Into Equestria (Legacy Edition)

by TheMajorTechie

The fractures grow,

Lisa’s eyes remained locked to the screen. “I… how—how did this happen? I thought we made sure that environment damage was disabled on the castle!”

A light buzz came from Samantha’s pocket. She pulled out her phone, reading through the message. Closing her eyes, she set the device screen-down on the table.

“Another attack.”

“Another?” Lisa gasped, “Where is it? Ponyville? Canterlot?”

“Neither. It’s not in Equestria. Whatever it is that’s happening is being spread across multiple simulations.”

Lisa hook her head, her breathing growing frantic. “Here, I’ll call in the students. They can help us in this…this—" She reached for her phone.

“Are you serious, Lis? You want three kids no older than… what— Thirteen? Fourteen? —to join into the simulations with full privileges?”

Lisa nodded. “They’re the top three of our classes. I mean, sure, they never exactly met, being in different sessions of the same class, but still… they’re gonna be our best bet. You, me, and them—we’ll go into Equestria and wherever else that got hit, fix things up, and come back out. Easy as that. And it’ll be a great way to get them to know each other, too!”

Samantha pursed her lips, drumming her fingers on the table. “I’m still not quite sure about this, Lis. We’re talking about at least one person who has backdoor access to the simulations. It doesn’t exactly help that we aren’t able to track them, either. Heck, it could very well be someone inside this building!”

“Which is why I’m calling them up. Get some techs on call to shut down the networks entirely.”

“But they hardly have any experience in the simulations! Wouldn’t you be putting them at risk by doing this?”

Lisa nodded again. “I know that, and yes. But what matters most right now is keeping any more damage from happening. Student or not, I’ll make sure nobody caught up in this is harmed.”

---

Elise shifted in her seat, glancing between the two boys sat beside her. Were these really the two others that got in besides her? They… weren’t exactly the kind of people she expected to see in a place like this. Especially given how they were panic-called to the building by Lisa herself.

Speaking of whom, Lisa stood at the front of the room, a nervous grin plastered across her face. She twitched, taking a deep breath.

“Now, I know this isn’t quite the best way to get everyone familiar with each other, but… we kinda have an emergency on our hands. Boys, between you is Elise. Be nice to her, alright? And Elise, that is Damian and Robert to your left and right, respectively. Alright, introductions over! Let’s get on with why we’re here so soon.

“Someone has been—is launching an attack on our networks. We’re still not exactly sure how or why they’re doing it, but the fact stands that even under a full lockdown on our servers, we can’t be sure whether or not any further breaches may be happening. I know you three are technically still only students, but much of the rest of the people we have in the company are caught up in keeping track of just about everything entering and leaving the company. Outside of them, you three are our best bet, and if we really have to, we…” she paused abruptly, clearing her throat. “We might have to pull in the rest of your classes.”

One of the boys—Damian, raised a hand. “What about Miss Samantha? What’s she doing right now?”

“She’s currently busy working with the rest of the company to keep things from spiraling out of control… if… if you couldn’t tell, we’re all a little on-edge at the moment.”

Lisa drew in a breath.

“Now, I know it’s a little soon to be doing this, but I’d like for the three of you to join me in the simulations. While Samantha helps patch up whatever holes she finds in our security, us four will be fixing up the damage that was done.”

Damian raised his hand again. “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to just restore a backup of the locations affected?”

Elise nodded. He did have a point. Though, Lisa quickly countered with her response.

“I did consider doing that, but… it’d kinda sorta break the immersion of the simulation for anyone around. And… wait, admin rights to restore the thing would probably just be the same thing, and…” Lisa trailed off into a mumble. “…you know what? You’re right. I’ll… I’ll just go make sure that nobody’s gonna get trapped in a wall or anything from restoring a backup, and then I’ll… uh, restore a backup. Elise, watch over the boys for me, ‘kay? It shouldn’t take me too long.”

She wandered out of the room without another word. The door clicked shut. Robert let out a loud snore.

Damian elbowed Elise. “So… you like anime?”

That was probably the most awkward moment in Elise’s day.

---

Pretty Lady watched her monitor, swiveling the mic down on her headphones. “How’s the progress going? You hit the backups like I instructed? Night had absolutely no idea that they even had backups when I brought it up to her.”

“Yes, yes,” a voice replied, “We poked around and managed to get into an offsite datacenter, and while you were busy, we junked their on-sites. Can you believe the on-site backups were on the same servers as the main data?”

Pretty Lady smirked. “And tell me, how did you and the others get into their datacenter?”

The voice chuckled heartily. “You know well what you were doing when you bought that stash of social security numbers. Beyond that, it was really just a matter of an ambush or two before we could rush the place. Of course, nobody was killed in the process, as you prefer. Would you like to hold them for ransom? It would certainly bring in some much-needed cash if it succeeds.”

“Nah, no ransoms. All that’d bring is more trouble. What matters is that they don’t recognize you all. I presume you were all disguised?”

“As best as we could.”

“Good. Pull back and lay low for some time. Your job is done for now.”

She hung up, placing her phone back on the table.

---

Elise grumbled under her breath while Damian pestered Robert. Lisa had only been gone for some five or so minutes, and already it seemed like they’d spent hours in the same room as each other. Looking down, she picked up her backpack. There wasn’t any sense in staying if she wasn’t going to be doing anything.

“For the last time, Damian, I’m not Japanese!”

It certainly seemed like they were getting along.

The door opened before she reached it. Lisa stepped into the room, visibly more anxious than when she left.

“Our backups are gone. Both the on-site and offsite arrays were hit at some point or another. We… we can’t restore anything without the risk of importing corrupted data. The best I could find were some old flash drives in my desk drawer from several years ago.”

By now, the two boys had stopped bickering.

Damian raised his hand again. “So, I’m guessing we’ll be connecting after all, then?”

Lisa nodded, but otherwise remained silent. It must’ve been hard for her, seeing so much of your work wiped in under a day. Even if it was only a few locations in the simulations, the fact that there weren’t any backups certainly made the possibility of another attack that much more threatening.

Elise glanced back to her new classmates. If anything, they looked excited to join in. Weren’t they worried in any way about the whole ordeal? Sure, it was still more or less a game of sorts, but this was real danger they were dealing with, regardless of whether or not they could actually be physically harmed while they were connected.

“L-Lisa?” she mumbled, tugging on her mentor’s sleeve, “How bad is it? Is… is there going to be a chance that it could happen again while we’re in the simulations?”

“I don’t really know, Elise. I—” Lisa hung her head. “I never really expected for anything like this to happen. We planned out just about everything, from all the ethical implications down to what to serve in the cafeteria. I never imagined that we’d one day be the target of an attack as devastating as this.”

“So, what do you think we should do then?”

Lisa tensed up, curling her hands into fists. She turned to Elise, a determined smirk on her face.

“We fight back.”