Tuesday, December 15, 2016 11:45a, Library at Canterlot City High School

Sasha had just sat down to a table in the library and sent a text.

Sasha: I'm here.

Chloe: On my way.

Sasha pushed his glasses to his face as he took out his laptop and turned it on.

"Software's too old to do all of this in a day, let alone fifteen minutes," he said to himself.

Pushing a strand of blue hair out of his face, the Russian looked around before returning to his laptop, presenting him with a pale-beige screen with a login box.

"I hate this kind of keyboard," he said, typing in a rather long password and logging into the system before plugging his phone in to charge and turning on a bluetooth hotspot.

Meanwhile, Chloe was surrounded by five girls, all trying to get her to hack into the new Anon-a-Miss page on the school's social media network.

"No, I won't do it," Chloe said, pushing her glasses to her face, "Hacking something like that would be petty."

"We know it was Sunset!" Alexandria said, "Hack her and tell us where to go to beat the crap out of that hippie bitch, Sweetie!"

"Okay, call me that again, and you'd better have a good dental plan!" Chloe replied, ready to beat the athlete senseless with a wrench.

"Alright!" Jamie said, a southern accent making itself well-known, "Them's fight'n words!"

"You wanna piece of me?" Chloe said, hitting the farmer and then athlete with the wrench.

"My God, Darling!" Janice said, holding a hand to her mouth, "How… uncouth!"

Chloe held her arms out slightly as she leaned forward, wrench still in hand, "Anyone else?"

The three remaining girls shook their heads.

"Good, now let me go or you get to see what I'm like when I'm even more pissed off."

At that, she put her wrench back in her jacket and went to the library with her laptop case.

Chloe knew that she had seen the fire-haired hippie around, but Chloe knew a biker and someone with mechanical inclination when she saw them; Sunset Shimmer was a biker with a hippie name at most.

"Better not come at me again," she said, going around a corner, "Wanna ask this 'Sunset' a few things."

When she finally made it to the library, it didn't take long to find Sasha typing away.

"You started without me," she said, taking her computer out and plugging it in.

"Firstly," the Russian said, "I told you to meet me at the west of the hour and you didn't. Second, I'm not even where we wanted to be yet."

"For all you know I had to shove a tampon up my vag. Be reasonable."

Sasha stopped hacking and looked up from his laptop as one of the exact same model started up across from him, "You weren't on your period."

"No, but it's my money that's paying for the graffitied garage that we're living in."

"And my money's going into what's getting us more capital, why did you bring up your menstrual cycle?"

"How long until you're ready for my mechanical prowess?"

"A few minutes," Sasha said, "What's with the blood?"

"Those girls about the blog."

"Sunset's friends?"

"Yup," Chloe said, logging into her laptop.

"You know what's great about getting old school laptops?"

"What?"

"They always have so much untapped potential."

"You always know how to rebuild old tech junk…" Chloe said, logging onto Sasha's network and opening a program she used to mod her car with, "Are you sure we can do this?"

"Absolutely," Sasha said, "Now, we just need to wait until someone drives by the garage in a Japanese car newer than 2008. Open your laptop to the network on root and home."

"Ready."

"I'm going to SSH into your laptop and pull the file over to mine so I can blast it over to the dickface in that van. We'll catch 'em redhanded."

"Finally," she said, pulling a chair next to Sasha.

As they both waited for a certain Suzuki Vitara, Sasha received a text message as he started sending the file to their home server.

Nyx: I'm coming to Oregon to check on you, so you better not have fucked anything up.

"The vampire's coming," Sasha said, "Guess what that means."

"Oh. My. Fuck."

"At least she's not the putz we're after."

"True, true."

"Anyway, we have a number of things to do when we get back, assuming Nyx doesn't get here before then."

"Let's hope," Chloe said, seeing a 2009 Suzuki Grand Vitara on the street cam at the garage, "There it is!"

"Scanning for plates..." Sasha said, typing furiously, "Found it! Plate number 42-1L3NM5, registered to a Malcolm Smith for a 2014 Ford Fusion."

"So it's a stolen plate?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn," Chloe said, "Move."

Sasha slid his laptop over to Chloe, so she started typing, almost as furiously as Sasha had been doing so moments earlier, the SUV quickly backfiring and the engine dying.

"Whelp, that's done," Sasha said, "What do you wanna do now?"

"Those five bitches were all over me in the hallway about hacking MyStable."

"Those toolkits are on my laptop."

"Got it," Chloe said, closing her laptop and putting it away as Sasha started hacking into the MyStable servers.

While Sasha was typing and in the zone, the orange girl came into he library and started looking something up on a computer, referencing several books on what seemed to be mechanics in the process.

"Dammit," Sunset said quietly as the link from Google came to an error page.

ERROR 403 Forbidden for student account access

"Please…"

"You know," Chloe said, startling the girl before lowering her voice, "We can get you around the firewall. What do you need?"

"There's this abandoned car near my place," the girl lied, "A few things happened lately, and I just… wanna take my mind off a few things for a while and see if I can't get it going for a joyride, you know?"

"Yeah," Chloe said, pulling her back, "I get ya. Bit of a gearhead myself, actually. Don't risk getting caught over the school's networks. Just bring me over to your place and I'll get her running for ya."

"I… don't let people over often."

"I get it," Chloe said, "But get me the make and model of it. Guarantee, I can get it racing."

"Thanks," Sunset said, turning back to the screen as Chloe went back over to Sasha, who had been hacking into various CHS-owned servers.

"You see what I see?" Chloe said.

"She's not Anon-a-miss, she flat-out duped the hell out of you, and she has underlying trauma that's likely going to kill her," Sasha said, "Approach with caution."

"What do you think the chance of this abandoned car being someone else's is?"

"Likely, eighty-to-twenty odds favoring her resorting to theft."

"I know."

"Let's follow at a distance. I picked up on some markers that people display when suicide is imminent, but could be depression."

"Diagnosis?"

"Nothing's for certain based on what I gathered. Don't wanna put out a fire that hasn't started yet, could make it burn brighter, hotter, and do more damage."

"I'd buy that, but I wanna see where she lives."

Sasha glanced between the screen, Chloe, and Sunset, the expression on his face showing that he had come to a realization that he couldn't believe.

"You're not gonna believe this," he said.

"What is it?" Chloe said, hurrying over to see the screen.

"It's the middle-schoolers. Younger sisters of two of the people you beat the crap out of and that English drama chick."

"Not. Good."

"Yeah," Sasha said, "I'll say that again, but I need more info before I have an accurate entrypoint into this."

"What now?"

Almost as if on cue, Sasha saw where his firewall had been breached.

"We get our shit and leave," he said, shutting the laptop and putting his equipment away, "Invite her for lunch tomorrow or Monday."

At that, they both began to head out.