Anon-A-Fix

by Soufriere

Chapter Five: Betrayal?

As was typical for mid-Særrajeola, the morning was chilly. Literally about freezing, driven home by the uniform expanse of grey that covered the sky toward the horizon in every direction. Of course, most CHS students still had to walk to the main building, as the bus drop-off point was on the south side at the Junior High Annex.

A couple of days had passed since Rarity’s slumber party. Sunset Shimmer was in a good mood for once despite the cold, and walked into the school with a bit of a bounce in her step. She was later than usual due to taking the scenic route through the snow and found her five friends already standing at Pinkie’s locker, which sat across the hall from her own.

“Hey girls!” Sunset greeted them happily. They did not respond. Confused, Sunset tried to spur a conversation. “What’s going… on?” she asked out of curiosity and a mounting concern.

They still did not respond.

Baffled and more than a little worried, Sunset turned around to grab a textbook from her locker, not that it really mattered since she was long past the point where she had to actually attend classes, when she felt a rather hard smack on her back. Turning around, she saw Applejack sporting an severe expression. The other four, still by the lockers, looked just as peeved, except for Pinkie who looked sad with her partly deflated hair, and Fluttershy whose expression gave the impression she had just witnessed someone she cared about die.

“Ow,” Sunset said, sticking her hand under her shirt to rub the sore spot. “What is it, AJ?”

“Sunset, do you… have ya lost your phone recently?” asked Applejack, her tone distinctly accusatory.

“Um… no?,” Sunset replied, mostly sure as she took it out of her bag and showed it. “It’s right here. Why?”

This answer caused Applejack’s expression to harden into anger. “Then ya need to explain this.”

She handed over her own phone, its browser open to the MyStable page where Anon-A-Miss had posted a trove of pictures. Sunset recognized them immediately; they were from the impromptu costume photoshoot at Rarity’s slumber party. All of the silliness of that night laid bare for the public to see. The few pictures with Sunset herself in them were conspicuously absent.

“What?!” she asked, shocked. “How did she get our pictures?”

“These ain’t our pictures, Sunset. They’re yours. All of these photos were taken by you, remember?” Applejack stated matter-of-factly. Both of them knew she was absolutely right.

Sunset’s eyes darted in all directions in vain hope of some sort of salvation that would never come before speaking again. “This… doesn’t make any sense. I’ve had my phone on me the entire time, so how did she…?”

“Yeah, how did she??” Applejack interrupted mockingly, shoving her index finger into Sunset’s sternum, causing Sunset to grunt involuntarily in response. “How’d she know my embarrassing childhood nickname that I only told y’all last Torsdaag? How’d she get the pics from your phone? Even a farm gal like me don’t need a map to figure this one out: You’re Anon-A-Miss!”

Sunset stared at her friends in shock, mouth agape. “W-what?!”

“We trusted you, Sunset! We thought you were our friend!” Rainbow Dash snipped.

“Wait!” Sunset tried to salvage the situation. “I didn’t do this! I would never hurt any of you!”

Rainbow Dash was not through. “But you did! You were only pretending to be our friend so you could find out our secrets and go back to your old tricks, weren’t you? What? Flash Sentry wasn’t a juicy enough target anymore, so you thought you could pull crap to destroy us again and expect us to just take it?!”

Out of nowhere, Pinkie Pie leaned in, pointing at Sunset. “You… you secret stealer!” she near-growled.

“N-no! I… I don’t know how Anon-A-Miss got this stuff, but it wasn’t me! I’m not…” Sunset protested as her eyes started to water.

“You’re not the person we thought you were!” said Fluttershy, her eyes already bloodshot from crying, her expression a whirlwind of emotion.

Then she stopped and looked up as if her train of thought suddenly pulled into the station before continuing, this time with cold precision.

“Actually… no. You ARE the person we thought you WERE. Before. You never reformed, did you? Now that Twilight’s gone, it’s probably easy for you to slip back into being a sneaky bully. I can’t believe I took you at your word when you apologized for harassing me for three years!”

“But I… I…” Sunset felt her throat seize up. Her legs grew weak as Rarity, silent up to this point, approached her. While Rarity’s face initially showed just as much anger as AJ or Rainbow Dash, as she moved closer to Sunset she looked more sad than anything. Instinctively reaching to take Sunset’s hand, she stopped herself and formed a fist instead, bringing it back to her hip.

“Spring Fling, freshman year,” Rarity said quietly, causing Sunset to flinch before staring at her like a cow would stare at an abattoir if it were sapient. “It’s not difficult to notice this feels the same as back then. You told me that Sunset was gone. How… how could you do this? After what we’ve all been through together? After what you and I have been through?”

“I didn’t,” Sunset croaked as her leg strength gave out and she fell to her knees in the middle of the hallway. A crowd of teenagers had gathered round by that point and had heard much of the conversation.

“This is it, Sunset,” Applejack spat, glaring, as she folded her arms. “Far as I can tell, ain’t no other good explanation than ya sold us out. Twilight told us to give ya a chance. We did. You blew it. We’re done. Go on an’ tell whatever secrets ya want. We ain’t gotta listen.”

With that, the five girls all turned on their heels and walked away, leaving Sunset a sobbing wreck as other students glared at her for another minute before dispersing to their own classes.

---

Over the next week, as the semester rapidly approached its conclusion, Anon-A-Miss continued her reign of humiliation.

Rainbow Dash entered the library to check a book out of the Science section after her less-than-stellar performance on her last Biology exam before the upcoming final, when she noticed several of the Nerd clique huddled around one of the computers giggling. Upon approaching them to see what all the fuss was about, she saw Anon-A-Miss had found her test – marked in red with a large ‘D’ and a note from her teacher Mister Cranky to see him after class. She resisted the urge to pound the weedy geeks through the floor and stormed out of the library in a huff.

Anon-A-Miss had also posted the video of Fluttershy’s impromptu song attempt from the slumber party and labelled it “Fluttershy Singing FAIL!!”. The ensuing laughter from fellow students caused the girl to break down sobbing on the front steps of the school as Pinkie Pie comforted her, trying to remind Fluttershy that she was in fact an excellent singer… when given time to rehearse.

Meanwhile, Applejack continued to be inundated with oinks, calls of her embarrassing nickname, and pictures of pigs. She growled, a tacit admission that it was getting to her.

Rarity had donned a big hat and sunglasses to escape notice, but students found her out as her skin, hair, and the clothes themselves were dead giveaways. They laughed at her anyway, partly from the knowledge that she had been the host, but also for the duckface, leading to quacking from some students. However, the fact that most pictures of her showed her wearing nothing but her strapless nightgown that left little to the imagination led to several boys and some girls calling her a slut and/or whore. Some boys tried to proposition her without success.

Not even popular boy Flash Sentry was immune. Anon-A-Miss insinuated that he was sexually attracted to horses. This was technically true in the broadest sense, given his relationships with Equestrians Sunset and Twilight, but still cruel. He tried his best to ignore it until the jocks wore horse masks.

The five friends would meet up whenever and wherever they could, just to have strength in numbers when facing the crowd, their single thought being:

“What do we do?”

Comments

[Crazycartoons5488]

I can't believe how Stupid are those girls framed Sunset Shimmer she is not anon a miss. They believe those Stupid lies.