20,000 Legumes Under The Sea

Sunset ran her fingers along the edge of the pool table. ‘Holy crap, Twilight, this is real mahogany. For an escape room, that nobody’s going to actually play pool on. Why go through all the extra expense?”

Twilight shrugged. “I subcontracted the escape rooms out to a separate company that specializes in making them. I suspect they were upcharging me for a lot of unnecessary luxuries, and at the time I was willing to rubber stamp pretty much anything regarding this project.”

“You should do what I did,” Sunset said. She found a poster of billiard balls on the wall, and a set of billiard balls on a nearby mini-fridge. “Travel, and try living off of the grid for awhile. You’ll learn to appreciate the value of money real fast. You could use it.”

“You don’t know how much I’ve dreamed of being able to do just that…” Twilight stared past Sunset, a distant look in her eyes. “To be able to give it all up. To erase it as if it never happened. Go back to the way things were.”

Sunset placed the billiard balls on the table, and started arranging them as seen on the poster. She glanced up at Twilight. “That’s not really a sentiment I expected to hear from you. As much as I’ve always hated it, Beanis was your passion, your drive, your ambition. A Twilight Sparkle with a goal she wants to achieve is a scary thing to behold. Has so much really changed for you in only a year?”

Twilight turned and gave her a sad smile. “It feels like a lot longer than that to me.”

Guilt stabbed at Sunset’s heart, but she pushed it away. Leaving had been the right choice. It was a journey she needed to make, and she wouldn’t apologize for it. “So, how do I solve this thing?”

“I don’t know.”

Sunset froze, eight ball in hand. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Twilight sighed, and shook her head. “I just told you. We subcontracted the escape rooms. I don’t know any of the answers.”

“Fuck! Why is it always something!” Deep breaths. Sunset finished setting the billiard balls, but nothing obvious happened. “Well, help me solve it then.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Twilight tapped her chin, then floated over to the mini fridge and opened it. “Hey, there’s some bottles of luminol in here.”

“Isn’t that the stuff that shows blood and semen and stuff in cop shows?”

“Yeah. Hey, let me spray some on that poster, and I’ll flip the lights.”

***

“Awesome! We got a coin. I bet this goes in the jukebox.”

***

“Come on, Sunset, you have to hit the darts in order! Red, green, then blue!”

“Well excuse me for not being very good at darts! Can’t you just levitate the darts into the right spot?”

“Oh right. I can do that, huh? Whoopsie!”

***

Sunset punched the code into the far door, and it slid open.

Twilight pumped her fist into the air. “We did it! There’s nothing that can stop us if we work together!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sunset smiled, and rubbed at the back of her head. “I’ll admit, that was actually kind of fun. I don’t think I ever got around to trying one of these until now.”

Twilight beamed, floating down to the ground. “I missed you, Sunset. Working with you, like this, I mean. It feels… right.”

“Yeah, well, get used to it, because we apparently have more of these to go.” Sunset frowned, stopping in front of the next door. “How many, exactly?”

“Um… there’s twenty total, so…”

Sunset sucked in a deep breath. “FFFFFF—”