“Okay, Gilda, let’s go through this again. Tell me what thoughts the word ‘kitten’ brings up.”
Weak. Useless. Defenseless. Hunt down. Attack. Revenge. Gilda’s mind trotted off the words. Sadly, the rest of her body hadn’t got the memo. She gave a faint roll of the eyes as her mouth rebelled and trotted off words about cuteness and fluffiness instead. Since when had she become such a massive dwee—d-word?
“Hm. Good. Good!” Gilda leaned back from her prone position on the couch to look at her psychiatrist. He rubbed his goateed chin with a tan hoof, nodding to himself and puffing away on a pipe as he telekinetically wrote notes. “I think you might just be ready.”
“For what?”
He spread his hooves wide and smiled at her, green eyes sparkling behind the lensless frames of his glasses. “What do you think? The final hurdle to overcoming your issues! You’ve successfully suppressed your baser instincts and natural aggression, not to mention internalising my message of core passivity. Now all that’s left is to address where this all began: Ponyville.”
Gilda jerked and sat up in the couch. “Whoa, Doc, you must be joshing me!” She stared at him incredulously. “You want me to go to the capital city of uncool?”
There was a sigh from the stallion. “Now, what did I tell you? It’s very much a subjective issue of what ‘coolness’ is—there’s no need to cause offense with baseless accusations like that! And please, it’s all informal in here; call me whatever non-confrontational identification construct you prefer.”
“Can’t I just stick with ‘Doc’?” Gilda said. “Hasn’t been a problem before…”
“I just feel that such an expert moniker can cause oppressive feelings of subordination for my clients,” he said, a pained expression crossing his face. “It’s always been a problem, I’ve just allowed you time to adjust to this new way of thinking.”
Gilda began to feel her talons ball into fists. No, no… anger was never the solution, she knew that now. “Well, if it says ‘Open Mind’ on your business card…”
“There’s no need to be held mentally hostage by a card—”
“It’s okay!” Gilda gave him an insincere grin and threw up her paws. “I’ll roll with it!”
Open Mind nodded again, pursing his lips around his pipe. He gave a brief tug to his brown goatee, before muttering “Rolling. With. It,” and scribbling on his pad. “Now then,” he said, jumping up and pushing his swivel chair back across the room. “Back to my point: the next—and ultimate—stage in your treatment is a return to the place that set you on your spiral of negativity.”
“Ehhh…” Gilda sighed and crossed her arms. “It’s a nice thought, but I burned my bridges there. No-one’s gonna want to see me around there again.”
“Ah, so you might think,” Open Mind said, eyes lighting up. He pulled down a screen at the far end of the room and flicked on a projector dangling from the ceiling, showing a crude illustration of six glowing ponies. “You see, ever since the Elements of Harmony were re-activated in Ponyville, the town has become a nexus of one-off villains and ne’er-do-wells who inevitably return to do good, according to my research. The rate of this is high enough that I’ve been able to specialise in this field of rehabilitation exclusively, to treat a condition I dub ‘Antagonist Syndrome’.”
Gilda raised an eyebrow. “Antag-whatsit?” she asked. “Why are you only telling me this now?”
Open Mind sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “An unfortunate part of the treatment. I find it better to keep patients from knowing this until I’ve successfully identified, isolated and suppressed the cause of their original antagonising: in your case, your quick temper.” He moved the projection to the next slide, showing pictures of Nightmare Moon, Discord, a unicorn in a cape and wizard hat being laughed at, twin unicorns in boater hats and jackets accosted by a crowd, an orange freckled filly scowling, and more. “You see, you’re far from alone in presenting a threat to either the town, or the integrity of interpersonal relationships within the town itself.”
“Uh huh.” She narrowed her eyes at the projection. With the exception of the immortal evil beings who had tried to take over the world, was she supposed to know who these losers—persons I disagree with, that damnable part of her mind corrected—were?
“Now, all of these individuals were attempting to better themselves in some way, and it just so happened Ponyville was an obstacle. An obstacle, ultimately, they could not overcome.” He looked at her evenly. “From their perspective, their lives were brought to a screeching halt by these ponies.” He flicked forward again, now showing a photograph of six mares. “Familiar?”
Gilda felt her claws flex slightly as she saw her ex-best friend and the pink one who ruined it all. “Yeah. You could say that,” she muttered darkly.
“The point is, though, that from their perspective, you were the antagonist. The evil one. And that’s fantastic.” He chuckled as Gilda gave a faint squawk of confusion. “The life lessons they learned! I performed some informal interviews in Ponyville: the anthologies of the letters that were sent to Princess Celestia about these encounters were especially interesting. Really, they should be thanking you for your input to their personal development!”
“Right.” Gilda huffed and threw herself back in the couch. “Where’s this going, exactly?”
Open Mind flicked to the final slide. It showed scenes of hope and joy: Princess Luna reuniting with her sister, Discord… doing some gardening, the various unicorns from earlier being lauded by crowds, the filly wearing some sort of maroon cape and accompanied by others, all bordered by rainbows. “Here, you see some of my successes with clients.” He smiled smugly. “Now, the temptation is to go back to Ponyville and wreak revenge on those who wronged you. But these species-non-specific people would say otherwise!” He flung a hoof to the screen. “Trixie here was humiliated by Twilight Sparkle’s magical prowess, but she came back only to co-operate in a fireworks display with her. The Flim Flam brothers were chased out of town competing with the Apple family, but on return, they had Applejack endorsing their product! Even Discord was eventually redeemed in Ponyville! And all of this with my expert coaching.” He pressed his forehooves against his mouth before pointing them at Gilda. “I wanted to make sure your natural tendency to conflict was gone before I revealed this to you: a non-confrontational future that you can partake in. But only when you embrace the fact that you were once an antagonist.”
Gilda sat up, looking hungrily at the smiling faces before her. She still had her pride; she would never admit that disaster of a party was all her fault. But maybe swallowing that would be worth getting back in Rainbow Dash’s good books. Maybe. “You really think that might work?”
“With a lot of hard work, yes,” Open Mind said. “But I need you to concentrate on your burned bridges.” He flipped to another part of his pad. “Now, based on what you’ve told me, you left your friend Rainbow in a non-optimal emotional state when you left. But I also understand there was a wedge that came between you?”
The blood drained from Gilda’s face as she realised who he meant. “No! No! Not her! Not that dwee—” Open Mind raised an eyebrow. “—uh, ‘d word’.” She rubbed her eyes with her paws. “Pinkie Pie stole my best friend from me.”
“Yes, yes,” Mind nodded sympathetically. “I realise she reappropriated your prime support unit. Truly, I understand your pain. But it’s most important to focus on what you might gain.” He pointed again to the presentation. “More friends. Better understanding. One hundred percent self-actualisation.” He smiled wanly. “You see, you were the antagonist of their story because you had to be. But you don’t have to be the antagonist of your own tale.”
Gilda stared at the ground. “And you think going back to Ponyville is the best way to do that?”
“It’s the only way.” Mind drew himself up to his full height and smacked his forehooves together. “I want you to think like this: you will make as big a comeback as Trixie: fireworks!” He flung up his forelegs in a jazzhooves gesture. “Be as trustworthy as the Flim Flam Brothers: tonic!” He slapped a hoof against his chest. “And be as reformed as Discord: skating!” He slid his hindhooves along the floor. “Show me those three things!”
Gilda cringed inwardly. And she thought the Junior Speedsters’ chant was embarrassing… “Fireworks.” Wave paws. “Tonic.” Smack chest. “Skating?” She mimed someone losing their balance on ice. “Right?”
“Right!” Open Mind grinned at her. “You keep those things in mind, and repeat them if you grow weak. I’m sure you’ll do fine today!”
“Wait, today?” She froze mid-skate. “That’s… fast.”
“It’s the best way: no time to allow the self-doubt feedback loops to work,” Mind said. “Now, what you’ll want to do is reassure the town—grace them with the serene and demure griffoness you’ve become after all that negativity suppression! Take everything Pinkie Pie can throw at you and accept it with a smile. I can assure you that you’ll be reintegrated in both friendship and mind by the end of the day.”
Gilda clacked her claws together and shifted her gaze from side to side. “If you insist…” She recoiled as Open Mind thrust a tape player under her beak, complete with headphones.
“For the journey,” he explained. “In order to ready you further, I’ve prepared a recording of Pinkie Pie’s speech and songs for you to listen to on the flight to Ponyville!” Mind grinned at Gilda’s horrified expression. “I’ve also included a little magical device so the ‘phones won’t come off till you get there. We need commitment, Gilda, just like we need fireworks, tonic and skating.”
“Yeah… commitment…” In an alternate reality, Gilda’s resolve finally snapped as she grabbed Mind by the goatee and hoisted him through the window, running in the opposite direction as fast as she could, away from all those therapy sessions that she’d spent nearly every last bit on, stomping the Pinkie recording into dust, and going to find a way to burn the whole building to the ground, just to be sure.
Of course, that was a world where she hadn’t spent hours stomping any vestige of rebelliousness and violence into dust, instead. She simply nodded dumbly as Open Mind slipped the cans onto her head and hit ‘play’ on Now That’s What I Call Tartarus. Screaming inwardly as Pinkie screeched about smiling, Gilda gave Mind a thumbs-up as he talked about something unintelligible. As soon as his lips stopped moving, she was gone, intent on setting the air speed record to Ponyville.
Ears already aching, she flew as though she was being chased by the oncoming of the Apocalypse. With Pinkie’s voice playing in her ears, it sure as hell sounded like it.
When Gilda finally reached her destination, her vision was a blur, ears ringing and wings on fire from her awful flight. Eyes streaming and a deranged grin on her face, she crushed the tape player between her paws and flung it to the ground. The cable of the headphones had been wrapped around a statue and pulled until the head had popped off. Clutching at her spinning head and groaning, she tried to exorcise the giggling demons from her head.
Echoes of giggling at ghosties and parasprite polkas still rattling around in her head, Gilda tried to find her way to the town centre. Her wings were still aching terribly, and she could barely remember the layout of Ponyville from her last fateful visit. Presumably, Dash or the other one would find her before she found them.
As the streets around her grew gradually busier, Gilda found herself being stared at by most of the town’s inhabitants. Sure, being a griffon meant that was pretty much always the case, but she didn’t usually get the suspicious whispers that were going on here. Yeah, there’d been a lot of ponies at that party, hadn’t there? They all remembered who she was. What are you all staring at, dwee—’d-words’? she inwardly snarled, dying a little at her self-censorship. She raised a paw in greeting and timidly said, “Hey… what’s up?”
There was yet more muttering and whispering, and Gilda’s heart began to sink a little. Was she public enemy number one in this town or something? “I’m, uh… not gonna snap or anything,” she continued. Although I might if you keep this up.
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
“Look, I’m just here to make up for some of the bad things I did!” At that, everypony apparently remembered that really urgent appointment they had simultaneously, as Gilda found herself standing in a suddenly empty street. What was going on? Didn’t they like giving people a second chance?
She grunted and whipped her tail against the ground. “Whatever. Didn’t need those species-non-speci—” Gilda clamped a paw around her beak as her mouth ran amok again. Bad inoffensive part of her mind! She’d rather stay silent than repeat some of Open Mind’s weirdest vocabulary. Feeling the irritation bubbling away, she tried his confidence exercise. “Okay, G, you’re a strong and independent griffon. Fireworks, tonic, skating…”
As she repeated the exercise, she felt the coiled spring of her pent-up frustration gradually unwind. In fact, she almost felt too calm; like she was losing her balance a little, and her voice echoing in her head.
“Fireworks, tonic, skating…” No, wait, she’d definitely stopped. Who was joining in with her? Gilda looked to the side and screamed at what she saw. Sat next to her and mimicking her actions was Pinkie Pie, except her head had been replaced with a horrifying grinning face, framed by apple slices and leaves.
“Ahhh! P-P-P-Pinkie Pie?!” she squawked. “What is that?”
“Oh, you like it?” Pinkie pushed the mask up and grinned at Gilda. “I spent all night making and painting it!”
“It’s… it’s…” Terrifying. “Nice, I guess.” Gilda gulped. How? How had her worst nightmare come to her mere minutes after arrival? Was this all just a hallucination brought on by that tape? Her befuddled mind struggled to stay stable. “What’s the mask for?”
“My Dia di los Huertos party!” Pinkie blew a party horn noisily, Gilda stepping back from the extended paper tube.
“‘Dia di los Muertos’? Day of the Dead party?” Gilda asked incredulously.
“No, silly! Huertos! Dia di los Huertos! Day of the Orchards party!” Pinkie exclaimed. “I wanted to drum up some more business for Sweet Apple Acres after Granny Smith spent all their money on tonics, so here we are! Wanna come?”
Gilda backed up further. She was not prepared for this: what had Open Mind been thinking? Another lame party with lame guests and lame pranks and her being especially lame? “Wait, why?” she asked.
“You seem nicer now!” Pinkie said. “I mean, it’s a weird sort of nice… like you’re bottling something up, but what do I know? You were pretty horrible last time you came here, but you’re not the first one to come back after that! It’s good to have someone nasty return to Ponyville and not ruin everything for once!”
“Y-wait, what?”
Pinkie didn’t deign to reply, instead tugging Gilda by the paw towards her garish lair. “Don’t worry about it; I made a mask for a griffon just in case of an emergency guest!” She looked upward in thought. “It was so awkward the last time we had a masquerade ball and Iron Will turned up…” She rummaged around in her tail and presented the griffon with a mask shaped for her beak, looking like a green apple macabrely carved into a vague skull shape, with leaves above the eye holes. “Just roll with it! I mean, if you’re not being all ‘hurr, I’m watching you like a hawk’ or ‘grrr, I know what you’re up to’, then maybe you’ll enjoy this party! Always room for a second chance, right?”
“Right…” Gilda sighed and put the mask on. Well, at least she had a bit of plausible deniability if she covered up both her face and personality. And maybe she could at least establish some contact with Dash. She followed Pinkie toward the party, trying to get used to her reduced peripheral vision.
As soon as they entered, Gilda felt herself get on edge. She hated being in enclosed spaces, let alone ones filled with yelling ponies. The creepy apple masks did not help in the slightest. Oh, and there was the fantastic possibility of getting hit by a shedload of pranks again! How fun. She tried looking for a telltale rainbow tail in the crowd, before being disturbed from her task by Pinkie thrusting a cup of sickly purple liquid in her face.
“Punch?” Pinkie asked.
“Uh… I can’t. There’s a mask in the way.”
“Oh, right! No wonder nopony was drinking it!” Pinkie said. She picked up a straw and inserted it through a hole in her mask and began sucking up the punch noisily through it. “Lucky I came prepared!” After the bowl was nearly drained, she looked back to Gilda and asked, “So, why are you back in Ponyville? When you left last time, it didn’t sound like you would ever come back!”
Gilda paused for a moment. That was… a fair question, she had to admit. According to Open Mind, this was her last step to getting over her Antagonist Syndrome. But according to herself… was she just picking at a wound that wasn’t ever going to really heal? “I… wanted to bury the hatchet,” she said quietly.
“Eh, you’re not gonna bury anything in here! The floor’s solid wood!” Pinkie said.
“I meant I wanted to hold out an olive branch,” Gilda reiterated.
“Sorry, Gilda. I don’t think there’s any olive trees for miles around here.”
“I meant—”
“You’re doing it again!” Pinkie said. “You keep using all those phrases and getting annoyed!”
Gilda rolled her eyes. “Alright, fine. I wanted to come back and make up with Dash. I’ve been seeing someone—no not in that way—and he’s helped me… I dunno, be ‘nicer’.”
“As in, not-stealing-apples-it-was-wrong-to-roar-at-Fluttershy-and-scare-Granny-Smith-kind-of-nice?” Pinkie asked. “Or a sort of ‘let’s-just-hide-all-the-nasty nice?”
“Uh…” Gilda shrank back a little from the sparkling blue eyes peering out of the mask in front of her. “I’ll get back to you on that,” she admitted weakly. “I mean, I just wanted a comeback like Trixie’s!”
“You did?” Pinkie gasped.
“Well, yeah! That’s what the whole ‘fireworks, tonic, skating’ thing was! Trixie, Flim Flams, Discord, all rolled into one! That’s what this town does, right? Second chances?”
Pinkie sucked in a great breath and looked aside. “Well…”
Her speech ended as Gilda felt a hoof on her shoulder. She turned around and gasped as she saw Dash hovering behind her, mask pushed up. Beneath her, also unmasked, was her friend with the hat. Gilda had never asked of her name… Fruit-j-something. Pearjordan? Grapejuice? No, the fruit was ‘apple’. Applejohn? Applejoy? “Dash! Hey! Long time no see!”
“Yeah,” Rainbow deadpanned. “You could say that.” The corners of her mouth tugged down, and she gave Gilda a brief, wooden hug. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again! I’d say I’m glad to see you, but after last time, I’m not so sure that’s true.” she said, swishing her tail and frowning, ears drooping. “What are you doing here?”
“Um. Pinkie invited me?”
“I meant this town, G. From what you said when you left, I doubt you’d just come back here for a casual visit,” Dash said.
“Dash, I’m…” Gilda licked her beak, then took a deep breath. No going back now. “I’m here for a second chance.” A chorus of gasps rang out. Somepony fell over the gramophone, causing the music to cut out to the sound of a record scratch. Every eye in the room was on her, making her start to sweat and grin insincerely.
“So, um, do you… uh… do you wanna give that to me?” she said in a dreadful whisper.
“A second chance,” Rainbow echoed.
“Yeah!” Gilda began to smile more broadly. Against all odds, everything was falling into place! She puffed out her chest. “I want to really try and earn it. I’ll have as big a comeback as Trixie! And I’ll be as trustworthy as the Flim Flam Brothers! I’ll try and be just as reformed as Discord!” She spread her claws wide. “So how about it?”
There was silence for a moment. Then, pandaemonium broke loose. Everypony started screaming and running this way and that, eventually finding their way to the exits, even as Pinkie frantically tried to keep them in the room. Eventually, the only ponies left in the room were the same six she’d seen on that slide earlier, all of them but Pinkie giving her death glares.
“Are you for real?!” Dash cried.
“We are clean out of second chances, missy!” Applejane said, pulling her hat lower on her head. “Do you have any idea what this town has to go through? Every half-baked villain and big-headed pony’s not content with comin’ through here once, oh no! They’ve gotta come back and get their revenge, or say ‘ooh, Ah’m so sorry, can you forgive me this one time?’, and it only takes wreckin’ most the town for ‘em to learn their lesson.”
Gilda shook her head in denial. “But… what about being your antagonist?!” she cried. “All those life lessons!”
“You know what I learned from the first time the Flim Flam Brothers came through?” Applejunk snarled, pressing her snout against Gilda’s beak. “Absolutely nothin’! Zip! Nada! And the second time, the most important thing Ah learned was to keep a darned close eye on your elderly relatives’ purse strings! Take your ‘life lessons’ and shove ‘em!”
“And you just had to bring up Trixie, didn’t you?” Rainbow growled. “Really gotta be insensitive. I still have nightmares about not being able to fly beyond the town boundaries!”
“Wha-what?”
“The glass dome, featherhead!”
Gilda looked around in panic. The other three members of Dash’s entourage seemed happy to leave Rainbow and Applejail to sort her out. Pinkie had managed to round up and herd most of the party guests back to the Corner, even if most were now just standing and trembling. “What’s going on?” she cried.
“Oh, everypony’s really suspicious of second chancers these days!” Pinkie said merrily, in between zipping in and out with recovered guests. “We all got hit with Discord’s antics when Fluttershy had to reform him, and then there was Trixie’s glass dome, and the Flim Flam Brothers’ tonic scam…” She bodily dragged a final pony in by the tail. “I don’t think anypony wants to see hide nor hair of you if you wronged us before!” Her face fell. “No offense. I wouldn’t mind it, but mob rule, y’know?”
“Right,” Dash said. “To be honest, G, if you’d come back and just said sorry, we’d have probably taken you back, no problem. But you’re gonna make a joke of all of those other times ponies came back to us and messed us around? Not. Cool.” She folded her forelegs and scowled.
Gilda shook her head. “I had no idea about that!”
“‘No idea?’ A giant glass dome was put over Ponyville for a whole week!” Rainbow cried, eyes wide. “How do you miss something like that?!”
“I don’t really follow the news…”
“Gilda, just get out. I don’t what you thought would happen, saying things like that, but you sure as hay aren’t welcome here any more,” Rainbow said harshly. “I mean it.”
A flood of red-hot rage ran through Gilda. How had she fallen this far in Dash’s eyes? And worse, how had she allowed it to happen on the back of such a slew of false information? Every fibre of her being was spent fighting back the urge to scream at Rainbow and match the disownment. For once, her suppressing her hot-bloodedness would be an advantage. She gulped and looked up at her old friend. “Look, there was a... specialist I was seeing. A pony who knows about this sort of stuff.”
“It really doesn’t sound like it,” Applejingle said.
“Listen! He told me that those ponies had come back here and just… redeemed themselves,” Gilda said. “He just said it today! Why would I doubt that?”
Rainbow exchanged a glance with Applejay. “Then he misled you,” Dash said. “Trixie only clawed it back after the dome. Flim and Flam legged it after AJ ratted out their ‘tonic’ as a fake, and Discord is still Discord, just less likely to take over the world now. They’re not exactly role models.”
Gilda stared at the ground. “Yeah, I get that now…”
“Is this also the guy who’s got you doing this weird fake niceness?” Dash continued. She gave a slight grin as Gilda frowned. “Sorry, G, it’s just so see-through when it’s you.” As the griffon nodded, she faltered and asked, “And how long have you been seeing him for?"
“Since about a month after I left Ponyville the first time,” Gilda said. “Why?”
“And you’ve been bottling up all your aggression and frustration since then?” Gilda nodded, and Dash began backing away slowly. “Oh-ho-kaaay... Why don’t we all take a deep breath and calm down?” The smile on her lips failed to reach her terror-filled eyes. “And, um, who is this guy?”
“The one who must have been sending all these ponies back here!” Gilda cried. “He said every one of them was a client of his! And he lied to make them mess up further—”
“—and to get ‘em to keep comin’ back for his ‘help’,” Applejive growled. “Who is this pony?”
Gilda said nothing. She had just noticed something awful—something she couldn’t honestly believe was there. In the corner, secluded behind a mountain of snacks, was a tan pony with a curly brown tail and closely cropped mane. And, to damn him further, his cutie mark was on prominent display: a weird sort of symbol that looked like the lovechild of a trident and the letter Y.
Open Mind’s cutie mark.
She marched over to the table, Mind apparently having not seen her advancing. She reached through the confectionary and yanked the stallion over the table, slamming him against the wall and flipping up his mask. “You want to see this pony? Well, I’ve got him right here!” Gilda snarled.
“What? Let me go! You’ve got the wrong pony!” Open Mind squeaked. He stared at Gilda and paled. “Oh! Gilda! Glad to see you’re, um, doing so well. How did you—”
“I saw your dumb trident mark on your flank.”
Mind went slack-jawed. “Gilda, it’s the letter psi,” he said incredulously. “It stands for psychology! ‘Dumb trident’, indeed!”
“That is pretty common knowledge, you know,” Rainbow’s slavemaster friend said. At least, Gilda supposed, she was probably a slavemaster. Who knew what that baby dragon she kept was for?
“So, why are you here?” Gilda said. “Checking on my progress?” When he nodded, she snorted and pushed him harder against the wall. “Funny, ‘cause I hear you’ve been feeding me a pack of lies, just to mess me up royally.”
“Now, Gilda, you have to remember your Antagonist Syndrome!” he pleaded. “You’re here to teach an important life lesson, but you must remember—”
“—that I’m the antagonist? Oh really? I am? Compared to the pony who keeps sending people like me to Ponyville just for them to mess it and themselves up even further?” Gilda whipped her tail against the ground. “And lemme guess, they all came running back to you with their tail between their legs, needing more of your ‘help’.”
Open Mind sighed. “Look, if my clients have achieved something real with me, they return! How can I control that?”
Gilda narrowed her eyes. “I reckon you’ve got a hoof on every pony who’s ever done this lot wrong.” She turned her head back to Dash’s entourage. “Hey, any of you still got a beef with ponies out there?”
“Lightning Dust, for sure,” Dash said.
“Certainly that awful Suri Polomare,” the fancy white one said.
“M-maybe even Iron Will…” the scaredy-flank—no, wait, Fluttershy, Pinkie’d mentioned her—said.
“Right! Any of those names on your client list, bucko?” Gilda demanded, giving him the stink eye.
“I-I-I…” Mind stammered. He waved his forehooves and looked up at her. “Gilda, Gilda, Gilda!” he pleaded. “You were doing so well! You’re losing all your self-actualisation; making a mockery of your negative emotion centre suppression! To forgive is divine; don’t let the old Gilda return!”
His pathetic whimpering was the last straw for her. “I’m sick of wearing a dumb mask over how I feel!” Gilda yelled, tearing the ornament from her face.
“Oooh, how symbolic!” Pinkie chirped.
“Shut it!””
Open Mind slid to the ground and cowered as Gilda let go of him. “Please…”
“You promise you’re gonna shut down that dumb clinic of yours?” she asked, pointing a claw in his face. “And you never, ever contact anypony who joshed with these guys again?”
“Yes! I’ll do anything!”
“Good.” Gilda pushed him around until he stood between her and the open door. "And I've got one last thing to say to you."
“Which is…?”
She answered his question by sucking in a great breath, and then roaring as loud as she could. The bellow carried more than just sound; it carried raw terror, a promise of dreadful violence, awful, primal memories of ancestors scuttling in fear as the predators screamed above.
Open Mind fled so quickly, Gilda swore he left half his goatee behind.
All at once, the party broke out into whoops and applause. Gilda’s eyes went wide as not just Dash, but a dozen other ponies rushed in to hug her. She was carried around the room by the force of affection and celebration, and panic began to flow through her. “No, wait!” she cried. “I’m a massive jerk! I don’t need a second chance! Don’t do it!” Her eye caught the purple one’s. “Dragon owner! Help!”
“My name is Twilight,” she grumbled. She stomped a hoof on the floor. “Alright, everypony, give her some breathing space!” she announced. The onslaught eased slightly at the command, leaving Dash—and inexplicably Pinkie—wrapped around Gilda.
“So, um… now what?” Gilda asked delicately.
“You’re forgiven,” Rainbow said. “I mean, you got rid of the guy who was sending all those ponies back our way—no wonder we’ve had so many weird comebacks of villains we thought we’d seen off!” Her face darkened slightly. “Then again, I’d have loved to have given a piece of my mind to Lightning Dust…”
Gilda frowned in confusion. “You genuinely want to do that? Forgive me? I mean, c’mon Dash, I’m a huge pain in the flank for everyone who’s around me.” She looked around at the rest of the party. “I don’t mind moving on. Just happy to get rid of that… that dweeb.”
“It’s okay—lots of people are jerks!” Pinkie said happily. “I mean, Dashie’s a big jerk some of the time—”
“Hey!”
“—but she knows how to control that! It sounds like you might have, too!”
“I… I guess you’re right.” Gilda looked down at Dash. “I think I’ll need to work on not getting jealous about you having other friends, though.” She grimaced. “That took me out last time, and that Mind loser was banking on me doing it again so I went back to him.”
“Well, at least you know what to watch out for now!” Pinkie chirped.
“Yeah…”
Twilight cleared her throat and pulled out a large tome from a saddle bag. “Well, I think this has been a very valuable lesson for us all,” she said primly. “On second chances, forgiveness, and perspective! Gilda, would you like to write—”
“NO!” Gilda grabbed the oversized diary from Twilight’s grip, and before she could react, ran outside with it and drop-kicked it as hard as she could into the woods.
She huffed in satisfaction as she watched it arc away. No more dumb ‘lessons’ and ‘second chances’ or ‘being someone’s antagonist’. She was finally free.
Twilight stomped up to her with a face like thunder. “You realise that diary was full of priceless lessons, memories and verbal artifacts, right?”
“Yeah…” Gilda said.
“And you realise you just punted it deep into the Everfree Forest, far beyond the reach of civilisation, right?”
Gilda hesitated and nodded again.
“And you realise you’re going to go and collect it… right?”
“I’ll be right back,” Gilda said weakly.
Several hours and fights later, Gilda reclined in one of the cloud chairs at Dash’s house. She’d been able to find the diary without too much effort and extract it. It wasn’t too badly dinged up, although Twilight had kept complaining about ‘a broken spine’ or something. Since when did books have bones? She’d also had to crush a couple of timberwolves into kindling to get the damn thing out, too. She’d be feeling splinters for weeks.
Right now, though, Dash was pouring out some lemonade while Twilight waited patiently. That was a surprise—apparently, Twilight had figured out how to grow wings. Something to do with magic. Apparently there was a big deal about it and she was technically a princess, but it had kind of passed Gilda by. She didn’t really follow the news.
“So,” Twilight said. “Could I see what you wrote?”
“Uh…” Gilda quickly scribbled down something and rotated it so Twilight could see. “How’s this?”
Today I learned:
I am a massive jerk no matter what
I am a massive jerk and so is everyone else
After what Dash told me, that Lightning Dust is a special grade of uber-jerk
Jerkiness is relative
That weird trident symbol is called sigh and stands for science
I still have no idea what ‘self-actualisation’ means
Never trust a pony with a goatee
Owning a baby dragon isn’t technically slavery
Sometimes, there’s dweebs who’ll take advantage of other losers for money. This may also involve whole towns of losers. If this happens, you should sort them out. Yelling generally helps. A ‘friend’ is what you call one of those losers ponies once you’ve helped them out, I guess. I dunno, I didn’t write the dictionary.
Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’ll do just fine,” she admitted. All ears in the room perked up as a knock came at the door. “Is that Pinkie?”
Rainbow and Gilda looked at each other. “I’ll get it!” they yelled together, racing to the door. They both pulled it open, to reveal not Pinkie in a flying machine, but a sky blue pegasus with a dark yellow mane. She was holding a bouquet of flowers and grinning nervously.
“Hey,” she mumbled. “Remember me? Your ol’ flying buddy Lightning? I, uh, I was here to ask you a-about a s-s-second chance…?” Her voice eroded to a whisper under the twin glares.
Rainbow and Gilda both glanced at each other and turned back to Lightning Dust.
“GET. OUT.”
Author's Note
Written for the 'Leap of Faith' EqD Writer's Training Grounds, this time for the prompt:
' Ponyville is a place of second chances, of forgiving and forgetting, no matter what lurks in your past...
Unless you live there! Well gosh, you're just plain fed up with all that!'
