Chapter 4: The Hidden Room
Upon arriving at CHS, Sasha and Sunset saw a number of familiar faces, virtually none of them friendly to Sunset.
"Here's the deal," Sasha said, getting a notepad and pen from the glovebox, "You're my cousin and you're a mute," he gave her the paper and pen, "Got it?"
"Got it."
Sasha and Sunset took the computers out of the back of the car, along with a shoebox of what looked to be garbage.
"Ready?" Sasha asked.
Sunset nodded and followed Sasha inside.
"Lot of nasty faces," he said, "I'll text Luna in a bit."
As the two of them continued walking through the school and to the library, Sunset, even in her disguise, was met with a range of looks from mild disgust to full-on glaring.
"Ignore them," Sasha said, "You're about to find out one of CHS's most terrifying rumors."
With that statement, the expressions toward Sunset changed to ones based in fear.
Eventually, Sasha and Sunset were in the library.
"Just us," Sasha said, seeing that nobody else was in there, "Follow me."
Sunset was comfortable following Sasha until she saw their destination: The bookcase room.
"Hell no!" Sunset said, realizing that the only thing separating her from some unknowable monstrosity of Sasha's and Chloe's was a curtain and door of some kind.
"Relax," Sasha said, holding onto Sunset to keep her from running, "I'll explain when we're inside."
"Please don't let Room 666 be real," Sunset said as Sasha pressed a pedal just behind the curtain and next to a bookcase with his foot.
A muffled thump was heard, then Sasha pulled Sunset behind the curtain.
"Oh sweet Celestia, I'm gonna die," she said, keeping her eyes squeezed tightly.
"No you're not," Sasha said, "Look."
Sunset slowly opened her eyes and couldn't believe what she saw: a makeshift room that had been wired to electricity with extension cords and used bookshelves for walls with a table in the center of the area, some chairs, and a desk with what looked like one of the school's old computers.
"It's all…"
"A myth," Sasha said, closing the gate, "When we first started coming here, we let Assistant Principal Lisa in on a little benefit, so she helped us set up this area. I ran the outlets and set up the server from one of the computers the school was getting rid of, Chloe designed the hidden door with some cardboard, pet gates, springs, a wire coathanger, and faux-woodgrain, and Lisa brought up the furniture. It's not particularly spacious, but we make do."
"What about Jimmy?" Sunset said, "From our freshman year?"
Sasha opened a drawer that had been messed with to cause it to normally jam and showed Sunset what the real beast in the room was.
"A sedative, gloves, and a few toys to help spread the idea of a monster from another universe."
Sunset was left speechless for a moment, "You and Chloe?"
"Yup," Sasha said, "Don't come snooping around here."
"Oh Celestia."
"We take privacy very seriously," Sasha said, pulling out a chair, "Make yourself at home."
"Okay," Sunset said, sitting down as Sasha closed the drawer, "Today, you'll be up here. I'll get some others to come up later to get you lunch and get you up to speed. Have you ever heard of a handle known as M3M3QU33N?"
"Yes?" Sunset said, "Why?"
"Well, during your days of being Miss Queen Bitch," Sasha explained, "I worked with 'em. We've parted ways somewhat since then, but we're still cool with each other."
"Wait, you've worked with the real M3M3QU33N?"
"You bet your pretty little ass," Sasha said, "What's better is that M3M3QU33N is the kind of person you can be talking to and not even know it, partly because nobody expects them to be who they are on this side of the keyboard."
"Do I know M3M3QU33N?" Sunset asked.
"Ich werde das später antworten," Sasha said in German.
"I'll answer that later," Sasha said in German.
"Warum kannst du mir nicht einfach sagen?"
"Why can't you just tell me now?"
"You know German?" Sasha asked.
"I've had some experience with it," Sunset explained, "When I was getting my motorbike fixed, the only schematics I could find was by MoterWagen99 and of them, only the coherent ones were in German."
"You're FieryBiker?" Sasha said.
"Mhm," Sunset said, "And I was gonna try to get out of this shithole."
"For the record," Sasha said, holding his hands up, "I never would've guessed."
"What now?"
"Welcome home," Sasha said, "Make yourself comfortable, do whatever."
Meanwhile, Chloe was on the outskirts of Canterlot City, outrunning a decent amount of traffic with a 250cc bike, eventually making it to Everfree Estates.
"Ich hasse diesen Ort," Chloe muttered in German as she inputted 33342 on the keypad.
"I hate this place," Chloe muttered in German as she inputted 33342 on the keypad.
Within moments, she was granted access to the community.
Inside, virtually all of the houses looked the same, differentiated by only the people that lived there. It was still early enough in the morning that CyberDawn would still be at her house, given that she was actually going to class in-person, but late enough that she knew the girl would already be awake.
Not wanting to waste any time, she opened the throttle on her motorcycle enough to get a speed boost, but stopped when she saw a 2010 Honda Accord out of the corner of her eye. Everfree Estates would always be dangerous territory for both her and Sasha, due to their general lack of etiquette and supposedly-low social standing. Granted, the first was true because both Sasha and Chloe had little appreciation for anything resembling a "frill", and the second being true only because others thought it to be true.
Society could be such a motherfucker sometimes.
Eventually, she made it to the girl's house and, thankfully, managed to get there after her target's parents had left for work.
"Danke Gott."
"Thank God."
Turning into the driveway, she knew there was a chance that the girl would have left a note at the door, but this was low enough, seeing as how she somehow managed to leave her house less than the number of times Sasha had mastered the art of being normal. Still, she parked the bike in the driveway and went into the garage.
No note, so she knocked.
"Da ich bin! Ich brauche diesen Controller-Schaltung für die Garage!" she said in German.
"It's me! I need that controller circuit for the garage!" she said in German.
Moments later a bespectacled girl in a uniform opened the door.
"MotorWagen99?"
"In the gas and oil," Chloe said, smiling for a moment.
"Did you have any trouble?"
"Not really," Chloe said, "You going somewhere, Cynthia?"
"Even when I do remote learning, I have to wear my school uniform."
"I don't even remember the last time I went to class. When does the motor have to be presented?"
"In about an hour-and-a-half. It's in the basement."
"I'll take a look at it," Chloe said, following Cynthia inside.
Inside the house, the TV was playing on a low volume, the shades were closed, and it was obvious that Cynthia had recently had breakfast.
"Can I get you anything?" the bespectacled girl asked the biker.
"I could use a drink," Chloe said.
Cynthia got the two of them each a drink and headed to the basement.
"So here's the thing," Cynthia said, starting up the robotics creation, "I can hear the motor whirring away, but at the final output shaft, I'm not getting any usable torque at all. I was kind of hoping that you could help me, since you're the expert with engines and motors."
"Gasoline and small diesel engines, sure," Chloe said examining the robotics project, "Electric motors, not so much."
"So you can't help me out?"
"I didn't say that," Chloe said, tinkering with the setup, "Most people don't know this, but an electric motor can dump nearly all of its torque from zero RPM, where an ICE on the other hand will stall out because it doesn't work that way. Everything seems to be fine-" she looked at some pins closer, "I may have found your problem."
"What was it?"
"When was the last time you cleaned your glasses?"
Cynthia took off her glasses and recoiled at just how filthy they had gotten, "Oh…"
"You had a pin loose, that was your Achilles' Heal. You never woulda seen it because of the filth on your glasses," Chloe said, tightening the pin and starting the thing back, "See? Problem solved!"
"More like three problems," Cynthia said, cleaning her glasses with an alcohol solution, "At CPA, appearance is a big part in your grade."
"No problem," Chloe said, "You can call us whenever. Now, about that controller board?"
"Right here," Cynthia said, taking a circuit board out of a box, "I still don't know how you guys don't get caught."
"We're professionals," Chloe said, looking at the circuit board as if it were a sexy guy she was waiting to see in bed.
Back in Room 666, Sunset was getting accustomed to the new world she now called home when Sasha brought her a plate of breakfast from the cafeteria.
"Don't you and Chloe have parents?" she asked as Sasha sat the breakfasts down.
"We're not normal," he said, sitting directly across from Sunset, "Neither are you. Of the worlds you've lived in before, you weren't built for any of them. If you're trying to fit in with the other students, or even your original magical world, it won't happen. As far as they're concerned, us too, the three of us are broken, so we had to make a place we could both call home. Nothing about us is normal or even mentally okay or stable. We, Chloe and I, have a combined IQ of nearly 350, according to the tests I could grab hold of. Adding you into the mix would easily push it over 500, though I'm more to assume that those numbers are inaccurate, seeing as how even the most comprehensive tests begin failing at scores over 158, and are completely unreliable and meaningless at 165."
Sunset looked at Sasha, "You're saying I've never been home before?"
"At its core, very much so," he said as Sunset took out her journal, "I'll even assume that this Twilight character you converse with doesn't even comprehend the depths of your intelligence, even if she managed to put a set of brakes on you."
"You…?"
"Twilight is doing more damage to you than she knows. Of course, her intentions are good, but she unknowingly orchestrated this shit."
"Twilight… caused this?"
"There are three groups of people: Normals, geniuses, and those that straddle the line. Twilight straddles the line. She tries to err on the side of genius, but she's more on the side of a normal. She doesn't realize it, so we couldn't hold it against her, especially after all she's tried to do."
"Do you know why she did it?"
"She didn't want you to feel alone, so she gave you friends, albeit the kind with a terrible-ass mindset that analogizes everything. 'Sunset tried to brainwash us and turn us against each other before, so she'll do it again because she's a bitch' is what went through their minds. Lucky for you, we were able to capitalize on their thought and make you into Anon-a-miss before dealing with the inconsistencies."
Sunset was visibly pissed at Sasha, "I know where you're going with this, but I don't like the words falling out of your mouth."
"We used three methods to put you as the creator of Anon-a-miss: arbitrary placement, a normal's mindset via analogizing, and creating links that didn't exist. Ultimately, the second one was a bit of profiling on some of the jackasses wanting to take a sledgehammer to your medulla, so we kept it anyway. The first and third, as we corrected for observational bias based on what we could pick up, boiled it down to a revenge plot that, in and of itself, capitalized on how normals think. To use an analogy myself, if you have a master key to 90% of the locks in a building, it's easier to open then than if you have to pick them open."
"I hate social engineering," Sunset said, writing in the journal.
"Be firm and direct. You know things about her she doesn't want to face."
Twilight, I think the Anon-a-Miss problem is solved now, at least to the extent I care about. Come over to this side of the portal later today, I'll get back with you with the time soon. It's important that you hear what I have to say.
Sunset looked at what she wrote and realized how good it felt to stop being normal and be… her.