The Hacker Pwny

by Chetzi

Chapter 9: Going home

August 6, 2:48 A.M.

I sat in a large semi in the co-drivers seat. We bounced along the night road with Bentley and Cortez asleep. It was cold and I had a blanket with the pattern of computer code wrapped around me. My legs were being held up, next to my chest as I slowly let out breaths of warm steam that fogged up the window I was looking out of. My face felt heavy and rusty as my eyes drifted in and out of sight. It shouldn't be this cold, I thought as I rubbed my eyes. I needed sleep. But my face was freezing and I shivered in the cold. What kept me up all night is: why is it so fucking cold? We're heading toward the Arizona desert. Rainfall, humidity, wind, and everything else but temperature indicated that we were in the right place. This just isn't right. Unless... it had something to do with the portal. Although wouldn't people notice that it was unusually cold? I haven't heard anything about this. My mind pondered solutions until I noticed something. It was a brief speck of light. I kept looking outside until I could see it again. It did it again. The same speck of light. I noticed a pattern. The road and the signs are repeating themselves. And once they finish a loop, it resets. I figured it out, we're trapped. This is all fake. I threw off the blanket and rushed over to Bentley in the drivers seat, asleep. I shake him until he begins to stir. He yawns and says,

"What time is it?" I point a finger to Cortez, who's sleeping on the backseats and say,

"Wake her up." He slowly hops up and shakes her. Instinctively, her fist shot out nailing Bentley in the nose. He grabs his nose and screams,

"OW! What the fuck!" Cortez opened her eyes and said,

"Sorry, instincts. And what is it? It's not even morning." I answer her with,

"You will see. Bentley, stop the truck." He complies and presses a few buttons. He grunts and says,

"That's odd. It says we're not moving. What the fuck?" I smirked in victory. I knew it. I said,

"Because we're not." I open up the door and hop out. My feet land on hard concrete and there's a rift of waves darting out from my feet, disrupting the road and everything else. The rifts get bigger and everything looks unstable. The rifts stop and everything molds back together. I start to walk toward the speck of light I keep seeing. I hit a smooth wall after about 20 steps and feel around it. My hands meet something that protrudes slightly. I reel my hand back punch the object. There's a shattering sound of glass and the object breaks, revealing some kind of projector. Then the outside highway turns all black and fades away to reveal a white round room. The temperature also returns to normal. I then yell,

"The game's over. Show yourself." I hear a hissing sound and a cloud of steam comes out in a rectangular pattern near me. Then a door lifts open and someone short walks in. The person is wearing full body clothing so I can't make out anything about them. They had blue jeans and a grey long-sleeve jacket on with a stripped blue and orange scarf and hat. But, I could make out one thing, the person's eyes. They were a deep grey. Jack had grey eyes. I remember him being slightly taller, but that was years ago. The masked person, who I'm believing to be Jack, points toward the door they came out and then walks through it, motioning for us to come with them. I shot a quick glance toward Bentley and Cortez, telling them to follow me and watch out. We all piled into the dark room through the door and could make out nothing. Then a large electric hum could be heard and overhead lights popped on. The room wasn't small. It was enormous. There were brown wooden crates stacked up as far as the eye could see. Each of them unlabeled, but important looking. I walked down the current isle I was in and saw the same person as before. They reached out their hand, which was covered by a glove, and I grabbed it. They then ran, at speeds that I could barely keep up with. It was only a few seconds before we found ourselves in some lap. With the portal. All done. It was just big to fit in a closet and was made of pure quartz and shined slightly in the dull light. There was nothing else but a few metal rods sticking out of the side. I had assumed the person next to me was Jack so I said,

"Thanks, Jack. But why do all this? Where's everyone else? And why trap us in that room?" He looked down and spoke for the first time.

"Jack is dead." It was a girl! She had a soft, edgeless voice. "The project got finished and he was killed from some kind of poising. Everyone left. They never looked back. I'm jack's daughter. I was left here and no one noticed me. I couldn't leave, no one took me home. I've lived here for years now. Once I noticed that you were coming near, I was scared. I used an illusion and trapped you there until I knew what to do. I had no clue what to do when you figured it out. No one has ever been able to figure it out." She took off her long-sleeve jacket, reveling a 15 year old female body. She then took off her hat and scarf and her long, flowing blonde hair shot out. She had Jack's face. She must really be his daughter. "Take the portal and go. I don't want you here." I might need her. If she really is this closely related to Jack, she must be good at building and driving. Bentley and Cortez are close behind me when I said,

"We need this portal. But, I want you to come with us. What is your name?" The girl blanches at the thought of this. She held out her hand, wanting me too shake it. I did and she said,

"My name is Jessica. I would love to come with you. I've been stuck here for years. But what do you need the portal for?" Bentley runs up and pushes me out of the way and grabs her hand. He then shakes her hand rapidly while saying,

"Hi! I'm Bentley! I'm awesome! And single!" He also had a overly happy grin. The girl raises her other hand, puts it into a fist, then launches it right at his jaw. It connects and Bentley stumbles back a few feet. Jessica calmly says,

"I'm not your girlfriend." Bentley argues with,

"Not yet!" He then jumps toward her and hugs tightly, not letting go. Jessica's face turned a bright red as she just stood there. I should probably do something before he loses his penis. Or not. This could be funny. It took about 10 seconds for her to grab his torso and spin him around. He let go of her and she sent him flying a few feet skidding across the floor. Cortez just giggled. We need to get back to the mission. I commanded them,

"Bentley, Cortez, go unplug the portal. Jessica, try not to break any of Bentley's bones." Jessica growled,

"If he touches me one more time..." she folded her arms and glared at Bentley. "Now, back to my original question. Why do you need the portal?" I replied with,

"To visit somewhere. It is past the solar system and-" Bentley jumped toward her and exclaimed,

"Equestria!" She looked down and chuckled. She looked back at me then at Bentley. She then asked,

"And you really expect me to believe that?" Wait, she didn't even ask what Equestria is and she already knew it enough to not believe it. Does that mean... I just might be able to use this for my advantage. Bentley answered her with,

"Yeah! Ask Dylan! He was there! Luna teleported him there!" Her eyes whip out at me. I nervously said,

"Uh... well... yeah..." Cortez called out,

"Bentley! This is a two-person job. I could use help." Bentley then walked over to Cortez and continued his job. Jessica continued to glare at me like I'm crazy. I better do this quickly. I said,

"I was there. The only proof I have is this." I held out the disk Vinyl gave me. She glanced at it and looked back at me. She continued to glare at me. I guess she doesn't believe me. "You've lived here your whole life. You've been isolated and no one has been nice to you. If I had to guess, you're a pegisister because you have been alone and when you saw the nice, friendly ponies on screen, you gained hope. You wanted to go there, so you dreamed about it. Well, now you can. Just come with me and you will see all the ponies in real life." It looks like I hit a nerve. She just stood there, stunned and wide-eyed. She then shook her head in disbelief. She then sighed and said,

"You're right. I do like the show. If there was a chance I could live in Equestria, I would take it. Actually, I've been working on building a virtual reality of Equestria. It's all I could do. Everyday, it seemed to be more and more impossible. I haven't touched the project in a year. But, if you're telling the truth, and Equestria is real, I will devote my life to going there." She kneels on her right knee.

"Thank you, but we're informal. There's no need to do that." She stands back up with her eyes red and stained with tears. She then lunges toward me and brings me into a tight hug. "Uhh, You can let go now." Just then Bentley joins the hug. Cortez comes walking up and says,

"Okay, you can end the group hug now. We should get the portal on the truck now." In agreement, I said,

"Right. Cortez, help me with this." Cortez and I hefted the hunk of rock through the long row of boxes. We threw it into the bed of the large truck and I patted my hands together. Jessica was right behind us, with Bentley still holding onto her. Jessica said,

"Restrain your dog." I rolled my eyes and said,

"All of you, pile into the truck." Cortez jumped in, Jessica took driver seat and Bentley took the seat between me and Jessica. I was in the co-drivers seat. Bentley said,

"This car drives its self. And I'm pretty sure you're too young to drive." She just scoffed and and hit a few buttons on some device on her wrist. A mechanical whir was heard and the white dome around the truck lifted up. It was still dark, but I could see some tunnel being lit up by dim orange floor lights. Jessica wasted no time in hitting the pedal. We zoomed forward through the tunnel at rapid speeds. The lights were a blur as the speed gauge was reaching max. I could a bright light at the end of the tunnel and we reached it in seconds. We were outside, on a lone highway. The ground nearby was dry, bare and cracked. I couldn't see anything in terms of life outside of a few cacti. We drove for a few minutes and then Bentley leaned over to me and whispered,

"I think she likes me." Sigh. I tell him,

"I don't think-" That's it! This might be funny. "Yeah, have you seen her eyes? She looks to be your soulmate." I said that loud enough for Jessica to hear me and her grip on the steering wheel tightened. Bentley then leaned back up and said to Jessica in a overly dramatic voice,

"I was once doing the mission where I had to infiltrate a secret base, the owner was the Russian president, and it was in the Antarctic about 2 miles underground! I waltzed in there and started throwing grenades everywhere! There were thousands of Russian mercenaries all carrying deadly chain guns and flamethrowers, but they were no match for me!" Russian president, Antarctic base 2 miles underground, mercenaries, I remember that job. I leaned my head back and started to review the memory. That fateful day, 3 years ago. The day of Lawn's death.

I laid there in the freezing cold snow with Cortez, Bentley, and Lawn. We were all dressed up in arctic camo, shades of white and grey. All of us were looking through advanced binoculars with radars and scanners, we liked to call, omniculars. Lawn said,

"Bit of asshats are hit'en the drink bar." In his usual gruff, scratchy voice. He pings a location on his omnicular and we all receive the marker. I shifted my omnicular over to the blue mark and see 3 large people in heavy grey coats. They were drinking something in a metal cup that had steam raising up above it. They sat inside a small, makeshift, metal, round building that stood 8 feet high. It had 2 small windows that were cracked and had ice growing on it. I raised my hand and put up two fingers. Cortez and I raise our snipers. Cortez had a good enough angle to be able to takeout two of the guards in one shot. I whipped my fingers forward and shot my gun. There was a soft, CLICK and then there was a prewp prewp and all 3 guards fell down. Bentley said,

"Nice kill. Tango down." Cortez slugged him in the arm and then said,

"This isn't call of duty." Bentley rubbed his arm and said,

"Hey, I learned everything I knew about guns from CoD." Lawn stood up and cracked his back.

"Coast's clear, pukenuts. Let's get moving." Lawn barked at us. I looked at him and noticed his short grey, his powdered white mustache, his scrunched up wrinkled face, and a large red scar over his right eye. He was a damn good strategist and our leader. He may have been a bit rude at times, but he was a natural leader and always put his squad first. I was 16 at the time, and had a heavy dose of acme and was slightly emo. Bentley was 14 at the time, and very short. He wore glasses and was slightly chubby. Cortez was the squad's second-in-command. She hasn't changed much.

The reason why I joined his squad is because, one day, I was hacking, just because I was bored. I was looking through security cameras of 'top secret labs' and noticed something. I saw Lawn rush into the lab, guns ablaze. I thought, what an idiot. He's a dead man. I heard many gun shots and smoke filled the place up. I thought he was dead. The smoke cleared out, and he was alive. Took a bullet to the chest, but looked fine. He was a tough old bastard, I'll give him that. He made a signal with his hand and Cortez came running up to him. He then kept going down the hall, gun at chin level. The lab he was in had nothing in particular of value I could find, so, I decided to keep watching him. He kept walking down the hall, checking each room. He was a heavily trained military veteran. Whenever someone aimed a gun at him, he shot them dead before they could squeeze the trigger. He walked into a large room, Cortez near him. He walked toward the middle of the room, swinging his gun around. An alarm sounded and within seconds, he was surrounded with about 30 people, each one at point-blank range, holding an ACR. Cortez put her gun down and raised her arms in surrender. I found a signal I could jack on someone's radio and listened to what they were saying. Lawn smiled and said,

"I guess this is it. Cortez, it has been an honor serving with you. I've been saving this last bullet. I'll see you all in hell." He raised a desert eagle to his head, finger on the trigger. No! I gotta save him! I desperately looked around everything I could in the room, begging for something to help him with. Nothing. The old man was about to die. Then I found a bug in the software used on the commutation devices that the guards were using.That's it! I overloaded each of the radios that they were carrying. They burned the enemy's skin and each one was distracted. Lawn wasted no time. He tackled the nearest one. He then stole the one guy's ACR and shot around him. Everybody, except Cortez, slumped to the ground, a bloody hole in all or their heads. How in the fuck did he do that? This one is strange. I should keep watching him. His ability to adapt and improvise is amazing. He tosses an ammo to clip to Cortez and she slammed it into her sub-machine gun. He continue through the room and came across a control panel. He pushed a few buttons and the console turned red. He then fired a few rounds into the panel for good measure. Then he turned around and walked out. I need to contact this guy, his work looks important, and I needed something to do. I had such potential, but I could never use it bring alone. I scanned Lawn, looking for any radio waves coming off of him. Nothing. Then I checked Cortez and she had a badly secured short range two-way radio on her. I hacked into it and spoke on speaker phone.

"Hello, My name is Dylan. I helped you back out there and I would like to join your squad on missions." Cortez looked surprised and Lawn just shook his head. He then said,

"So, you're a hacker. I could use someone of your talent. You are now part of the squad. Meet us at..." He told me directions and time to a abandoned warehouse. Just like that, I was in. A few days later, I went to the warehouse. The air was chilly and dry and it stunk of sewer. I cautiously stepped through a large garage door that had been rusted and broken. A few red laser dots appeared around me. It was a trap. I launched myself under a nearby desk, and could hear gunfire rain down. By the mechanical whirring, I could tell they were sentries. I pulled out my laptop, which I always carry with me, and deactivated them one by one. They were simple military infrared-connected turrets that I could hack easily. I got out from under the table, which had no holes in it. They sentries must have fired blanks. This was a test. Dash it all, I should have known. Come on! I'm smarter then this! I called out,

"Okay, test over. Show yourself." A shadowy figure appeared out from a wide pole. It was Lawn. He nodded and said,

"Welcome to the team." I then came back to reality, back to the snowy wasteland. I was the last to get up. We all silently trudged trough the snow until we came upon the main building. It was a fairly large factory. Bentley stuck a small explosive on the back door and it burst open. The bomb was called a SED. It was made by Bentley and stands for Silent Explosive Device. We switched to our ballistic shotguns and Lawn took lead. He went through a few boxes and kicked open a door and then rushed up and sliced a nearby guards neck. The guard fell down and we continued forward. We arrived at a control panel and Lawn motioned for me to hack it. I did, the defense was simple and took no time to break. I stuck in a USB drive and downloaded blueprints for an experimental freeze laser. It was like a regular laser, but instead of adding heat, it took it away. It worked, but it didn't freeze anything quick enough. It could freeze a rubber ball at room temp in 39 days, and it couldn't freeze humans at all. Someone was paying us good money to delete the data and research. I kept it with me on a small USB drive just in case I ever needed it. An alarm went off and we getting swarmed by guards. Lawn bark at Bentley,

"Bentley, blow open a hole and the wall and escape. The rest of you get out of here. I'll keep these dick-breaths out of here." He said as he fired round after round at anyone who entered the room. Bentley did just that, he threw a C-43, his own design, at a nearby wall and blew it open. They all rushed out, except for me and Lawn. I yelled at him,

"Come on! We have to go!" He stood his ground and growled back,

"No, there are too many. Leave. GET OUT OF HERE!" I ran out, following the others. As I looked back at Lawn, who was about a hundred feet away, I saw his last ammo cartridge fall to the floor and noticed he was out. He threw he gun on the ground and pulled out his Desert Eagle, freshly polished. There was one bullet in that gun. One bullet that held a lot of meaning. It was gold plated and had the words, 'Meet me in heaven, Lawn' inscribed on it. He aimed it at his head as he was swarmed by guards. He smiled. His finger tensed. The gun clicked. There was a bang. Lawn collapsed on the floor, a smile on his face. He wanted a beautiful death. He got one. He saved our lives by sacrificing his own. I will never forget him.

I snapped back to reality to hear Jessica laughing and Bentley saying,

"Then the guy tripped over his own gun and fell face first, knocked out cold." He made hand motions and they both laughed, enjoying themselves. After Lawn's death, we all split up and went our separate ways. I tried to keep us together, but Bentley didnt want to hear it. He just walked away and never looked back. Cortez also left me, but she eventually wanted the team back together. I glanced over to Bentley and he was already holding hands with Jessica, who was laughing loudly. Wait, did I just have a flashback inside a flashback? Don't think I've done that before. Jessica then stopped laughing and looked into Bentley's eyes. She leans forward and lays a kiss on Bentley' lips. He just sits there, dazed. I laughed and said,

"Next stop, Equestria."

Bored of humans? One hipster pony coming up!

I snickered, with a black marker on my hoof, as I looked over my victim. Rainbow Dash laid there, snoring and with her face covered in black marks. I drew a mustache, a monocle, and the letters 'VS' on her face. I was in her cloud home and I could stand in it because I brought small rags that I laid on the fluffy cloud floor. Occasionally, she muttered 'I can eat carpet better then you.' and 'Oh, Soarin, you're so big.' I couldn't help but giggle at what she sleep-talks about. When my prank was over, I tip-hoofed out of her cloud home, picking up the rags on my out.

Okay, that's enough of the hipster pony for now. Read on to find out what happens next.

*Thump* *glihcz* I whipped my head up, toward the sound. We were only about 5 miles from home and driving on the highway. It was about 10 at night and very dark.

"Anyone else hear that?" I said. Cortez looked at me and said,

"I did too. Sounded like a landing from magnetic boots, followed by them powering on them. I'd recommend shooting it." Magnetic boots, this means someone's trying to steal something in our car. I heard the buzz of a blowtorch being lit and saw sparks flying down from the ceiling. Bentley mouthed the words 'Aww, shit'. I looked back at Bentley and said,

"This thing have any defensive capabilities?" He shook his head and said,

"This is a transport vehicle, not an attack car." I used my hands and signaled for Cortez to shoot it. She pulled out a M9 and fired it once. There was another loud thump and the squeal of something sliding off of the roof. The Jessica looked out the window and said,

"We have 3 cars cashing us. 2 have front-mounted chain guns and the last has a steel pusher strapped to the front. Make and model lead me to believe that their American FBI stranded issue intercept cars." Fucking l! First Russia, then the CIA, then the FBI, who's fucking next! They might as well invite fucking superman at this rate! Calm down, think. It's too risky to send someone out as long as the chain guns are there, but they're front-mounted which means they're auto-targeting. I grabbed my laptop off the floor and banged on the keyboard. I sreachrd for nearby signals and I found the chain gun's targeting computer and broke down it's defense. It was too stubborn to allow me to reconfigure it's targeting parameters, so I just DDOS'd it and then looked out the window. They stopped spinning right before they were about to fire and pointed down. They were offline for now. I hear another 2 thumps and the electric sounds of magnetic boots latching on. I turned to Bentley and said,

"Bent, ya mind taking care of the latchers up above?" He nodded and pulled out a plain green grenade. He then stood up and opened the top hatch. He stuck his top half out and said,

"Hey, I think you dropped this." He then ducked down and closed the latch. Only 2 seconds passed and I heard an explosion. That took care of them. Jessica then yelled,

"3 more cars. Each having about 6 people. Hold on to your balls, I'm ramming them." She turned the steering wheel hard and the truck screech hard and she threw the stick in reverse. We were then going backwards in the same direction. She then slammed the transmission stick into forward and the tires screeched forward. Right before impact, she turned the wheel again and we went longways into 2 cars, sending them flying. Without losing any momentum, Jessica turned more and we faced the right direction again, going full speed. Cortez handed me a handgun and said,

"Come on, lets go fuck up their day." Bentley then slapped a white grenade, with Vinyl's cutie mark on it, in my hand and said,

"Made this for you. Go give 'em hell." I smiled and jumped out of the top hatch. Cortez followed closely, we both has auto-detecting magnetic shoes on. The wind whipped my face as we speed past the rolling plains at 80 miles an hour. The road was a blur as I slowly walk toward the edge. Cortez ran and jumped off the edge and right before she jumped, she grabbed my shirt and pulled me with her. We landed on the big truck with the pusher. Less landed, more fell, for me anyway. I stumbled back up and saw that Cortez had already pulled out the driver and the other person's head a bloody pulp, all over the window. If she could do this, then why the fuck am I here? I'm the hacker, not the fighter! Cortez then punched the steering wheel and jumped onto another car. I threw myself at the same car Cortez jumped on as the car I was just on slid over to the left, crashing into another FBI car. I landed on the hood and the person in the co-driver raised a glock 18 out the window and aimed it right toward me. Time slowed and I thought about what to do. It would take him .89 seconds for him to pull the trigger and the bullets to hit me. He held it at an odd angle and I knew that they were inaccurate weapons. The chance of him hitting me would be 4% combined with the 40 rounds in the gun would mean he had a 86% chance of hitting me with one magazine with aerodynamics thrown in. I threw my body into action by running up the front window and then grabbing the gun, making him spray bullets harmlessly in the air. 40 bullets later, the gun clicked and I let go of the gun. It would take him 5.58 seconds to reload and fire at me. It would take me 3.8 seconds to throw a grenade in the car. The choice was obvious. I pulled out the Vinyl grenade. Yanked out the pin. Tossed it in the window. I then turned to Cortez and signaled her to go back to our truck. We both pulled out magnet guns and shot them at the large truck. We shot forward, dodging glock 18 fire, and climbed into our truck. Bentley greeted us with,

"Did you use the-" Just then there was a long, low sound that sounded like it came out of a bass stereo. I held my ears and the ground shook more and more rapidly every second and all the cars slid off the road, spinning and crashing into each other. Jessica was having trouble, but she was still a good enough driver to keep us afloat. It reminded me of Vinyl's alarm clock. Bentley then said,

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." I looked out the window and saw nothing. No more FBI, no more fighting, for now, anyway. I leaned back into my seat, hoping for this long day to be over, but not before I said to Bentley,

"You're one crazy son of a bitch, ya know that?"

Comments

[Anteh]

Grenade that destroys FBI... "It reminded me of Vinyl's alarm clock."

[Butterbeaner]

Are you ready for the roughneck bass!?

[Kinky Pie]

Damn, I need a Vinyl grenade!

[nevergone]

OH. MY. GOD. i would like to by that fine vinyl grenade you got there name your price and i will pay it