//------------------------------// // Prologue: Your past will always find you; your past won't go away // Story: Anon-a-Missed // by chris the cynic //------------------------------// Apple Bloom stormed into her room and kicked the door shut behind her. Somehow this was all Sunset Shimmer's fault. The fact that that didn't quite track didn't hinder the angry girl's assignment of blame at all. Sunset Shimmer was somehow responsible. Maybe the demon was protected by some kind of hex set up to bring misfortune on those who opposed her. That had to be it. How else could you explain Apple Bloom's master plan falling apart in less than a day when it when it wasn't even supposed to shift into gear until The Rainboom's next slumber party? She hadn't even recruited Sweetie Belle and and Scootaloo when it all came crashing down. How else could one explain her phone just happening to slip out of her hand when she just happened to be logged into the Anon-a-Miss account for the only time since making it that morning? How else could you explain all that occurring right in front of Diamond Tiara, who had of course picked it up and seen things that weren’t her business. How else could you explain how the phone, after Apple Bloom had tackled Diamond, managed to bounce and slide across the floor in such a way that it skidded to a halt directly at Applejack's feet? Or the fact that all this happened to happen in the cafeteria: the one place in the entire school where her grandmother, instead of some teacher or other, would be the one to lecture her in front of the entire student body? Yeah, this was definitely the result of some kind of demonic magic. It couldn't possibly be that Apple Bloom had brought any of this on herself. Still . . . it was obviously some kind of passive magic. A charm or curse or something that brought misfortune on Sunset's enemies without notifying Sunset of who those enemies were. Sunset had shown precisely zero recognition that any of this was aimed at her. Like everyone else, Sunset believed that Apple Bloom had been playing a prank on Applejack, no connection to Sunset had been made, so Apple Bloom still had the element of surprise. On the other hand, how could she use that element of surprise to her advantage when eldritch forces would turn luck itself against any plan she made? Things had been derailed so fast. The plan had been perfect, that much was clear. All she'd meant to do today was plant the seed that it might be Sunset in Applejack's mind and let Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo in on the plan. They wouldn't be convinced yet, but they would have kept quiet and Sunset's own evil would have spelled her doom. Sunset was making their sisters (honorary in Scootaloo's case, sure) ignore them at best and treat them badly as often, so when Rarity, under Sunset's influence, was dismissive or cruel to Sweetie Belle, which was sure to happen before or during the sleepover at Rarity's, that would ensure Sweetie Belle joined in. She'd have access to Sunset's phone once the girls were all asleep and would be able to get something --it didn't much matter what-- that would seem like it could only have come from Sunset. That would be when things could really get moving. Sure the girls would think of some way to rationalize it away, but the doubt would be still there afterward: How had Anon-a-Miss gotten that whatever from Sunset's phone? Sunset's influence meant that Rainbow Dash would inevitably mistreat Scootaloo, and then the crusade would be in full swing. With the three of them working together they could do what Apple Bloom could never do on her own: make sure that Sunset was the only single person that had been present for everything the account revealed. Eventually Applejack and the others would have to accept that it was Sunset --back to her old ways. They'd all leave Sunset, with luck Sunset would leave, and after that everything would go back to the way things had been before Applejack made the mistake of befriending a literal demon. The plan was perfect. There were absolutely no flaws. So if the perfect plan couldn't take down Sunset, thanks to her stupid demon luck field, what would? Maybe the solution was to avoid having a plan at all. Apple Bloom would just have to do everything in one fell swoop, then there would be no opportunity for the demonic magic to interfere. She needed something that was over as soon as it started. Something that couldn't be stopped by making her fumble a phone. Something that once unleashed could never, ever, be undone. She had just the thing. * * * Apple Bloom did not, in fact, have a secret laptop in case her phone and regular laptop got taken away and Granny Smith unplugged the the ethernet cable that ran to Apple Bloom's room. She had a secret laptop because if any of the others knew about it they'd ask questions about where it had come from. Explaining that she'd made friends with a couple of less than reputable older girls, one of whom did not-quite-legal things for fun, had never been a conversation Apple Bloom was particularly interested in having. Sure, she'd never been into that, and there were no attempts to convert her to the dark side, but the gift of a fully working computer would have seemed suspicious to the other Apples. Even Apple Bloom herself had been flummoxed, briefly wondering if she was being buttered up for some untoward proposal, when she was given a completely free fully functional computer. Then its origins had been explained to her. While Cipher was a hacker in the usual sense, Puzzle was a hacker in a far more literal sense: breaking down equipment and then Frankensteining it back together in ways never intended by the manufacturer. She hacked things up and then soldered, screwed, and wired them into something new and different. The laptop had been practice for her, taking some obsolete tech from a handful of different systems and making them into a single cohesive whole. Once it was finished and tested, neither Puzzle nor Cipher had had any actual use for it. It was just a waste of space that they were more than happy to give away. Add to that their abject horror at learning that Apple Bloom didn't have her own computer back then, and it really was a foregone conclusion that they'd give it to her. Then time passed and things changed.  While Granny Smith still spoke with awe about the transition between 300 bits per second to 1200 back in her day, she accepted that modern technology did have a place in the rest of the family’s life.  When Sweet Apple Acres got hard line internet connections in most rooms, including most of the bedrooms, and Apple Bloom got her own desktop, most of the reason to use the ancient laptop had gone away.  When Granny Smith gave Apple Bloom a laptop last Christmas, all of the reason to use the secret one was gone. Because of that, Apple Bloom hadn't used the it in ages. She hadn't thought about it in ages. Now, though, it was exactly what she needed. An ancient laptop with both wireless and USB connections, when combined with a thumb drive she'd been keeping hidden for some time now, would mark the downfall of Sunset Shimmer. Unless the ambient demon magic protecting Sunset stopped the computer from working. After Apple Bloom excavated it, plugged it in, and turned it on, it seemed like demon magic might not be necessary. The oldness of the computer alone was probably one of the tortures of Hell in and of itself. She was greeted by the symbol of a decade old operating system, a reminder that the laptop had been little more than a paperweight between when Puzzle was finished making it and when it was given to Apple Bloom. Her fingers danced across the keys, her password was entered, and she . . . waited an excruciatingly long time for the desktop to actually be ready to use. Every step involved looking at a how her cursor transformed into a pixelated hourglass and everything told her “(not responding)” before eventually deciding to respond in a way that more resembled embracing sloth than it did actually working. Her initial plan had been to do the whole thing in one go, without ever opening her door, in order to minimize the chances of being caught. Her will to go through with that plan, though, had not merely been ground down. It had been sacked, hoisted, de-sacked, dropped through the hopper onto millstones, thoroughly ground down, resacked, sent through the whole process again (being routed to different millstones via automatic processes, of course), and finally exported for sale as ultra fine grain. Shortly after getting a sandwich and bringing it back to her room, the internet chat program was actually up and running. “Finally,” she said to no one in particular. “Ya better be online right now,” she muttered to someone who had no way to hear her. She scanned the list of friends and lucked out when she spotted a green check mark indicating someone was logged in. Unfortunately Apple Bloom didn’t know which someone because, Puzzle and Cipher had a habit of using whatever account was already open, regardless of which of them the account in question actually belonged to. She opened a chat box, which automatically invited the other user to a private chat. Before she finished typing her message, one popped up from the other user: <\...hello?> A glitched out icon appeared next to the message, Apple Bloom still had no idea if it was the actual avatar, being artistically glitched out, or if the glitching was a function of her laptop being constructed from literal garbage. Apple Bloom Typed. Apple Bloom could sense the pout. Cipher it was. <... Well well, if it isn't PoisonApple27! Don't remember picking up necromancy.> Apple Bloom responded with a frown. <*centuries> Apple Bloom rolled her eyes, then typed: