Destiny

This was Twilight’s chance. Now she could finally prove herself that she could be just as merciless as Lyra. In her mind she prepared herself and quickly repeated the instructions for a magical barrage.

Step one: Gather energy.

Twilight closed her eyes and tugged her internal reservoir, letting the magic flow through her body and into her horn.

Step two: Face target.

Still with her eyes closed, she towered over the covering Pegasus, who tried to scramble backwards from the lavender glow.

Step three: focus on will to hurt target.

This was the critical part of the process. A Unicorn might have a certain innate power, but effective punch of a spell, especially when attempting to hurt the target , was just as much influenced by the emotional situation of the caster.

Step four –

She just couldn’t do it. On look into those eyes and her whole determination to harm the Pegasus was gone.

Instead she collapsed to the floor in a sobbing mess.

She was such a failure to falter at an elementary task like that. No wonder nopony ever wanted to have anything to do with her .Why couldn’t she have never been born? The world would be better without her and –

A soft voice broke into her misery thoughts. “Shhhhhh. Calm down. Everything will be okay.”

O shush you! , Twilight thought, before realizing that the voice didn’t come from her head. No, it came from the Pegasus that had bent over her and was caressing her back with a concerned expression.

Twilight wanted to yell at the mare to leave her alone, but when she opened her mouth, only more sobs came out.

The Pegasus continued with her caressing for a few minutes, before standing up and looking Twilight directly into the eye.

“Don’t worry. Things will be just fine.”

“How can you say that? You don’t even know me!” Twilight snapped.

The Pegasus was slightly taken aback by her reaction, but answered nonetheless. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“It is worse.”

“Why?”

It was but a simple question and it an incredible amount of underlying emotion, all of them overshadowed by the desire to understand and help.

“Because I am a total failure”, Twilight answered and once again broke into sobs.

“What makes you think that?”

“I am useless.”

“That is not true. You have your own unique talent that makes you special. How could you be useless with that?”

If that was supposed to ease Twilight’s pain, then it utterly failed.

“That is just it! I completely fail at my own special talent.”

“Hey, -“, the Pegasus tried, but Twilight interrupted her.

“No! Look! -” Twilight turned to let the mare see her flank “- My special talent is supposed to be magic. And yet I completely fail at it. I fail at the lousiest spells. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to blast one worthless, stupid Pegasus.”

“I -“

“And don’t get me started with ‘I am sure your special talent shows out in some way’! It doesn’t!”

“No, I -”

“And why are you even still talking to me? I just called you stupid and worthless. I don’t deserve your kindness.”

The Pegasus fixated her with a stern gaze. “Because, -“ she said with a completely calm and sure voice, “- you are not a bad pony.”

Twilight was dumbfounded. “How can you say that? I just –“

“I know what you said.  But you didn’t mean it. You sort of apologized afterwards. A bad pony would have not done that.”

“But when you bumped into me, I wanted to strike you simply for being in my way! How can that not make me a bad pony?

“And yet you didn’t. You earlier said that your hesitation was a sign for your lack of magical talent. I know several nobles with next to no magical talent that wouldn’t have hesitated a second to throw me down the entire street.

A single bad decision does not make you a bad pony, especially if you reverse it before you take action.”