents in question, for my own personal records. The lawyer seemed hesitant, but I made a statement implying that he could give them to me, or he could give them to my lawyer tomorrow. He chose to give me the copies: He couldn't think up any legally justifiable reason not to. For a week, I made preparations, and once everything was ready, I struck. My hate can be slow to rise, but when it does, it does not do so with heat, but with an arctic frost. One week after my sixteenth birthday, a series of legal documents found their way onto a forum frequented by known members of a certain group of hackers, as did a full and detailed history of what this had caused to happen, and what was expected to happen. My personal information was carefully blacked out, and my name and personal information was nowhere to be seen in the description of events, but everything else was free for anyone to see. Heh, I still laugh, thinking about it: A wealthy family breaking a legal contract and then driving an innocent family into ruin for something they were in no way responsible for? For the ones who saw this, it was practically Christmas. I shall now quote The Rules Of The Internet. Rule Three: We Are Anonymous. Rule Four: Anonymous Is Legion. Rule Five: Anonymous Never Forgives. Rule Six: Anonymous Can Be a Horrible, Senseless, Uncaring Monster. Rule Seven: Anonymous Is Still Able To Deliver. And yes, they certainly did. There is nothing quite as destructive as a team of hackers who owe no one allegience, and feel justified in whatever action they take. But the hackers were only the start: Within hours of the original post, the entire story went viral, and things exploded from there. Ah, right, you're not from earth, so you might not fully understand the implications of what I'm telling you: Back home, the internet is a worldwide network, allowing people to communicate and share information. Sometimes, an idea or concept 'goes viral', causing it to spread all across the nation. Sometimes, when something good comes to the attention of the world, like with the whole 'Batkid' story, it brings out the best in us, and makes you believe in humanity. *The alterations to this chapter begin here* And sometimes, when someone has done something terrible, their crime has been exposed, and it seems like the hand of justice has faltered, then the fury of the online community can come down like the fist of an angry god. And I was the one who had called that wrath upon both my biological parents, and the lawyer who had represented them. Here's the thing: What my biological parents and lawyer had done was not simply unethical, but illegal as well. Due to my own lack of legal knowledge, and misunderstandings due to a couple of anime and manga I had read (Cowboy Bebop, where a character had "inherited" the debt of a person who had passed away, and The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, where a character had inherited a debt to a group of gangsters due to having claimed inheritance from his deceased parents), I had assumed that inheriting debt was a thing that could happen due to a legal contract. Instead, not only was that particular caveat against the law, but in the weeks to come, a law expert would post a video explaining how the entire contract was illegal, and pointed out that several "fine print" sections literally made it impossible for my birth parents to claim any recompense for having brought me to term, and would have saddled them with the hospital costs in any case, even if my birthing had miraculously caused the recovery of my elder sibling. And this wasn't the only contract that the lawyer in question had made that would have made Perry Mason, Matlock, and Jack McCoy spontaneously manifest into our reality for the sole purpose of giving that bastard a curb stomp of epic proportions: An investigation found records of over a dozen similar contracts. All of them involved extremely wealthy clients on one side, and extremely poor individuals on the other, and always in the favor of the wealthy. And the individuals in question were always so poor that there was no way that they could hire a lawyer. Many of them were in the country illegally, so even if they could hire a lawyer, taking the case to court would result in deportation... I'm going into too much detail there, I guess. Anyway, the point is, my birth parents were screwed from the start, and my biological parents had earned everything that was coming to them. I will spare you the details where I can. Here's the highlight reel: Their lawyer was disbarred and went to jail. Obviously. Criminal acts like that will easily do so, even for a lawyer. He couldn't even get a decent plea deal: Attorney-client privilege prevented him from testifying against the people he'd worked on behalf of. The firm he was a part of was also put under a microscope, and a lot of illegal activity was discovered. Not just at the lower levels, either: Retrieved correspondence and testimony given by several individuals who made a plea with the DA, plus people who came forward to testify when it was clear that the firm was nearing collapse, made it clear that the corruption was not only known to the senior staff, but actively encouraged. Almost every lawyer there ended up in jail, disbarred, and disgraced. The law office itself more or less vanished off the face of the earth, and the few "survivors" of the firm's fall from grace were branded for life, and no reputable, or even disreputable, law office would ever accept them. Good riddance to bad rubbish. As for my biological parents? Even with just the highlights, we could be here all week. All of their dirty business, not just my story, but everything that they'd ever done, was brought to light... and a lot of what they'd done was dirty. Embezzlement is a pretty serious crime, after all, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I won't disgust you with the details. They'd need a really good lawyer to get them off the hook, or at least get them off with a light sentence. Too bad theirs was going to jail. Of course, being wealthy, they could just hire another one, right? Wrong. Their collective fortunes vanished. A lot of the money out there in the world was digital, stored in bank accounts that could be accessed via computer, and even banks have holes in their security systems. It was determined that someone hacked into their banks, and drained their checking and savings accounts. Not just in the USA, but also their illegal accounts overseas. Whoever it was that did it was thorough: Not one penny left behind. I'd have given him a high five, if I ever met him. Then, the money was transferred digitally through a total of more than three thousand different banks across the world. It took a long time to find out what happened to that money, and by then, well, it was moot. Ultimately, the stolen funds were eventually tracked down, a couple of years after the fact. It had apparently been divided among twenty or thirty charity groups, worldwide. My parents were left solely with what tangible assets they had left. Some cash money, their house, their cars, their condo in the Bahamas, stuff like that. Things that they could sell, but faced with impending criminal charges, nowhere near enough to pay for a lawyer skillful enough to keep clients this guilty out of jail. They'd be going from trial to trial for over a year before they served a day of their collective sentences, and nobody was going to bother offering a plea. Justice was going to be done, and seen to be done. And the public outcry for a speedy trial to put them into prison was enormous. However, the sheer volume of charges against them worked in their favor, and caused a delay of over a month before the first trial date could be set, and while out on bail, that didn't stop everyone from knowing who they were and what they'd done. My biological parents could not go out outside without being recognized, and... well, vandalism was the least of their worries, but their cars were defaced in a variety of ways, their tires slashed, a potato stuffed into the exhaust pipes, and sugar poured into the gas tanks. I kinda felt this was a shame, since they both had really nice cars. I, personally, would have just stolen them, but that's just me. There's more. Hours more. This all went on for over a month, after all. But brevity might be the way to go, here. To cut to the chase, I had turned my parents' lives into a public toilet, and I sat back and laughed as everyone in the world took turns taking a shit in it. A month later, three days before the first trial date, a tape recorder was delivered discretely to their home, a tape inside. It took me a while to make it, given that I had to use a voice-distorting program I had found online and was unfamiliar with, and had to add in some artificial background noise, and make absolutely certain that no trace evidence and no fingerprints could be found on it, so as to render it impossible to trace back to me. I shall give you the message that I had painstakingly recorded upon it. 'Greeting, fuckstains. You are probably wondering who I am. I am the secret architect of your despair. I am the devil who crawled out of the hell you created. I am as Hades, god of the underworld and eternal punisher of sinners, and I am he who has rained shit upon your lives as punishment for your transgressions... and I am only just getting started. You think that this is the end of my fury? I have not even begun to fuck with your lives. This was only the prelude. Worse is coming, and will continue to come until your dying days. Your lives are my playthings, and your hopes and dreams are the toilet paper I shall wipe my ass upon from now until the end of the world. I shall vomit such misfortune upon your lives that you will beg for a death that will not come. My hatred of you will be the only constant you will ever know. That, and your endless misery. Please enjoy it, you worthless, festering sacks of shit.' That... that recording was found, in my biological father's left hand, and a pistol in his right. The same pistol he'd used to kill my mother. Before killing himself. The suicide note indicated that this wasn't a murder-suicide, but an assisted suicide-suicide. I had not understood, I fear, the nature of the two individuals I had sought vengeance against. The two of them were, at their cores, cowards. They hid. The hid behind money, they hid behind the law, and they hid behind lawyers. Stripped of their money, their legal protection, and their anonymity, they did what any coward would do: They took the coward's way out. And three days later, their daughter, my little sister, the one I didn't know I had, arrived at the orphanage. At six years old, she came home to the sight of something no child should ever see. A sight that I was indeed the architect of. In the end, they had robbed me of my victory without even knowing it: The satisfaction I had felt in ruining their lives turned to ashes on my tongue when I saw that little girl, crying her eyes out because her parents were gone. All I felt was shame... and The Hate. Not just for them, but for myself as well. That hatred is something I kept locked away in a little box inside my heart, and I had used it to power Sombra's dark magic. And it had festered within me long enough to become a power that could rattle the heavens themselves, along with a terrible urge for self-destruction...