The Pony Games

If Reaping Day had anything happy about it at all, it would be that ponies were allowed to sleep until the afternoon. Twilight groaned and flipped onto her stomach, feeling for wings that were no longer there.

Oh. That's right. They had been gone for quite a while, now.

Twilight winced as she remembered Luna's secret visit to her prison. The princess of the night had given her a gift, one of the last things she could do to resist Celestia. Luna had informed her that she had performed the same ritual over the other Elements of Harmony, giving them the gift of half-mortality. They would age oh-so-slightly by day, but the night would renew their youth and return them to the same state they were in before Twilight was crowned.

"Remember, Twilight Sparkle," Luna had whispered quietly to her before departing, "The fate of the old Equestria rests on thy shoulders. Thou shall always be our fellow ruler in our eyes, and we regret not restraining our sister before she took our freedom. We believe there is still good to be found in our sister. Farewell, Princess. We hope to see thee and thy friends once more."

Twilight rose to her hooves and opened her blinds, gazing out at the empty streets of New Ponyville. The enlarged town was silent in preparation for what was to come, for the Reaping of the 3rd Annual Pony Games.

The Pony Games were the punishment for The Lunar Republic's uprising. Every year, twenty-four young mares and stallions between the ages of twelve and eighteen were randomly chosen to fight to the death in an arena, with only one victor allowed to survive. It was a terrible thing to even think about, and Twilight tried to shove the obtrusive thought from her mind. Her name was in the reaping thrity-one times this year, multiplied every time she had to buy something and did not have the bits to provide for it.

Celestial Equestria seemed to have forgotten about its youngest princess when she had been stripped of her Alicorn powers and cast out of Canterlot. Everypony treated her as worse than an average mare, but she was tolerant. She did not want fame, glory, and favors made for her. It was her honor to silently fight against her former mother-figure with her fellow ponies as an equal.

Her heart ached every time she thought of the betrayal of Celestia. The mere fact that the majestic Alicorn ruler had torturously removed Twilight's wings and cast her out without any sign of remorse or sympathy hit Twilight time and time again, along with the phantom pains along her shoulder blades. The pain in her soul was repeated every time the names of her friends came back up, as she remembered them being ripped from her grasp as the guards, now known as Harmonybalancers, separated the Elements and spreaded them across the country. She remembered her good friend, the Delegate of Saddle Arabia at the time, Amina Abbasi, being torturously stabbed to death before she could send a letter to the Princess of Saddle Arabia a request for Emergency Amity procedures. The memory of Zecora, Ponyville's zebra, being violently ripped from her home in the Everfree Forest and beheaded in the square hurt her heart. She recalled the death of her brother, Shining Armor, as he fought with a small group of rebel guards to keep Old Equestria.

Before she knew it, the crystalline tears were cascading from her eyes, hitting the floor with a gentle cadence.

The commanding voices of Harmonybalancers rang through the square, reaching Twilight's sensitive ears up in the bedroom of the library. The reaping would start in an hour. If a pony tried to stay behind, it was no use. Twilight winced once again as she remembered the unicorn firing squad's beams of magic, time and time again, as they executed a straggler every single year.

"Twi?" Spike asked quietly from the corner. "You okay?"

"Yes, Spike," Twilight responded calmly. "I'm sure all will be fine. You go and stand with Cheerilee, okay?"

Spike nodded and ran out the door, trying to outrun the Harmonybalancers.

The unicorn brushed the snarls out of her navy mane before slowly departing the tree-house. It was her last year in the reaping, as she was finally eighteen, though her appearance was still that of a fifteen-year-old mare, but it meant nothing to anypony but herself.  If Twilight was not chosen this last time, she was free to travel between districts. She could go find her friends. They might be able to save Equestria.

She silently thanked Luna for her gift, though she feared the Princess was no more. After The Lunar Republic, so named by Celestia after the revolt, had been defeated, the ruler of the night had never been heard from again.

The Harmonybalancers were just knocking on her door as she opened it, rudely shoving past them in an act of defiance and slowly trotting to the town square.

There, a podium had been set up in front of the abandoned town hall. The mayor of Ponyville grimly gazed out at the other ponies, grieving already for the ponies she had known for all of their lives. Next to her sat a lavishly decorated mare, her sparkly mane glinting in the sunlight. She was a crystal pony, one of the lucky chosen jewel ponies chosen to be part of the Canterlot Elite when Cadence had been executed and the rest of the Crystal Empire destroyed. Besides being a high and mighty Canterlotian, Twilight had heard things about Rosella Petals, like that she had multiple personality disorder, and though she seemed happy and chipper in public, the tragic end to her country and the old memories of King Sombra had damaged the mare far beyond repair.

Twilight found her way to the front section, roped off by age like the rest of the tribute candidate areas. Her old friends, Bon Bon, Lyra Heartstrings, Rose, Ditzy Doo, Lotus Blossom, and Aloe stood around her, silently loathing Canterlot and the now-Queen Celestia.

Twilight looked around at the others standing with her. Her heart stopped as she caught sight of the former Cutie Mark Crusaders huddled together in the twelve-year-old area as she remembered that the now-decorated-flanked fillies were indeed old enough for the Games.

Not them, she pleaded silently. If you pick anypony, let it be anypony but those poor little fillies.

She turned and looked up to the stage as the impatient Rosella tapped on the microphone, ready to begin.

"Fillies and gentlecolts," she said into the microphone, her voice laced with syrupy sugar, "welcome to the District of New Ponyille's Reaping for the 3rd Annual Pony Games!"

She paused for applause, but she was greeted with cold silence and poisonous stares.

"Let us begin," she said finally. "Fillies first."

Twilight could feel her heart pounding as she recited the same thing over and over again in barely a whisper, no longer caring if she was chosen or not.

"Not Sweetie Belle. Not Apple Bloom. Not Scootaloo. Not Sweetie Belle. Not Apple Bloom. Not Scootaloo..."

Rosella gracefully trotted over to the first bowl, full of folded paper with the names of the young mares written in neat calligraphy. She swirled her hoof over the bowl before delving deep into the deep bowl, extracting one slip of thick paper and trotting back to the microphone. With quick and precise movements, she pulled off the seal and opened the paper.

"Apple Bloom!"