Sparkswirl's empireby SparkswirlChaptersMagic9 kilos of candy5635 bitsSparkswirlBetter call Pinkie!MagicThe sun is shining bright upon the castle in ponyville. It's somewhat an early morning. Suddenly, the castle doors burst open. Out walks princess Twilight Sparkle herself, wearing a bathrobe. She proceeds to walk till the mailbox, there she stops. She takes out the letters from the mailbox and starts reading them out loud "From Rainbow Dash. From quills and sofas. From Ponyville University. From Town hall." Twilight takes all the letters with her and starts walking back inside. As she closes the door behind her, she throws the letter from quills and sofas into a trash can,which is sitting right next to the door. She then walks into her study, dropping all the rest of the letters on a desk. The purple alicorn sits down, puts on glasses and starts opening the letters. Twilight starts off with Dash's letter "Hey Twilight! You're invited to Lyra's birthday party, she said it herself! I'll pick you up on the way there, so be ready!" Twilight puts Dash's letter aside and opens the letter from Ponyville University "Your research funding has been granted. You can find the 3000 bits in the letter." And then the last letter, the one which Twilight really didn't want to open that much, but as a conscientious pony, did anyway "Dear Twilight Sparkle, according to ponyvilles law paragraph 6.2, you're obligated to pay 8000 bits by the 10th day of this month." Twilight sighed as she stood up and started moving books away from bookshelf. She pulled out a box from the behind the books. Twilight laid the box onto the table and started counting the money it contained. "2347 bits," finished Twilight the counting. "I'm gonna be 5653 bits short!" "The great and powerful Trixie requires the most important meal of the day. Breakfast is an important part of the daily routine. And Trixie isn't going to....bla,bla,bla" Twilight, cooking pancakes, tries to ignore Trixie. "Are you even listening to the golden words of the one and only, great and poweful Trixie?" Twilight lets out an annoyed grunt and answers "yes, I'm listening to all the fascinating things you have to say." "Good, cause Trixie is...bla,bla,bla" continues Trixie on with her unuseful talking. "Hey! What's for breakfast?" "Spike! You're awake!" shouts Twilight, as she runs to hug Spike. "Umm, yeah, what's for breakfast?" asks Spike again, while trying to avoid Twilight's hugs. "Blueberry pancakes! You know, the recipe I got from Pinkie all those years ago." "Oh yeah, those are my favourite!" shouts Spike happily after hearing the good news. Twilight throws on a jacket "Well, treat yourself, I got to go." "Magic! Can anyone tell me what magic is?" asks Twilight giving a lecture in front of the class. "Force that you can use to manipulate the world around you?" asks a random filly in the front seat. Twilight looks at the filly "That too, but I like to see it, as a wonderful force of nature. You see, thanks to the horns that every unicorn has upon birth, we can use our own nerv system, to manipulate the atoms and molecules around our horn, to create something completely new and useful out of thin air." That moment Twilight releases a big light show out of her horn "Fascinating, isn't it?" "Can we do tricks like that one day too?" asks an orange unicorn in the middle row. "Well, that was an advanced magic trick, but if you're interested in the subject, then one day you can perhaps learn to do almost anything you want, with just the power of your horn." Now a brown unicorn in the last row gets curious "Could we use our horn to shoot things?" There's a silence in the class. Twilight quickly gathers up her thoughts and answers "Well, technically yes, but it's also filed under advanced magic. Also, it's not allowed to be fired towards other ponies." There's another silence in the class. Twilight looks at the class for a moment and decides to wrap it up "Well, don't forget to read pages 42 till 53, there isn't gonna be a test, but there's a lot of fascinating information there. Next time I'll talk about innovations in magic science." As rhe final filly closes the door, after leaving the class, Twilight takes out a cup. "Okay, lets see if the machine is finally fixed." As she says those words, she looks at her reflection in a bottle of water. "That's weird. My horn shouldn't be glowing, I'm not using any magic." She touches her horn, only to get stinged by the magic aura surrounding it. As Twilight freaks out, she quickly makes a run towards the library, but collapses on the way there. "Did you hear, what I just said to you?" "Yes, horn cancer. Two years at best." replies Twilight. "Well, we should talk about treatment. As you are an alicorn princess, we can get you the best doctors in Equestria. But, it's gonna cost you. Probably not a problem to a princess like yourself." Twilight nods. "So, should I schedule an appointment?" "Yes. I can get the money, somehow." replies Twilight. Knock, knock. Twilight waits for a moment and then knocks again. With no answer she decides to take a peek through the windows. There are curtains in front of the windows, but Twilight can see at least one pony figure through them. "Got you!" whispers Twilight. She goes to the back door and slowly opens it. As she sneaks through the hallway, she can hear whispers coming from the room in the far left. The whispers are loud enough to hear, but too muddled to understand. Twilight opens the door and jumps in. "Why are you trying to...-" Twilight is cut off middentence as she can see a dark blue pony holding a gun to Cadence's head. "One more move and you're dead," hears Twilight from behind herself. She can feel the cold barrel of a gun touching the back of her head. As the dark blue pony prepares to pull the trigger, Twilight shouts: "Wait! Why are you here? Whatever you are here for, I'm sure we can settle this like civilised ponies!" The pony behind Twilight says: "heh, unless you could teach us how go cook Spark with purity over 90%, then you're pretty useless to our goal." Twilight quickly gathers up her thoughts and makes up a lie: "I can cook it! I'm the best god damn cook out there." "Oh really?" asks the pony from behind Twilight. "Yes," whispers Twilight with a threatening tone. "I call bullshit!" says the pony behind her and Twilight can feel the barrel of the gun pressed deeper into her hair. "Please, just give me a chance and I can prove it. Get me into a lab and I cook it," whispers Twilight as the last act of despair. "Well, we got nothing to lose," says the pony behind her. The two ponies throw bags over Cadence's and Twilight's head and throw both of them on a wagon. As the wagon finally stops, Twilight and Cadence are pushed off it. The ponies remove bag from Twilight's head, as one of them says "well, genius, cook!" Twilight sees Cadence still laying on the ground with a bag over her head. Twilight slowly walks to the workspace and starts mixing chemicals. She takes a few quick looks around the room and then continues on. As the dark blue pony sees Twilight's hooves starting to shiver, he slowly walks up to her and puts the gun against her head. "What exactly are you planning to do here anyway? We're not stupid, we realise, you've never cooked in your entire life. This bullshit here, ain't gonna save you." "I might have never cooked a single batch in my entire life," Twilight's voice starts to tremble "but I sure as hay know my chemistry." After saying that she pours a dark orange chemical, she had mixed together, into water. She quickly jumps towards the gas masks she had located earlier. The chemical mixes with water and explodes, filling the entire room with orange poisonous gas. Twilight, wearing a gas mask, stumbles through the gas, trying to find Cadence. As she sees a glimpse of pink, she quickly runs towards it. She gently removes the bag from Cadence's head and puts on a gas mask. Then, a bullet flies through the fog, hitting Twilight right to the back hoof. Twilight falls to the ground, feeling a stinging pain in her back hoof. She can hear bullets flying over her head, all breaking some kind of lab equipment in the room. Suddenly the bullets stop, Twilight can hear a few strong coughs from the fog and then there's quietness. As the fog settles, Twilight slowly opens her eyes. She tries to push herself up, onto her three legs. "Ouch!" shouts she, as the pain from the back hoof kicks in. She takes a horrid look at what she had done: Two dead ponies lying on the ground, a bullet in her hoof and a passed out Cadence next to her. 9 kilos of candy"Wake up! Wake up!" Cadence opens her eyes, only to find a troubled looking Twilight shaking her and two gas masks laying next to her, on the ground. "What happened, did they leave us alone? You showed them how to cook it and they actually left us alone?" asks Cadence slowly pushing herself up from the ground. "No, I they didn't. Oh Celestia, I'm a horrible pony!" shouts Twilight, clearly stressed out. Cadence looks around the room. She walks up to the two ponies lying on the ground and starts touching them with her hoof. "Are they...are they...?" "Yes!" shouts Twilight, as tears start dropping from her eyes. "What happened?" asks Cadence, still unaware of how things ended up the way they did. Twilight answers through sobbing "Sparklamyne. I mixed sparklamyne with a cooling liquid at high temperature. Then I poured the liquid into water. It causes a mini explosion and lots of dangerous fumes. It was the best solution to get us out of the given situation. The explosion served as distraction and the fumes were too colorful to see through." "O...okay," looks Cadence around, still confused by the given situation "what now?" Twilight lifts her head "what to you mean by what now?" "Well, we have two dead ponies and...well, that's pretty much it, we have teo dead ponies. We just can't leave them here." Twilight starts sobbing even more "I don't know, hide them, for now, I need to gather my thoughts. I'll think up something by tomorrow." "H...hide the bodies? Th...that's illegal, we could both get into big trouble for this," starts Cadence trembling. Twilight looks up to Cadence with a sad and desperate face: "And you think killing ponies isn't? Cadence, I'm a criminal now. I hace commited a crime, worst crime there is, taken a ponies life. I need to live with this knowledge for the last few years I have left. You were the one eho dragged me into this, you were the pony who caused me to do this. You have to help me out now, we're in this together!" Cadence starts excusing herself: "Hey I didn't ask you to sneak into my house!" Twilight looks up at Cadence and Cadence can detect a bit of anger in her eyes and tone "If I wouldn't have shown up, you would've been dead by now. Show some gratitude!" "Fine, I'll hide the bodies. But you promise that you figure out what to do by tomorrow?" "I Pinkie promise!" Twilight slowly and quietly levitates open the castle door. She sneaks through the hallway, to the medical room. "Now lets see" says Twilight opening a book "Treating bullet wounds". She followed every step in the book step by step. As the bullet was out, she quickly put bandage around it. The bullet didn't go to deep, hopefully it'll heal up fast. She closed the door of the medical room and sneaked into her bedroom. "Who disturbs the great and powerful Trixie in the middle of the night?!" Twilight gets shocked, that she had woken up Trixie "Umm, it's me Twilight." Trixie looks at Twilight "And why are you here so late? You think it's funny to mock Trixie by showing up late at night? I was worried, you know. Where were you" Twilight, trying to avoid any further questions answers "I...I visited Cadence. We have some money problems, I thought she could help out a bit." "Hmmph, whatever, I'm going back to sleep. No snuggling tonight, makes you think about not doing things like that again." "Fine," answers Twilight, making herself comfortable in the bed. Twilight opens up her eyes, the sun is already shining bright upon Equestria. A new day, a new hope. A hope, that yesterday never hapened. Twilight jumps out of her bed, badly hurting her backhoof. "Ouch! It's...it's still there. The bandage is there and that means...I'm a killer." Twilight quickly took a shower and threw on her bathrobe. She went to the hallway and started walking towards the castle door, going to pick up her mail and then read it and then eat and then..."No! I can't do it, I can't waste time here with this! She pushed open the library door and gazed upon the large selection of books. Sne quickly went around, picking up every single book about acids that she could find. "Dissolving a pony? What acid should I use to dissolve a full entire pony body?" After some searching she finds what she was looking for "hydrofluoric acid." Twilight quickly takes out her hoofphone and calls Cadence: "Cadence, lets meet at the lab, I know what to do!" Cadence pushes open the lab door and after she and Twilight enter the room, Twilight locks the door behind her. "Now, Cadence, it's important that nopony would enter this room, not until the reaction has finished." Twilight looks through the lab equipment and chemicals and asks: "Umm, Cadence? Where's hydrofluoric acid?" Cadence looks at Twilight with a confused face and asks "hydro what now?" Twilight looses control: "Hydrofluoric acid. The chemical we were supposed to use to dissolve these bodies. I thought this lab had those!" "And I thought you were gonna turn yourself in!" There's a silence in the lab. Twilight's face turns from angry to worried to desperate to sad, "You thought what?" Cadence realises she had said something she shouldn't have: "I thought you were gonna take this time to say goodbye to everypony you cared about and just give yourself in, for killing those ponies." Twilight sat down and rested her back against the wall, "you thought...you thought that I was gonna give myself in? Go to jail, for...for this. What would Spike think of me? What would Trixie think of me? What would Rainbow Dash think of me? What would...what would...what would princess Celestia think of me?! You thought, that I was just gonna go out there and admit to everypony, that I, the princess of friendship, former student of princess Celestia...am a murderer?" "Well, I thought it was the right thing to do." Twilight looks at Cadence "Right thing to do? You want to hear what is a right thing to do? Save yourself and your friend from murderous psychopats. And I did it! I saved both of our lives and you just thought, that I was gonna give myself in? Tell me exactly, what did those two ponies want from you anyway?" "The spark. The very thing you said you were going to cook for them. I used to work in the spark market. I was a small part of a big business, I was the one who got the supplies. All the compounds needed to make a batch," explains Cadence. "Wait, this Spark...tell me, how much can you earn from it?" Cadence looks at Twilight with a surprised face, "Well, all I know is that there is big momey moving in the business. The purer the product, the more you can earn." "And you know all the compounds?" asks Twilight. Cadence nods. Twilight makes up a plan, "In that case...we have a lab, we have the compounds and we have...the cook." Cadence looks at Twilight, "The cook? We don't have...-" "I'm the cook!" interupts Twilight. There's silence in the room, until Twilight breaks it, "Get me sulfur, fluorite and water. Leave the rest to me." Twilight walks into the lab early the next day. She can see that Cadence had got her the things she had asked for. "Time to do chemistry." Twilight burns the sulfur, to produce sulfur dioxide. From there on, she uses oxygen with vanadium(V) oxide as catalyst. She then proceeds, to hydrate the obtained sulfur trioxide into sulfuric acid. And condensation to finish it off. Twilight looks at the finished product - 20 gallons of sulfuric acid. "Okay, according to the book, all I have to do now, is combine the sulfuric acid with fluorite and I'll have the finished product - hydrofluoric acid." As Twilight finally finishes the batch of hydrofluoric acid, her excitement of the chemical process slowly starts to fade and she starts to remember why she had to obtain it in the first place. She looked at the blanket, covering the two ponies lying on the ground. Not the bast way to hide dead bodies, but neither she or Cadence where familiar with doing anything like that. Twilight walked to the plastic barrel, sitting in the corner of the room. She gulped, "No going back after this." As she started to move the barrel, she started to have a moment of doubt, "Is that what I truly want to do? Dissolve the bodies of two ponies?" She looked at the blanket, hidding two dead ponies underneath it. "No, I have to be strong, I have to go through with this. Not just for myself, but also for everypony I care about. I can't let everypony down like that. It was a moment of self defence, there was nothing else I could've done. If I'd have to relive yesterday again, I would do absolutely the same thing!" She dragged the plastic barrel across the room to the dead bodies. She took off the blanket and started lifting the dark blue pony with a levitation spell. "Ding ding, dinga ding, ding ding, dinga ding!" Twilight was startled by an unexpected sound and dropped the pony onto the ground. "No, how could've this all gone so wrong?!" She dropped onto the ground and slowly lifted her front hoofs to the air. "I give up! I know what I've done is horrible, but I didn't have another choice." The sound kept on going and Twilight slowly turned to the source of the sound - her pocket. She slowly levitated her phone out of her pocket, lifted it to her head and answered the phone, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle speaking." "Hey Twilight, where are you? I said Lyra's gonna have a birthday and I said I was gonna come and pick you up, so be ready," can Twilight hear Rainbow Dash's voice. Twilight is still a bit shocked by what had just happened, but tries to answer calmly, "O-Oh, the birthday? Well, you didn't realy specify in the letter, when it was going to be," "I sent you the letter two days ago. Which means you got it yesterday, so it's only logical I'd show up today. You know, one day to prepare, buy a gift." "Dash, I can't really speak at the moment, I'm in the middle of something. You can go on without me, I know where Lyra lives, I'll show up a bit later. Pick up a gift on the way there..." "Wait, you haven't bought a gift yet? But I told you---" Dash's phone call is cut off by Twilight. Twilight sighs in relief, relief of not getting caught, relief of it just being a simple phone call. But there wasn't time to waste, there was job to be done, a job which no one in their right mind would look forward to doing - disposal of corpses. Twilight began with the same process she was cut off from, by an unexpected call from Dash. Twilight lifts up the pony and throws him into the plastic barrel. Then Twilight puts on her gas mask and starts emptying gallon after gallon into the barrel. Twilight runs through the streets of ponyville. "What could I possibly buy for Lyra? She stops in front of a candy store. "That!" She quickly runs inside, "10 Kg of candy, fast! Any flavour, just candy!" The shopkeeper looks suspiciously at Twilight, but fills the bag with candy anyhow. "That'll be 50 bits!" Twilight picked out her wallet, reminding her of again of the money trouble she had, "Umm...you know, I only have 47 bits, perhaps I could get a discount or pay up next time I'll be here?" The shopkeep looks at Twilight with a grumpy face and pours back 1 Kg from the bag, "Now it's 45 bits, you get to keep the 2." Twilight looks at shopkeep with a disappointed face, but takes the candy, "You have a very friendly service here. I am so going to tell about this place to my friends," says Twilight when walking out of the door. "What's that smell?" asks a filly walking past Twilight. "Shush, you can't talk about a princess like that," bickers the fillies mother with the young filly. "But she's one of the useless princesses, you know, the one who---" "Keep your mouth!" whispers the fillies mother at an angry tone. Twilight felt sudden anger flow through her, "The useless princess? That's what they call her nowadays? And it's all cause of princess Celestia..." But Twilight's train of thought was ended by something rather unexpected, Twilight actually realised that the filly was right, she smelled, smelled badly. "How could've I forgot? The chemistry I've been working with for the full day, and I would've almost went to Lyra's house smelling like this. Boy, that wouldn't have raised a ton of questions." She pushed opened the SPA door. "I need perfume, strong one, fast!" Aloe looked at her and quickly brought out a pink perfume bottle from the back room, "Only the best for a princess." Twilight opened the wallet, only to see 2 bits lying in it. "Umm, I have a SPA card, could I use it? I don't have any money with me right now..." "Of course you can use it!" answered Aloe, taking the card from Twilight's hand and registering the purchase. "Have a nice day!" shouted she after Twilight, who had quickly ran out after getting the card back. Knock, knock. Lyra opened the door, "Twilight, you made it! I thought you weren't coming, when I saw Dash show up alone." "Oh, I had to run a few errands and you know...busy life..." "Nah, I totally understand. It's Dash you should be worried about, she seems kinda sad, she's usually more active." Twilight hands Lyra her bag of candy, "Oh. Hey here's your present, do you mind if I go talk to Dash for a while?" "Sure. Hey, those are from candy emporium, I love this place. Great candy and friendly workers," looks Lyra at the bag of candy, "How much did you exactly buy?" Twilight hesitates for awhile, "I bought... 10 kilos, 10 kilos of candy" "Heh, that's a lot, I'm gonna get a sugar rush out of this," talks Lyra through a mouthful of candy. Twilight walks up to Dash. "Hey, there buddy, you made it!" shouts Dash with a tone, that is pretending hapiness, while trying to hide actual sadness. Twilight looks at Dash with a concerned look, "Hey is something wrong, I'm sorry I wasn't home..." "No, no, it isn't cause of you. It's...it's just work troubles..." Twilight sits down next to Dash, "So, what's wrong with work?" "I, I thought I had a good lead. You see, me and Lyra had been keeping an eye on that scumbag for awhile now and yesterday, she just slipped out of our sight. We haven't seen him since..." Twilight tries to comfort Dash, "Hey, don't worry about it, you're a good EDEA agent, I'm sure you'll find him eventually. Maybe you could describe him to me, I could give you a call if I happen to see him." "Heh, well I doubt you'll see him, but he's dark blue colored, hidden cutie mark, dark hair and---" Twilight interrupts, "Red eyes?" "Yeah, red eyes, how did you know?" asked Dash surprisedly. Twilight thinks about the pony she left soaking in the barrel, before she left the lab, "I...I think I saw him...in...Crystal Empire...when I was visiting Cadence...he walked past me on the street." "Heh, that super brain of your remembers every little detail doesn't it?" starts Rainbow Dash poking fun. "Not everything, that pony, he just seemed off, kinda different," starts Twilight explaining herself. "You got a good eye for scumbags. You know, I know you love your safe little job at the university, but maybe, one day, I could take you on a ride along? You know, hanging out, having an adventure again, like back in the days, when we had our group together." "Yeah, maybe one day," replies Twilight, letting out a small chuckle. "Hey, what's this?" asks Cadence pointing at the plastic barrel in the middle of the room. "It's where I dissolved one of them and it's where I'm going to dissolve the other one as well," answers Twilight. Cadence's face turns worried as she says, "Yeah, that's gonna be a problem." Twilight starts feeling everything inside her grumble, like something bad has happened, "What? Why? I got enough hydrofluoric acid left..." "He woke up!" shouts Cadence. "What?" asks Twilight, feeling the grumbling inside her getting worse. As the door opens up, Cadence points at a dark green pony, tied against a tube. "He started to wake up, I felt it was a good idea to tie him up, who knows what he would do in a situation like that. Right, Twilight? Twilight?" Twilight's heart had started bumping at an incredible speed and she tried to breathe deeply, to get it back to normal. As her heart pulse returned to normal, she started stressimg out, "Oh Celestia, no, this was not supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen..." Cadence looked at her and decided to ask the question, "Isn't it a good thing? That means you're only half the murderer you thought you were." "Half the murderer?" asks Twilight from Cadence, "You know what this pony is going to do, once he gets his health back to normal? He's going to escape and he's going to send dangerous people after us, after the ponies we care about...No! We can't let him live!" "Can't let him live? What are you trying to say here, murder him?" asks Cadence from Twilight. "This, at the given circumstances, seems to be our best option," answers Twilight. "Well, I ain't gonna do it. I don't know about you, but I'm not that comfortable with murdering other ponies," points out Cadence. "What? You think I liked poisoning these two? Do you think I get some kind of pleasure out of making sure this guy here dies? No, I'm doing this, because this is our best option. Our only option, so to say, cause if we don't do it, he's gonna hurt us and everybody we care about." Cadence sighs, "I'm not capable of murder." "I know you aren't and that's why...," Twilight gulps, "I have to do it." 5635 bitsTwilight lets her hoof fly through all the lab equipment, "You know, we should start cooking. We have all the equipment here, we have all the components of Spark right here." "Hey, aren't you forgetting something?" asks Cadence, pointing her hoof to the basement door. "I'm...I'm just gonna need more time. I'll do it, I promise. But how about now we cook up a batch, you go and sell it, while I take care of our little "problem" in the basement," "Fine, but don't leave it like that for long. He ain't stupid and he's gonna eventually figure out, how to get out of there, unless we get to him first," points out Cadence, while bringing the gas masks. "Okay, lets cook!" says Twilight trying to get her mind off the deed she has to do soon. "It's finished!" shouts Twilight after a couple of hours. "78% pure," says Twilight testing the purity. "78% pure? I've been in this business for long and the best I've seen so far is 76% pure. How did you get something like that on your first cook?" shouts Cadence in surprise. Twilight starts to ramble, "Did you forget? I used to be the star pupil of Celestia. All it required was knowledge in chemistry. I might even tweak the recipe a bit, perhaps get even a better result." "That's awesome! You're a god damn artist!" shouts Cadence, still surprised by the purity they had cooked up. "Well, glad you like it," says Twilight, taking off her glasses and cleaning them. "Okay, I'll be off to sell them sweet rocks. Remember to "clean out" the basement, okay?" says Cadence running off. Sudden shock hits Twilight, "The basment?" She had totally forgot that once they were done with the batch, she had to finish brutally murdering a pony. "Perhaps he's already dead?" goes thought through Twilight's head. "Maybe the fumes just took some time more to kill him?" But as soon as Twilight opened the basement door, she realised, no luck. The pony was still tied to a tube and was as much alive as herself. "Water!" shouts suddenly the pony tied up to the tube. "Wha-?" starts asking Twilight, but is cut off by the pony, "Listen, if you're gonna kill me, then do it now, don't leave me here to die of dehydration. If on the other hoof aren't planning on doing that, will you please bring me something to drink?" Twilight realised that dehydration would be a good way to go. It wouldn't be messy, she wouldn't have to do anything and there would be no resistance. But Twilight's heart wasn't cold enough to do that, leaving somepony to die in pain like that, even if they themself would probably leave her in a situation like that. "I'll bring you something to drink," says Twilight as she walks out of the door. Twilight walks through the hallway of the castle of the crystal empire. "The kitchen has to be here somewhere," she mumbles to herself, while walking through the room. "There it is!" shouts Twilight, walking into the kitchen. Twilight takes a glass and fills it with some water from the tap. She walks back, pushes open the basement door and walks down. As she takes the last step, she can feel her head getting a bit dizzy and as she reaches down the stairs, the aura around her horn suddenly disappears and the glass falls fown to the floor, breaking it into pieces. "Oh my, what happened?" asks the tied up pony. "Nothing, it hasn't happened before, maybe I just lost control over my magic," says Twilight as she pushes all the pieces of the broken glass into a bag. "You know, you should go to a doctor with this. It might be something you'd need to cure," says the tied up pony. Twilight lifts up the bag full of shattered glass, "Yeah, and why do you care? It seemed to me that a few days ago you were planning to waste me and Cadence." "I'm truly sorry for what I did. I truly am. But you have to see, I didn't stand a choice. It was either me or Cadence and I'm pretty sure you would've done the same in my situation. I never planned to hurt anyone else but her, you were just a bystander, who showed up at a bad time." "I wouldn't have done the same what you did...I have morals, I don't go killing off ponies, just so I could secure my own safety," Twilight takes a deep breathe, "And it wasn't a bad time, it was a perfect time. If I wouldn't have showed up then, Cadence would be dead. There would be nationwide crisis, not to even start talking about losing an old friend. I saved her life, with the price of you two. Am I proud of it? No! But it was the only option I had back then." The tied up pony looks and Twilight and says, "You said with the price of us two, but does it really have to be both of us? You already killed my partner, isn't that enough to send a message across. Killing me would be a pointless move to make, I learned to not mess with you. I know I seem like a criminal to you, but I have a life outside of that. A family that'll start missing me. Just let me go and we can end this here. No more blood has to be shattered. Come on, I know you aren't a killer, you can make the right choice here." Twilight looks into the eye of the pony and realises, she can't do this. "The pony is right, I'm not a killer," thinks Twilight in her head. "I'm...I'm gonna bring a box cutter and cut you out of these ropes," says Twilight as she picks up the bag full of shattered class and walks out of the door. Twilight walks into Shining Armor's work room. "He used to have a box cutter here somewhere..." says Twilight looking through the drawers. "Here it is!" she shouts, as she finds what she was looking for. "Wait..." says Twilight as she can see some glue and duct tape next to the box cutter. "Maybe I could fix the broken glass. Would avoid a lot of questions from Cadence." She pours out the pieces of shattered glass onto the table and starts rearranging the pieces. "No, this can't be," Twilight starts looking around for missing pieces. "No,no,no,no..." shouts Twilight as she leans onto the wall, sits down and starts crying, "there is one piece missing, a big piece." Twilight slowly approaches the tied up pony, with a box cutter in one hand. "You're going to release me? I knew you'd be a smart pony. Just cut the rope open and we can both forget this ever happened," looks the pony at Twilight with a hopefull and happy face. "Let's say I'm going to release you...," Twilight walks behind the tube, "Then what are you going to do? Stab me with that piece of glass." As soon as Twilight finished the sentence, the tied up pony's hoof took out a piece of glass and hit it right into Twilight's front hoof. Twilight dropped the box cutter and it landed right in front of the tied up pony. As the pony reached out his hoof to grab the box cutter, his head was suddenly torn back, hitting back of his head right to the tube. Twilight was pulling the rope, tied around the other ponies beck. Twilight closed her eyes as she kept on pulling the ropes, hearing the last breaths of the other pony. As the pony no longer moved or screamed, Twilight slowly opened her eyes, seeing blood coming out of the pony's mouth. And that's the moment Twilight realised, she had already commited a second murder. Twilight closed the door behind her and took off the the gas mask. "What happened? Did you do it?" asks Cadence, seeing Twilight at the door. Twilight puts the gas mask into Cadence's hooves saying, "Have a look at it yourself. Also, cleaning the basement will be your job." As Twilight walks off, Cadence puts on her gas mask and walks into the room. She looks into the barrel, seeing only a hoof floating on top of the hydrofluoric acid and even that sinks in shortly. She opens up the basement door, looking down at it, a box cutter lying on the ground, a piece of glass covered in blood and tons of loose ropes. A few days later: As Twilight walks out of the university, after the lessons, she sees Cadence wearing some kind of Stupid outfit on the other side of the road and waving to her. Twilight runs to her and shouts in an angry whispering voice: "what in the name of Celestia are you doing here? You know-" "Hey, cut it. We've got a big deal, a big opportunity." replies Cadence to Twilight. Twilight looks around and after making sure nopony is looking, she asks: "what are you talking about?" "Put these on!" Shouts Cadence while throwing a porkpie hat and sunglasses to Twilight. Then she takes out a can of purple spraypaint and colors over Twilight's cutie mark. "You better start explaining right now to me what the heck this is all about or I walk!" looks Twilight at Cadence with an angry face. Cadence answers: "I managed to get a guy, who knows how to get our product on the streets, to try our product. He wants more, but he wants to meet the person who created it - you!" Twilight tries to interupt: "Wait, but-" Cadence completely ignores Twilight and continues on "Now, we can't have your real name moving on the streets with the product, so you need to create an alias, and better change up your looks aswell. We're going into the big business." SparkswirlCadence and Twilight are standing in front of an old building. "Well, there's no going back" says Cadence. Twilight puts on her porkpie hat. They both walk in slowly. Two ponies check their pockets upon entry. All they find is a bag full of a bit clear crystals. "It's the stuff" says Twilight. The ponies give Twilight the bag pack and let both of them enter a door, which leads to stairs. Twilight and Cadence walk up the stairs and into a room. They see Bulk Biceps sitting in front of them Snips on one side and Snails on the other. Snips walks up to Twilight, takes the bag of crystals and throws it to Bulk. Bulk takes a look and says "It's the purest I've seen" Twilight says, "Yeah, it's 78% pure. It's not the type of garbage your usual street guy cooks, this is pure chemistry." Bulk looks at Twilight and asks, "Hey, purple one! What's your name?" Twilight looks at Bulk with a self-assured face "Sparkswirl. My name is Sparkswirl." Bulk looks at Twilight and says "Okay then, Sparkswirl, we're in business!" When Twilight and Cadence walk out of the building, Cadence finally turns to Twilight "Wow, Twilight, that was some confidence back there." Twilight stops and stares at Cadence "Yes, cause that's how the game works, right? The weak get crushed and the strong survive? Well, I'll have you know, I'm the dtrong one." Then Twilight walks off, leaving confused Cadence behind her. As soon as Twilight opens the door Trixie runs to her and asks "Where have you been? You do remember Dash is coming over for dinner?" "Yes, I remember completely," answers Twilight, throwing the porkpie hat onto the coat rack. "And what's that?" asks Trixie pointing at the porkpie hat. Twilight puts her jacket on the coat rack aswell, "It's a porkpie hat. A gift from a work associate." "Another teacher?" doesn't Trixie stop bugging Twilight with questions. Twilight slowly nods. "What's been up with you lately?" Trixie pauses for a moment, " You show up late, you always have those places to be, you have those bandages on two of your hooves and now you show up home with a pork hat?" "It's a porkpie hat," corrects Twilight Trixie's word. Trixie brings the subject back to Twilight, "It doesn't matter what hat it is. What I want to know is what you've been doing lately?" "I've been, uh, helping Applejack out on the farm. I found that with our current financial situation, we'd need more money and this would be the best way to earn it," Twilight realised she had lied and was now waiting for the result. She was eager to see if Trixie had bought her lie or not. "You know, I could start doing presentations again for the---" "No!" shouts Twilight, "I've got it all under control, you don't need to go back to that old job, just let me handle the situation. I promise, I can handle the money." "Listen," holds Trixie up Twilight's front hoof, "just remember, I can always help out." "There's no need,---" Knock, knock. Twilight turns her head around and asks "Who's the one who knocks?" "Hey, Twilight! It's me, Rainbow Dash! Could you open the door, buddy?" "Right away, just wait a bit!" Twilight runs to the door and opens it up. While Trixie runs to the kitchen. "Hey, so what've you been up to?" asks Dash upon entry. "Eh, nothing much. I visited Cadence awhile back," starts Twilight talking to Dash. "And she's been helping Applejack out on the farm for money!" shouts Trixie from the kitchen. "Really?" looks Dash at Twilight with a surprised face, "You know, it's good to know you're helping AJ out, but if you're in financial trouble, you should've said it to me. Y'know, I'd be always willing to help you out." "As I said already to Trixie, there is no need," says Twilight with a determined face. "So, how's the investegation coming along?" asks Twilight from Dash, trying to change the subject and maybe get some information as well. "Eh, it's basically a dead end, seems like this guy just disappeared off the planet," says Dash with a worried face. "So, you got nothing? Don't know any connections he might've had or anything about the past?" asks Twilight. "Well, we know something about his past, but not much helpful. Nothing suspicious has come up yet," Rainbow Dash pauses for a moment, "I think somepony just cleared him out of the way. Probably somepony who knew we were tracing him." "What makes you think he's dead. Maybe he's just in hiding?" starts Twilight to feel shivers going down her spine. "I've been on this job long enough, my gut tells me it. Somepony had done a sweep on his home. A criminal who escapes usually doesn't bother to do that." Twilight gets confused,"A sweep? Are you sure?" "Yeah, everything was clean, too clean, not the style of a probabal criminal like that." "Hey you two, come and eat the legendary food cooked by the great and powerful Trixie!" shouts Trixie from the other room. "Is this going to be a regular thing now?" asks Cadence from Twilight. "What?" asks Twilight slowly taking off her jacket. "You know, wounding one of your hooves every time you kill someone." "No," says Twilight, walking up to a locker, "This, the street level, making deals with bulk or anypony else, is your end of the business. I'm the cook, the silent partner. I'm never going to hurt another pony again." A few days later, Twilight shows up at the lab, with no signs of Cadence. Twilight looks around the lab thinking that usually Cadence shows up early before her. Twilight waited for a few hours, until she realised, if she doesn't start now, the patch will go to waste. She started slowly the cooking process in the hopes that she can handle it alone. After a long cooking process, she tests the purity. "71%, damn it. Cadence better have a good excuse!" Mumbled Twilight to herself. She could hear her phone start ringing. All of the memories, killing the first pony, dissolving him later and doing it with the other pony too, all flashed through her head. "I'd really need to switch my ringtone after all of this." She picked up the phone answering, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle. How may I help you?" "Hey, Twi, I've got some really bad news," could Twilight hear Rainbow Dash's voice "I'm currently on the corner of ponyville and well...I can't even..." "Calm down Dash, what happened?" asks Twilight with a shiver going down her spine. "Cadence, Cadence is, is, is dead," trembles Rainbow Dash. Twilight drops her phone onto the lab floor. Better call Pinkie!The floor of the lab is soaking with methylamine, as a purple alicorn is standing in the middle of the room, wearing a gas mask and emptying gallon after gallon of the liquid on the floor. As the final canister empties up, Twilight runs around the lab, throwing everything unflamable and everything that doesn't burn fast onto a wagon. "Goodbye Cadance" whispers Twilight in a sad tone, almost shredding a tear. She sets the entire lab on fire and runs away with the wagon. "Lets move in!" shouts Dash as she busts down the door. Rainbow Dash dashes through the caslte, searching for anything suspicious. She stops as she can see a red glow coming from a room. "What we got?" asks Lyra, panting after finally managing keeping up with Dash. "We got second place," says Dash, grinding her teeth. Twilight had been running since the crystal empire, never looking back. Now, as she had finally reached the edge of ponyville she stopped and thought for a second, "What exactly am I going to do with a wagon full of unflamable lab equipment?" "Well, you could set up a lab and continue what you were doing before, just without Cadence," comes a squeaky voice from behind Twilight. As Twilight slowly turned around, she could see Pinkie lifting up the blanket, that she had thrown on the lab equipment, and peeking inside. "How did you?" looks Twilight at Pinkie. "Don't worry, I'm here to help you. There's big money moving in this business, only if you know where to find it and learn to not get caught. Lucky for you, I know a few things about both of them," whispers Pinkie to Twilight, placing a business card into Twilight's hoof. "Better call Pinkie?" reads Twilight from the card, "Seriously? That's the best you could come up with?" asks Twilight from Pinkie. "Hey, I'm a dirty lawyer. And what better catchphrase for a dirty lawyer, than---?" "Okay, I get it," cuts Twilight Pinkie off, "Now, what makes you think I even want to do this business anymore? And why do you think even if I do that I need you?" "Easy, same answer for the both questions - you need money, you don't wanna get caught and your hatred towards Celestia," pulls Pinkie out an answer on a second notice, "You see, now that Cadence has been murdered, Celestia is gonna start harassing you with stuff like emergency meetings and extra security and all that annoying Celestia crap that you don't want. But lucky for you, I'm a lawyer and I can represent you and make sure you can keep on cooking in the privacy." "Heh," chuckles Twilight, "And who's gonna be my lab assistan, you?" "Lab assistant?" looks Pinkie into Twilight's eyes askingly. "Yeah, I can't cook alone. Well I can, but it's a lot of work and I'm not capable of it all on my own. The quality of the product suffers from it, seemingly. Do you even know the first thing about cooking Spark?" questions Twilight Pinkie's power to help her. "Okay, listen, I might know what to do," flashes an idea in Pinkie's head, "just find a place, set up your lab and I'll send an assistant there." Twilight looks at Pinkie, questioning if she could truly get her a lab assistant who knows what they're doing and wouldn't squeal. There's a small silence, until Twilight finally nods and answers Pinkie, "Okay, get me a lab assistant and I'll make you my lawyer." "What we got on street?" takes Rainbow Dash a sip of coffee. "Well, the same old The Mineral story and," Lyra pauses. "And? What, The new The Rock story?" chuckles Rainbow Dash. "You know, if you'd just let me finish and wouldn't interupt me with your stupid bull crap---" Dash interrupts Lyra, "Okay, cut it off, party pooper, tell me what's up?" "There's a new name moving on the street. Goes with the best product I've and the street guys have ever seen. 78%" "78, huh? Oh boy, so what's the name?" gets Dash concerned. "Another stupid name like The Mineral. This one goes by the name Sparkswirl. Stupid made up names both. Checked already, there's no pony going by that name." "Well, whoever she is, she ain't no idiot. I did a check on what was left of the lab,everything was burnt and everything what wasn't, she took with her." "Why do you think she didn't burn everything?" asks Lyra. "Heh, years of experience," chuckles Rainbow Dash, "You see, the fire hadn't burned for long by the time we got there. Not long enough to burn everything you need in a spark lab, especially given the fact that some of the equipment is unflamable." "So, there's still proof out there?" asks Lyra. "Yeah, but for how long, that's the question. Whoever she was, she burnt down the entire lab, not leaving any proof thete. There are two options - she either took it all somewhere else to cook there or, she just needed time to dissolve the equipment some other way. Now, the first is the best case scenario for us, cause then we still have evidence. But we need to act fast, try to get much information as possible, so we could track down wherever these things are stored at currently," answers Dash, taking another sip out of the coffee. "Well, then we'd better get to work fast," shakes Lyra the file room keys. Twilight strolled through the sweet apple acres apple garden, looking around every now and then, making sure nopony is following her. After a long walk, she reached an open field between the trees. And there it was, the cutie mark crusaders treehouse. She pushed open the door, taking a peek inside the dusty room. She tooks out her hoofphone and quickdials Pinkie's number, "Found it, I'll send you the cordinates." Twilight can hear soft hoof knocks on the door. "Fluttershy?" is Twilight shocked upon opening the door. "Oh my," blushes Fluttershy. "Pinkie didn't send you, did she?" asks Twilight from Fluttershy. "Pinkie said I needed to bring some lab equipment here and help the cook with her cooking. I'm sorry," blushes Fluttershy even more. There's an awkward silence in the room, while both of them are trying to adjust to the other being interested in the process of the spark cooking. "Well," breaks Twilight the silence, "Lets set up the lab." As the cook finishes and Twilight tests the quality, she gets another surprise, "84%? That's 6% rise in quality," Twilight turns around and looks Fluttershy deep jnto the eye, "We must be the best Spark cooks in the world." "Oh, that's, umm, good," says Fluttershy in a quiet tone. Twilight rushes into euphoria, "Good? This is better than good, we're the best. We could---" "Not to burst your bubble, but we're out of supplies to make another batch," interupts Fluttershy Twilight's feelings of triumph. "What?" drops Twilight her front hooves back on the ground. "We're out of the green crystals and methylamine and a lot of other stuff as well," points Fluttershy towards empty barrels. Twilight's mind jumps to the moment where Cadence promised to keep her always supplied, reminding her, that without Cadence, there is nothing to make the product out of. "Could you excuse me?" asks Twilight, rushing out of the tree house and taking her hoofphone out of the pocket. "Pinkie Pinkman, how can I help you?" can she hear from the other end of the line. "Pinkman?" questions Twilight. "Oh, hey Twilight. Yeah, it's a lawyer name, I've got a rather shady clientel, if you catch my drift," reclines Pinkie in her chair. "Pinkie, we're out of supplies. We don't have anything to make the product out of," flips Twilight into the phone. "Whoa, hold off there. Don't worry, I'm your lawyer, I've got you covered. But remember, lawyer's cut is 17% out of the profit and I take care of almost your every problem," negotiates Pinkie. "Okay, 15%, 17%, whatever, just get me someone who can regularly supply the incridients for me," flips Twilight at Pinkie again. "Don't worry, only the very best for my client. Got you covered," says Pinkie the final lines, before ending the phone call. Twilight walks up to the old building again, feeling a gulp in her throat. She puts on her porkpie hat and sunglasses. Twilight walks past the security guys and to the second floor. "Here's the new product!" shouts Twilight, throwing a big bag of Spark on Bulk's table, "It's 84% now, so double the cost." Bulk looks at Twilight with an angry face, "What exactly is that? You come here alone now? And you demand double the pay? Who the buck do you think you are?" "I am Sparkswirl," says Twilight with an arrogant tone, "and if you want this product, you'll pay the double for it. This is the best product in the world and nowhere, I repeat, nowhere, can you get anything like it. Take a sniff." Bulk breaks rhe Spark crystal into little pieces and sniffs it in, "Tight! Tight! Tight! Yeah! Alright, keep bringing me that. Double, triple, whatever." "Okay, I'm gonna take triple," says Twilight with an arrogant smile. "You trying to push my buttons?" hits bulk his hoof on the table. "Hey, as I said, this is the best product in the world and I can sell it anytime anywhere with triple the price of what you gave me for the last batch. The question is, are you gonna be the one to buy it?" "Fine, I pay triple. You sure know the business, Sparkswirl," says Bulk, throwing a bag full of money at Twilight. Twilight picks up the bag in front of her hooves, lifts it up and smirks, "Glad to do business with you." "Hey, there you are!" shouts Pinkie upon Twilight's entry. "Meet your new supplier!" shouts Pinkie, pointing her front hooves at Rarity. "What's next, Applejack as a bodyguard?" bursts out Twilight. "No, no, no. I'm a professional and Applejack ain't in the circle. She's the honest pony, it wouldn't work out with her," bursts Pinkie into laughter. As the sun shines through the window a purple crystal brightens up. "What's this?" asks Twilight pointing her hoof at it. "Oh, it's a purple sparklamphine, I need it for my next design," looks Rarity at the crystal. "Could you get me 10 kilos of these in a week?" asks Twilight. "Well, I suppose I could," looks Rarity at the crystals, "what do you need them for?" "My grand recipe," answers Twilight with a slight smirk. "97%" shouts Twilight in euphoria after a sucessful cook, "13% rise in quality." At the moment Rarity walks in, carrying a barrel of purple sparklamphine. Twilight runs to Rarity, putting her hooves on her shoulder and looking into Rarity's eyes with a bright stare, "This crystal is the best thing that has happened in the entire Spark business!" "Glad you like it," answers Rarity, trying to push Twilight's hooves off her shoulders, "but I'd appreciate if you wouldn't touch me with your spark cooking hooves." Twilight's hoofphone starts ringing and as she picks it up, she can hear angry Trixie, "where exactly are you? Rainbow Dash came over 2 hours ago." "Oh, I totally forgot she was gonna come over today. Listen, I'll be right there," answers Twilight, ending the call to avoid any further questions. "Hey, Rarity, could you drop the Spark off to bulk? He's at that old building by the edge of ponyville, take Fluttershy with you," Twilight grabs Rarity into her arms, "You're good at negotiating right?" "Well, I've negotiated quite a few dress prices and---" "Good. Tell him the price has quintupled and that the product is now 97% pure," says Twilight, handing Rarity the bag of Spark and running out of the treehouse. Rarity is standing in front of the old building with Fluttershy standing next to her. "How disgusting," remarks Rarity looking at the building. As they walk in, they are being stopped by two guards. "Hey, get your dirty hooves off of me, I'm here to deliever the product," shouts Rarity. One of the guards takes the bag from her and walks up the stairs. Rarity and Fluttershy slowly follow him. Rarity can feel the disgusting dirt on the stairs runing her pedicure. "When this is over, I'm going right into the SPA," whispers she to Fluttershy. The guard throws the bag to Bulk. "This thing is 97% pure now and the price has quintupled," shouts Rarity. Bulk looks at Rarity and starts laughing, "Quintupled? What are you crazy?" "Hey, Twilight said it's quintupled, which means I'm going to her with the money she demanded for the product, weather you like it or not," looks Rarity at Bulk with an angry face. "Twilight? Sparkswirl's a princess? And moreso, now that her product is that pure, she is too good to come here by herself and sends her mules here?" laughs Bulk, while walking towards Rarity. "I ain't no mule, you roughian!" shouts Rarity at Bulk. "A tempered one, aren't you?" laughs Bulk into Rarity's face. "Maybe we should go," whispers Fluttershy. "We ain't going anywhere before this idiot pays up," whispers Rarity back. "Okay, you know what? I got your quintuple right here!" as he says those words, Bulk hits Rarity onto floor. "That's quintuple the hits I usually give for fuckers who try to screw me over," shouts Bulk, while beating the blood out of Rarity's mouth. "Please, stop!" shouts Fluttershy, trying to stop Bulk from hitting Rarity. "Okay, I stopped," stops Bulk hitting Rarity and walks back to his chair. Fluttershy looks at Rarity lying on the ground - Broken hooves, blood coming out of her mouth, broken teeth, messy hair and a black eye. "And that's basically the story," ends Rainbow Dash her story. "Sparkswirl, huh?" questions Spike. "Yeah, the clever ones usually always come up with some kind of irrelevant aliases. There's that one pony, goes by the name The Mineral, been trying to bring down his Spark operation for years now. Not a single clue found yet, whoever they're, they don't leave many clues," rambles Dash. "Hey, but maybe there's something to it? Those aliases couldn't come out of thin air, maybe there's some thin connection between the pony and the name," questions Spike once again. At that moment , the door flies open as Twilight walks in and puts her jacket on the coat rack. "Hey, Twi! What's up with you?" flied Dash to greet Twilight. Twilight quickly makes up a lie, "Nothing much, been helping Applejack at the farm again." "For Celestias sake, you're killing yourself there. You look exhausted. Are you sure you don't need any help? All you gotta do is ask. Remember, I'm always here for you, buddy," puts Dash her hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "No, it's fine. I've been sitting inside for so long anyway, it's good to get some physical excercise," makes Twilight quickly up and excuse. "Okay, just be careful. Quick changes aren't good for anypony," is Dash still concerned. As Twilight and Dash are talking, they're slowly moving towards the diner room. "Twilight, where have you been?" asks Trixie as soon as they enter the diner room. "Your brave mare has been working on the farm, bucking some apples," says Dash crashing down on a chair. "Yeah, actually AJ's planning to pay me for my work tomorrow. Then we can pay for the castle debt and maybe save some money aside," starts Twilight rambling, after sitting down. "Hey, you know, we got guns at work now. After what had happened to Cadance, you know, extra security measures. They're believing that the Spark market is becoming more violent, now that---," Rainbow Dash pauses. "Now that?" asks Twilight immidietly. "There's somepony new on the market, goes by the name Sparkswirl. Cooks the best god damn Spark out there," continues Dash, "Just today, our sources found the spark with the purity of 84% moving the streets. No wonder it's causing such a commotion. The purity level is incredible." "Whoever synthesized it, must be a really good chemist," adds Twilight, while sipping on wine. "Hey, what's that?" asks Rainbow Dash, pointing her hoof at the air and creating a sudden quietness around the table. "My hoofphone! Excuse me," shouts Twilight, jumping up from the table and transporting to the jacket. "Where is it?" looks Twilight through the pockets. She lifts up the phone and answers it, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle speaking, how may I help you?" "Hey, Twilight!" Can Twilight recognize Pinkie's voice, "We got a problem - one of your business partners decided to beat the crap out of one of your business associates. Long story short, you lost your suppliement network, at least temporarily and got screwed over from the money aspect." "What?" questions Twilight into the phone. "Bulk beat the crap out of Rarity. Rarity's in the hospital. Bulk took the Spark. Zero gain. Null profit earned," sums Pinkie up the current situation. Twilight can feel the world around her getting dizzy as she drops down the phone. "You alright?" can Twilight see a blurry Rainbow Dash coming from the distance. "I'm not, I'm not sure," says Twilight, resting her hoof onto the wall and trying to hold her body up. She feels her hoof slowly slipping away and the gravity forcing her down. As she can no longer resist, she falls down onto the floor and her eyes slowly close.
MagicThe sun is shining bright upon the castle in ponyville. It's somewhat an early morning. Suddenly, the castle doors burst open. Out walks princess Twilight Sparkle herself, wearing a bathrobe. She proceeds to walk till the mailbox, there she stops. She takes out the letters from the mailbox and starts reading them out loud "From Rainbow Dash. From quills and sofas. From Ponyville University. From Town hall." Twilight takes all the letters with her and starts walking back inside. As she closes the door behind her, she throws the letter from quills and sofas into a trash can,which is sitting right next to the door. She then walks into her study, dropping all the rest of the letters on a desk. The purple alicorn sits down, puts on glasses and starts opening the letters. Twilight starts off with Dash's letter "Hey Twilight! You're invited to Lyra's birthday party, she said it herself! I'll pick you up on the way there, so be ready!" Twilight puts Dash's letter aside and opens the letter from Ponyville University "Your research funding has been granted. You can find the 3000 bits in the letter." And then the last letter, the one which Twilight really didn't want to open that much, but as a conscientious pony, did anyway "Dear Twilight Sparkle, according to ponyvilles law paragraph 6.2, you're obligated to pay 8000 bits by the 10th day of this month." Twilight sighed as she stood up and started moving books away from bookshelf. She pulled out a box from the behind the books. Twilight laid the box onto the table and started counting the money it contained. "2347 bits," finished Twilight the counting. "I'm gonna be 5653 bits short!" "The great and powerful Trixie requires the most important meal of the day. Breakfast is an important part of the daily routine. And Trixie isn't going to....bla,bla,bla" Twilight, cooking pancakes, tries to ignore Trixie. "Are you even listening to the golden words of the one and only, great and poweful Trixie?" Twilight lets out an annoyed grunt and answers "yes, I'm listening to all the fascinating things you have to say." "Good, cause Trixie is...bla,bla,bla" continues Trixie on with her unuseful talking. "Hey! What's for breakfast?" "Spike! You're awake!" shouts Twilight, as she runs to hug Spike. "Umm, yeah, what's for breakfast?" asks Spike again, while trying to avoid Twilight's hugs. "Blueberry pancakes! You know, the recipe I got from Pinkie all those years ago." "Oh yeah, those are my favourite!" shouts Spike happily after hearing the good news. Twilight throws on a jacket "Well, treat yourself, I got to go." "Magic! Can anyone tell me what magic is?" asks Twilight giving a lecture in front of the class. "Force that you can use to manipulate the world around you?" asks a random filly in the front seat. Twilight looks at the filly "That too, but I like to see it, as a wonderful force of nature. You see, thanks to the horns that every unicorn has upon birth, we can use our own nerv system, to manipulate the atoms and molecules around our horn, to create something completely new and useful out of thin air." That moment Twilight releases a big light show out of her horn "Fascinating, isn't it?" "Can we do tricks like that one day too?" asks an orange unicorn in the middle row. "Well, that was an advanced magic trick, but if you're interested in the subject, then one day you can perhaps learn to do almost anything you want, with just the power of your horn." Now a brown unicorn in the last row gets curious "Could we use our horn to shoot things?" There's a silence in the class. Twilight quickly gathers up her thoughts and answers "Well, technically yes, but it's also filed under advanced magic. Also, it's not allowed to be fired towards other ponies." There's another silence in the class. Twilight looks at the class for a moment and decides to wrap it up "Well, don't forget to read pages 42 till 53, there isn't gonna be a test, but there's a lot of fascinating information there. Next time I'll talk about innovations in magic science." As rhe final filly closes the door, after leaving the class, Twilight takes out a cup. "Okay, lets see if the machine is finally fixed." As she says those words, she looks at her reflection in a bottle of water. "That's weird. My horn shouldn't be glowing, I'm not using any magic." She touches her horn, only to get stinged by the magic aura surrounding it. As Twilight freaks out, she quickly makes a run towards the library, but collapses on the way there. "Did you hear, what I just said to you?" "Yes, horn cancer. Two years at best." replies Twilight. "Well, we should talk about treatment. As you are an alicorn princess, we can get you the best doctors in Equestria. But, it's gonna cost you. Probably not a problem to a princess like yourself." Twilight nods. "So, should I schedule an appointment?" "Yes. I can get the money, somehow." replies Twilight. Knock, knock. Twilight waits for a moment and then knocks again. With no answer she decides to take a peek through the windows. There are curtains in front of the windows, but Twilight can see at least one pony figure through them. "Got you!" whispers Twilight. She goes to the back door and slowly opens it. As she sneaks through the hallway, she can hear whispers coming from the room in the far left. The whispers are loud enough to hear, but too muddled to understand. Twilight opens the door and jumps in. "Why are you trying to...-" Twilight is cut off middentence as she can see a dark blue pony holding a gun to Cadence's head. "One more move and you're dead," hears Twilight from behind herself. She can feel the cold barrel of a gun touching the back of her head. As the dark blue pony prepares to pull the trigger, Twilight shouts: "Wait! Why are you here? Whatever you are here for, I'm sure we can settle this like civilised ponies!" The pony behind Twilight says: "heh, unless you could teach us how go cook Spark with purity over 90%, then you're pretty useless to our goal." Twilight quickly gathers up her thoughts and makes up a lie: "I can cook it! I'm the best god damn cook out there." "Oh really?" asks the pony from behind Twilight. "Yes," whispers Twilight with a threatening tone. "I call bullshit!" says the pony behind her and Twilight can feel the barrel of the gun pressed deeper into her hair. "Please, just give me a chance and I can prove it. Get me into a lab and I cook it," whispers Twilight as the last act of despair. "Well, we got nothing to lose," says the pony behind her. The two ponies throw bags over Cadence's and Twilight's head and throw both of them on a wagon. As the wagon finally stops, Twilight and Cadence are pushed off it. The ponies remove bag from Twilight's head, as one of them says "well, genius, cook!" Twilight sees Cadence still laying on the ground with a bag over her head. Twilight slowly walks to the workspace and starts mixing chemicals. She takes a few quick looks around the room and then continues on. As the dark blue pony sees Twilight's hooves starting to shiver, he slowly walks up to her and puts the gun against her head. "What exactly are you planning to do here anyway? We're not stupid, we realise, you've never cooked in your entire life. This bullshit here, ain't gonna save you." "I might have never cooked a single batch in my entire life," Twilight's voice starts to tremble "but I sure as hay know my chemistry." After saying that she pours a dark orange chemical, she had mixed together, into water. She quickly jumps towards the gas masks she had located earlier. The chemical mixes with water and explodes, filling the entire room with orange poisonous gas. Twilight, wearing a gas mask, stumbles through the gas, trying to find Cadence. As she sees a glimpse of pink, she quickly runs towards it. She gently removes the bag from Cadence's head and puts on a gas mask. Then, a bullet flies through the fog, hitting Twilight right to the back hoof. Twilight falls to the ground, feeling a stinging pain in her back hoof. She can hear bullets flying over her head, all breaking some kind of lab equipment in the room. Suddenly the bullets stop, Twilight can hear a few strong coughs from the fog and then there's quietness. As the fog settles, Twilight slowly opens her eyes. She tries to push herself up, onto her three legs. "Ouch!" shouts she, as the pain from the back hoof kicks in. She takes a horrid look at what she had done: Two dead ponies lying on the ground, a bullet in her hoof and a passed out Cadence next to her.
9 kilos of candy"Wake up! Wake up!" Cadence opens her eyes, only to find a troubled looking Twilight shaking her and two gas masks laying next to her, on the ground. "What happened, did they leave us alone? You showed them how to cook it and they actually left us alone?" asks Cadence slowly pushing herself up from the ground. "No, I they didn't. Oh Celestia, I'm a horrible pony!" shouts Twilight, clearly stressed out. Cadence looks around the room. She walks up to the two ponies lying on the ground and starts touching them with her hoof. "Are they...are they...?" "Yes!" shouts Twilight, as tears start dropping from her eyes. "What happened?" asks Cadence, still unaware of how things ended up the way they did. Twilight answers through sobbing "Sparklamyne. I mixed sparklamyne with a cooling liquid at high temperature. Then I poured the liquid into water. It causes a mini explosion and lots of dangerous fumes. It was the best solution to get us out of the given situation. The explosion served as distraction and the fumes were too colorful to see through." "O...okay," looks Cadence around, still confused by the given situation "what now?" Twilight lifts her head "what to you mean by what now?" "Well, we have two dead ponies and...well, that's pretty much it, we have teo dead ponies. We just can't leave them here." Twilight starts sobbing even more "I don't know, hide them, for now, I need to gather my thoughts. I'll think up something by tomorrow." "H...hide the bodies? Th...that's illegal, we could both get into big trouble for this," starts Cadence trembling. Twilight looks up to Cadence with a sad and desperate face: "And you think killing ponies isn't? Cadence, I'm a criminal now. I hace commited a crime, worst crime there is, taken a ponies life. I need to live with this knowledge for the last few years I have left. You were the one eho dragged me into this, you were the pony who caused me to do this. You have to help me out now, we're in this together!" Cadence starts excusing herself: "Hey I didn't ask you to sneak into my house!" Twilight looks up at Cadence and Cadence can detect a bit of anger in her eyes and tone "If I wouldn't have shown up, you would've been dead by now. Show some gratitude!" "Fine, I'll hide the bodies. But you promise that you figure out what to do by tomorrow?" "I Pinkie promise!" Twilight slowly and quietly levitates open the castle door. She sneaks through the hallway, to the medical room. "Now lets see" says Twilight opening a book "Treating bullet wounds". She followed every step in the book step by step. As the bullet was out, she quickly put bandage around it. The bullet didn't go to deep, hopefully it'll heal up fast. She closed the door of the medical room and sneaked into her bedroom. "Who disturbs the great and powerful Trixie in the middle of the night?!" Twilight gets shocked, that she had woken up Trixie "Umm, it's me Twilight." Trixie looks at Twilight "And why are you here so late? You think it's funny to mock Trixie by showing up late at night? I was worried, you know. Where were you" Twilight, trying to avoid any further questions answers "I...I visited Cadence. We have some money problems, I thought she could help out a bit." "Hmmph, whatever, I'm going back to sleep. No snuggling tonight, makes you think about not doing things like that again." "Fine," answers Twilight, making herself comfortable in the bed. Twilight opens up her eyes, the sun is already shining bright upon Equestria. A new day, a new hope. A hope, that yesterday never hapened. Twilight jumps out of her bed, badly hurting her backhoof. "Ouch! It's...it's still there. The bandage is there and that means...I'm a killer." Twilight quickly took a shower and threw on her bathrobe. She went to the hallway and started walking towards the castle door, going to pick up her mail and then read it and then eat and then..."No! I can't do it, I can't waste time here with this! She pushed open the library door and gazed upon the large selection of books. Sne quickly went around, picking up every single book about acids that she could find. "Dissolving a pony? What acid should I use to dissolve a full entire pony body?" After some searching she finds what she was looking for "hydrofluoric acid." Twilight quickly takes out her hoofphone and calls Cadence: "Cadence, lets meet at the lab, I know what to do!" Cadence pushes open the lab door and after she and Twilight enter the room, Twilight locks the door behind her. "Now, Cadence, it's important that nopony would enter this room, not until the reaction has finished." Twilight looks through the lab equipment and chemicals and asks: "Umm, Cadence? Where's hydrofluoric acid?" Cadence looks at Twilight with a confused face and asks "hydro what now?" Twilight looses control: "Hydrofluoric acid. The chemical we were supposed to use to dissolve these bodies. I thought this lab had those!" "And I thought you were gonna turn yourself in!" There's a silence in the lab. Twilight's face turns from angry to worried to desperate to sad, "You thought what?" Cadence realises she had said something she shouldn't have: "I thought you were gonna take this time to say goodbye to everypony you cared about and just give yourself in, for killing those ponies." Twilight sat down and rested her back against the wall, "you thought...you thought that I was gonna give myself in? Go to jail, for...for this. What would Spike think of me? What would Trixie think of me? What would Rainbow Dash think of me? What would...what would...what would princess Celestia think of me?! You thought, that I was just gonna go out there and admit to everypony, that I, the princess of friendship, former student of princess Celestia...am a murderer?" "Well, I thought it was the right thing to do." Twilight looks at Cadence "Right thing to do? You want to hear what is a right thing to do? Save yourself and your friend from murderous psychopats. And I did it! I saved both of our lives and you just thought, that I was gonna give myself in? Tell me exactly, what did those two ponies want from you anyway?" "The spark. The very thing you said you were going to cook for them. I used to work in the spark market. I was a small part of a big business, I was the one who got the supplies. All the compounds needed to make a batch," explains Cadence. "Wait, this Spark...tell me, how much can you earn from it?" Cadence looks at Twilight with a surprised face, "Well, all I know is that there is big momey moving in the business. The purer the product, the more you can earn." "And you know all the compounds?" asks Twilight. Cadence nods. Twilight makes up a plan, "In that case...we have a lab, we have the compounds and we have...the cook." Cadence looks at Twilight, "The cook? We don't have...-" "I'm the cook!" interupts Twilight. There's silence in the room, until Twilight breaks it, "Get me sulfur, fluorite and water. Leave the rest to me." Twilight walks into the lab early the next day. She can see that Cadence had got her the things she had asked for. "Time to do chemistry." Twilight burns the sulfur, to produce sulfur dioxide. From there on, she uses oxygen with vanadium(V) oxide as catalyst. She then proceeds, to hydrate the obtained sulfur trioxide into sulfuric acid. And condensation to finish it off. Twilight looks at the finished product - 20 gallons of sulfuric acid. "Okay, according to the book, all I have to do now, is combine the sulfuric acid with fluorite and I'll have the finished product - hydrofluoric acid." As Twilight finally finishes the batch of hydrofluoric acid, her excitement of the chemical process slowly starts to fade and she starts to remember why she had to obtain it in the first place. She looked at the blanket, covering the two ponies lying on the ground. Not the bast way to hide dead bodies, but neither she or Cadence where familiar with doing anything like that. Twilight walked to the plastic barrel, sitting in the corner of the room. She gulped, "No going back after this." As she started to move the barrel, she started to have a moment of doubt, "Is that what I truly want to do? Dissolve the bodies of two ponies?" She looked at the blanket, hidding two dead ponies underneath it. "No, I have to be strong, I have to go through with this. Not just for myself, but also for everypony I care about. I can't let everypony down like that. It was a moment of self defence, there was nothing else I could've done. If I'd have to relive yesterday again, I would do absolutely the same thing!" She dragged the plastic barrel across the room to the dead bodies. She took off the blanket and started lifting the dark blue pony with a levitation spell. "Ding ding, dinga ding, ding ding, dinga ding!" Twilight was startled by an unexpected sound and dropped the pony onto the ground. "No, how could've this all gone so wrong?!" She dropped onto the ground and slowly lifted her front hoofs to the air. "I give up! I know what I've done is horrible, but I didn't have another choice." The sound kept on going and Twilight slowly turned to the source of the sound - her pocket. She slowly levitated her phone out of her pocket, lifted it to her head and answered the phone, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle speaking." "Hey Twilight, where are you? I said Lyra's gonna have a birthday and I said I was gonna come and pick you up, so be ready," can Twilight hear Rainbow Dash's voice. Twilight is still a bit shocked by what had just happened, but tries to answer calmly, "O-Oh, the birthday? Well, you didn't realy specify in the letter, when it was going to be," "I sent you the letter two days ago. Which means you got it yesterday, so it's only logical I'd show up today. You know, one day to prepare, buy a gift." "Dash, I can't really speak at the moment, I'm in the middle of something. You can go on without me, I know where Lyra lives, I'll show up a bit later. Pick up a gift on the way there..." "Wait, you haven't bought a gift yet? But I told you---" Dash's phone call is cut off by Twilight. Twilight sighs in relief, relief of not getting caught, relief of it just being a simple phone call. But there wasn't time to waste, there was job to be done, a job which no one in their right mind would look forward to doing - disposal of corpses. Twilight began with the same process she was cut off from, by an unexpected call from Dash. Twilight lifts up the pony and throws him into the plastic barrel. Then Twilight puts on her gas mask and starts emptying gallon after gallon into the barrel. Twilight runs through the streets of ponyville. "What could I possibly buy for Lyra? She stops in front of a candy store. "That!" She quickly runs inside, "10 Kg of candy, fast! Any flavour, just candy!" The shopkeeper looks suspiciously at Twilight, but fills the bag with candy anyhow. "That'll be 50 bits!" Twilight picked out her wallet, reminding her of again of the money trouble she had, "Umm...you know, I only have 47 bits, perhaps I could get a discount or pay up next time I'll be here?" The shopkeep looks at Twilight with a grumpy face and pours back 1 Kg from the bag, "Now it's 45 bits, you get to keep the 2." Twilight looks at shopkeep with a disappointed face, but takes the candy, "You have a very friendly service here. I am so going to tell about this place to my friends," says Twilight when walking out of the door. "What's that smell?" asks a filly walking past Twilight. "Shush, you can't talk about a princess like that," bickers the fillies mother with the young filly. "But she's one of the useless princesses, you know, the one who---" "Keep your mouth!" whispers the fillies mother at an angry tone. Twilight felt sudden anger flow through her, "The useless princess? That's what they call her nowadays? And it's all cause of princess Celestia..." But Twilight's train of thought was ended by something rather unexpected, Twilight actually realised that the filly was right, she smelled, smelled badly. "How could've I forgot? The chemistry I've been working with for the full day, and I would've almost went to Lyra's house smelling like this. Boy, that wouldn't have raised a ton of questions." She pushed opened the SPA door. "I need perfume, strong one, fast!" Aloe looked at her and quickly brought out a pink perfume bottle from the back room, "Only the best for a princess." Twilight opened the wallet, only to see 2 bits lying in it. "Umm, I have a SPA card, could I use it? I don't have any money with me right now..." "Of course you can use it!" answered Aloe, taking the card from Twilight's hand and registering the purchase. "Have a nice day!" shouted she after Twilight, who had quickly ran out after getting the card back. Knock, knock. Lyra opened the door, "Twilight, you made it! I thought you weren't coming, when I saw Dash show up alone." "Oh, I had to run a few errands and you know...busy life..." "Nah, I totally understand. It's Dash you should be worried about, she seems kinda sad, she's usually more active." Twilight hands Lyra her bag of candy, "Oh. Hey here's your present, do you mind if I go talk to Dash for a while?" "Sure. Hey, those are from candy emporium, I love this place. Great candy and friendly workers," looks Lyra at the bag of candy, "How much did you exactly buy?" Twilight hesitates for awhile, "I bought... 10 kilos, 10 kilos of candy" "Heh, that's a lot, I'm gonna get a sugar rush out of this," talks Lyra through a mouthful of candy. Twilight walks up to Dash. "Hey, there buddy, you made it!" shouts Dash with a tone, that is pretending hapiness, while trying to hide actual sadness. Twilight looks at Dash with a concerned look, "Hey is something wrong, I'm sorry I wasn't home..." "No, no, it isn't cause of you. It's...it's just work troubles..." Twilight sits down next to Dash, "So, what's wrong with work?" "I, I thought I had a good lead. You see, me and Lyra had been keeping an eye on that scumbag for awhile now and yesterday, she just slipped out of our sight. We haven't seen him since..." Twilight tries to comfort Dash, "Hey, don't worry about it, you're a good EDEA agent, I'm sure you'll find him eventually. Maybe you could describe him to me, I could give you a call if I happen to see him." "Heh, well I doubt you'll see him, but he's dark blue colored, hidden cutie mark, dark hair and---" Twilight interrupts, "Red eyes?" "Yeah, red eyes, how did you know?" asked Dash surprisedly. Twilight thinks about the pony she left soaking in the barrel, before she left the lab, "I...I think I saw him...in...Crystal Empire...when I was visiting Cadence...he walked past me on the street." "Heh, that super brain of your remembers every little detail doesn't it?" starts Rainbow Dash poking fun. "Not everything, that pony, he just seemed off, kinda different," starts Twilight explaining herself. "You got a good eye for scumbags. You know, I know you love your safe little job at the university, but maybe, one day, I could take you on a ride along? You know, hanging out, having an adventure again, like back in the days, when we had our group together." "Yeah, maybe one day," replies Twilight, letting out a small chuckle. "Hey, what's this?" asks Cadence pointing at the plastic barrel in the middle of the room. "It's where I dissolved one of them and it's where I'm going to dissolve the other one as well," answers Twilight. Cadence's face turns worried as she says, "Yeah, that's gonna be a problem." Twilight starts feeling everything inside her grumble, like something bad has happened, "What? Why? I got enough hydrofluoric acid left..." "He woke up!" shouts Cadence. "What?" asks Twilight, feeling the grumbling inside her getting worse. As the door opens up, Cadence points at a dark green pony, tied against a tube. "He started to wake up, I felt it was a good idea to tie him up, who knows what he would do in a situation like that. Right, Twilight? Twilight?" Twilight's heart had started bumping at an incredible speed and she tried to breathe deeply, to get it back to normal. As her heart pulse returned to normal, she started stressimg out, "Oh Celestia, no, this was not supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen..." Cadence looked at her and decided to ask the question, "Isn't it a good thing? That means you're only half the murderer you thought you were." "Half the murderer?" asks Twilight from Cadence, "You know what this pony is going to do, once he gets his health back to normal? He's going to escape and he's going to send dangerous people after us, after the ponies we care about...No! We can't let him live!" "Can't let him live? What are you trying to say here, murder him?" asks Cadence from Twilight. "This, at the given circumstances, seems to be our best option," answers Twilight. "Well, I ain't gonna do it. I don't know about you, but I'm not that comfortable with murdering other ponies," points out Cadence. "What? You think I liked poisoning these two? Do you think I get some kind of pleasure out of making sure this guy here dies? No, I'm doing this, because this is our best option. Our only option, so to say, cause if we don't do it, he's gonna hurt us and everybody we care about." Cadence sighs, "I'm not capable of murder." "I know you aren't and that's why...," Twilight gulps, "I have to do it."
5635 bitsTwilight lets her hoof fly through all the lab equipment, "You know, we should start cooking. We have all the equipment here, we have all the components of Spark right here." "Hey, aren't you forgetting something?" asks Cadence, pointing her hoof to the basement door. "I'm...I'm just gonna need more time. I'll do it, I promise. But how about now we cook up a batch, you go and sell it, while I take care of our little "problem" in the basement," "Fine, but don't leave it like that for long. He ain't stupid and he's gonna eventually figure out, how to get out of there, unless we get to him first," points out Cadence, while bringing the gas masks. "Okay, lets cook!" says Twilight trying to get her mind off the deed she has to do soon. "It's finished!" shouts Twilight after a couple of hours. "78% pure," says Twilight testing the purity. "78% pure? I've been in this business for long and the best I've seen so far is 76% pure. How did you get something like that on your first cook?" shouts Cadence in surprise. Twilight starts to ramble, "Did you forget? I used to be the star pupil of Celestia. All it required was knowledge in chemistry. I might even tweak the recipe a bit, perhaps get even a better result." "That's awesome! You're a god damn artist!" shouts Cadence, still surprised by the purity they had cooked up. "Well, glad you like it," says Twilight, taking off her glasses and cleaning them. "Okay, I'll be off to sell them sweet rocks. Remember to "clean out" the basement, okay?" says Cadence running off. Sudden shock hits Twilight, "The basment?" She had totally forgot that once they were done with the batch, she had to finish brutally murdering a pony. "Perhaps he's already dead?" goes thought through Twilight's head. "Maybe the fumes just took some time more to kill him?" But as soon as Twilight opened the basement door, she realised, no luck. The pony was still tied to a tube and was as much alive as herself. "Water!" shouts suddenly the pony tied up to the tube. "Wha-?" starts asking Twilight, but is cut off by the pony, "Listen, if you're gonna kill me, then do it now, don't leave me here to die of dehydration. If on the other hoof aren't planning on doing that, will you please bring me something to drink?" Twilight realised that dehydration would be a good way to go. It wouldn't be messy, she wouldn't have to do anything and there would be no resistance. But Twilight's heart wasn't cold enough to do that, leaving somepony to die in pain like that, even if they themself would probably leave her in a situation like that. "I'll bring you something to drink," says Twilight as she walks out of the door. Twilight walks through the hallway of the castle of the crystal empire. "The kitchen has to be here somewhere," she mumbles to herself, while walking through the room. "There it is!" shouts Twilight, walking into the kitchen. Twilight takes a glass and fills it with some water from the tap. She walks back, pushes open the basement door and walks down. As she takes the last step, she can feel her head getting a bit dizzy and as she reaches down the stairs, the aura around her horn suddenly disappears and the glass falls fown to the floor, breaking it into pieces. "Oh my, what happened?" asks the tied up pony. "Nothing, it hasn't happened before, maybe I just lost control over my magic," says Twilight as she pushes all the pieces of the broken glass into a bag. "You know, you should go to a doctor with this. It might be something you'd need to cure," says the tied up pony. Twilight lifts up the bag full of shattered glass, "Yeah, and why do you care? It seemed to me that a few days ago you were planning to waste me and Cadence." "I'm truly sorry for what I did. I truly am. But you have to see, I didn't stand a choice. It was either me or Cadence and I'm pretty sure you would've done the same in my situation. I never planned to hurt anyone else but her, you were just a bystander, who showed up at a bad time." "I wouldn't have done the same what you did...I have morals, I don't go killing off ponies, just so I could secure my own safety," Twilight takes a deep breathe, "And it wasn't a bad time, it was a perfect time. If I wouldn't have showed up then, Cadence would be dead. There would be nationwide crisis, not to even start talking about losing an old friend. I saved her life, with the price of you two. Am I proud of it? No! But it was the only option I had back then." The tied up pony looks and Twilight and says, "You said with the price of us two, but does it really have to be both of us? You already killed my partner, isn't that enough to send a message across. Killing me would be a pointless move to make, I learned to not mess with you. I know I seem like a criminal to you, but I have a life outside of that. A family that'll start missing me. Just let me go and we can end this here. No more blood has to be shattered. Come on, I know you aren't a killer, you can make the right choice here." Twilight looks into the eye of the pony and realises, she can't do this. "The pony is right, I'm not a killer," thinks Twilight in her head. "I'm...I'm gonna bring a box cutter and cut you out of these ropes," says Twilight as she picks up the bag full of shattered class and walks out of the door. Twilight walks into Shining Armor's work room. "He used to have a box cutter here somewhere..." says Twilight looking through the drawers. "Here it is!" she shouts, as she finds what she was looking for. "Wait..." says Twilight as she can see some glue and duct tape next to the box cutter. "Maybe I could fix the broken glass. Would avoid a lot of questions from Cadence." She pours out the pieces of shattered glass onto the table and starts rearranging the pieces. "No, this can't be," Twilight starts looking around for missing pieces. "No,no,no,no..." shouts Twilight as she leans onto the wall, sits down and starts crying, "there is one piece missing, a big piece." Twilight slowly approaches the tied up pony, with a box cutter in one hand. "You're going to release me? I knew you'd be a smart pony. Just cut the rope open and we can both forget this ever happened," looks the pony at Twilight with a hopefull and happy face. "Let's say I'm going to release you...," Twilight walks behind the tube, "Then what are you going to do? Stab me with that piece of glass." As soon as Twilight finished the sentence, the tied up pony's hoof took out a piece of glass and hit it right into Twilight's front hoof. Twilight dropped the box cutter and it landed right in front of the tied up pony. As the pony reached out his hoof to grab the box cutter, his head was suddenly torn back, hitting back of his head right to the tube. Twilight was pulling the rope, tied around the other ponies beck. Twilight closed her eyes as she kept on pulling the ropes, hearing the last breaths of the other pony. As the pony no longer moved or screamed, Twilight slowly opened her eyes, seeing blood coming out of the pony's mouth. And that's the moment Twilight realised, she had already commited a second murder. Twilight closed the door behind her and took off the the gas mask. "What happened? Did you do it?" asks Cadence, seeing Twilight at the door. Twilight puts the gas mask into Cadence's hooves saying, "Have a look at it yourself. Also, cleaning the basement will be your job." As Twilight walks off, Cadence puts on her gas mask and walks into the room. She looks into the barrel, seeing only a hoof floating on top of the hydrofluoric acid and even that sinks in shortly. She opens up the basement door, looking down at it, a box cutter lying on the ground, a piece of glass covered in blood and tons of loose ropes. A few days later: As Twilight walks out of the university, after the lessons, she sees Cadence wearing some kind of Stupid outfit on the other side of the road and waving to her. Twilight runs to her and shouts in an angry whispering voice: "what in the name of Celestia are you doing here? You know-" "Hey, cut it. We've got a big deal, a big opportunity." replies Cadence to Twilight. Twilight looks around and after making sure nopony is looking, she asks: "what are you talking about?" "Put these on!" Shouts Cadence while throwing a porkpie hat and sunglasses to Twilight. Then she takes out a can of purple spraypaint and colors over Twilight's cutie mark. "You better start explaining right now to me what the heck this is all about or I walk!" looks Twilight at Cadence with an angry face. Cadence answers: "I managed to get a guy, who knows how to get our product on the streets, to try our product. He wants more, but he wants to meet the person who created it - you!" Twilight tries to interupt: "Wait, but-" Cadence completely ignores Twilight and continues on "Now, we can't have your real name moving on the streets with the product, so you need to create an alias, and better change up your looks aswell. We're going into the big business."
SparkswirlCadence and Twilight are standing in front of an old building. "Well, there's no going back" says Cadence. Twilight puts on her porkpie hat. They both walk in slowly. Two ponies check their pockets upon entry. All they find is a bag full of a bit clear crystals. "It's the stuff" says Twilight. The ponies give Twilight the bag pack and let both of them enter a door, which leads to stairs. Twilight and Cadence walk up the stairs and into a room. They see Bulk Biceps sitting in front of them Snips on one side and Snails on the other. Snips walks up to Twilight, takes the bag of crystals and throws it to Bulk. Bulk takes a look and says "It's the purest I've seen" Twilight says, "Yeah, it's 78% pure. It's not the type of garbage your usual street guy cooks, this is pure chemistry." Bulk looks at Twilight and asks, "Hey, purple one! What's your name?" Twilight looks at Bulk with a self-assured face "Sparkswirl. My name is Sparkswirl." Bulk looks at Twilight and says "Okay then, Sparkswirl, we're in business!" When Twilight and Cadence walk out of the building, Cadence finally turns to Twilight "Wow, Twilight, that was some confidence back there." Twilight stops and stares at Cadence "Yes, cause that's how the game works, right? The weak get crushed and the strong survive? Well, I'll have you know, I'm the dtrong one." Then Twilight walks off, leaving confused Cadence behind her. As soon as Twilight opens the door Trixie runs to her and asks "Where have you been? You do remember Dash is coming over for dinner?" "Yes, I remember completely," answers Twilight, throwing the porkpie hat onto the coat rack. "And what's that?" asks Trixie pointing at the porkpie hat. Twilight puts her jacket on the coat rack aswell, "It's a porkpie hat. A gift from a work associate." "Another teacher?" doesn't Trixie stop bugging Twilight with questions. Twilight slowly nods. "What's been up with you lately?" Trixie pauses for a moment, " You show up late, you always have those places to be, you have those bandages on two of your hooves and now you show up home with a pork hat?" "It's a porkpie hat," corrects Twilight Trixie's word. Trixie brings the subject back to Twilight, "It doesn't matter what hat it is. What I want to know is what you've been doing lately?" "I've been, uh, helping Applejack out on the farm. I found that with our current financial situation, we'd need more money and this would be the best way to earn it," Twilight realised she had lied and was now waiting for the result. She was eager to see if Trixie had bought her lie or not. "You know, I could start doing presentations again for the---" "No!" shouts Twilight, "I've got it all under control, you don't need to go back to that old job, just let me handle the situation. I promise, I can handle the money." "Listen," holds Trixie up Twilight's front hoof, "just remember, I can always help out." "There's no need,---" Knock, knock. Twilight turns her head around and asks "Who's the one who knocks?" "Hey, Twilight! It's me, Rainbow Dash! Could you open the door, buddy?" "Right away, just wait a bit!" Twilight runs to the door and opens it up. While Trixie runs to the kitchen. "Hey, so what've you been up to?" asks Dash upon entry. "Eh, nothing much. I visited Cadence awhile back," starts Twilight talking to Dash. "And she's been helping Applejack out on the farm for money!" shouts Trixie from the kitchen. "Really?" looks Dash at Twilight with a surprised face, "You know, it's good to know you're helping AJ out, but if you're in financial trouble, you should've said it to me. Y'know, I'd be always willing to help you out." "As I said already to Trixie, there is no need," says Twilight with a determined face. "So, how's the investegation coming along?" asks Twilight from Dash, trying to change the subject and maybe get some information as well. "Eh, it's basically a dead end, seems like this guy just disappeared off the planet," says Dash with a worried face. "So, you got nothing? Don't know any connections he might've had or anything about the past?" asks Twilight. "Well, we know something about his past, but not much helpful. Nothing suspicious has come up yet," Rainbow Dash pauses for a moment, "I think somepony just cleared him out of the way. Probably somepony who knew we were tracing him." "What makes you think he's dead. Maybe he's just in hiding?" starts Twilight to feel shivers going down her spine. "I've been on this job long enough, my gut tells me it. Somepony had done a sweep on his home. A criminal who escapes usually doesn't bother to do that." Twilight gets confused,"A sweep? Are you sure?" "Yeah, everything was clean, too clean, not the style of a probabal criminal like that." "Hey you two, come and eat the legendary food cooked by the great and powerful Trixie!" shouts Trixie from the other room. "Is this going to be a regular thing now?" asks Cadence from Twilight. "What?" asks Twilight slowly taking off her jacket. "You know, wounding one of your hooves every time you kill someone." "No," says Twilight, walking up to a locker, "This, the street level, making deals with bulk or anypony else, is your end of the business. I'm the cook, the silent partner. I'm never going to hurt another pony again." A few days later, Twilight shows up at the lab, with no signs of Cadence. Twilight looks around the lab thinking that usually Cadence shows up early before her. Twilight waited for a few hours, until she realised, if she doesn't start now, the patch will go to waste. She started slowly the cooking process in the hopes that she can handle it alone. After a long cooking process, she tests the purity. "71%, damn it. Cadence better have a good excuse!" Mumbled Twilight to herself. She could hear her phone start ringing. All of the memories, killing the first pony, dissolving him later and doing it with the other pony too, all flashed through her head. "I'd really need to switch my ringtone after all of this." She picked up the phone answering, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle. How may I help you?" "Hey, Twi, I've got some really bad news," could Twilight hear Rainbow Dash's voice "I'm currently on the corner of ponyville and well...I can't even..." "Calm down Dash, what happened?" asks Twilight with a shiver going down her spine. "Cadence, Cadence is, is, is dead," trembles Rainbow Dash. Twilight drops her phone onto the lab floor.
Better call Pinkie!The floor of the lab is soaking with methylamine, as a purple alicorn is standing in the middle of the room, wearing a gas mask and emptying gallon after gallon of the liquid on the floor. As the final canister empties up, Twilight runs around the lab, throwing everything unflamable and everything that doesn't burn fast onto a wagon. "Goodbye Cadance" whispers Twilight in a sad tone, almost shredding a tear. She sets the entire lab on fire and runs away with the wagon. "Lets move in!" shouts Dash as she busts down the door. Rainbow Dash dashes through the caslte, searching for anything suspicious. She stops as she can see a red glow coming from a room. "What we got?" asks Lyra, panting after finally managing keeping up with Dash. "We got second place," says Dash, grinding her teeth. Twilight had been running since the crystal empire, never looking back. Now, as she had finally reached the edge of ponyville she stopped and thought for a second, "What exactly am I going to do with a wagon full of unflamable lab equipment?" "Well, you could set up a lab and continue what you were doing before, just without Cadence," comes a squeaky voice from behind Twilight. As Twilight slowly turned around, she could see Pinkie lifting up the blanket, that she had thrown on the lab equipment, and peeking inside. "How did you?" looks Twilight at Pinkie. "Don't worry, I'm here to help you. There's big money moving in this business, only if you know where to find it and learn to not get caught. Lucky for you, I know a few things about both of them," whispers Pinkie to Twilight, placing a business card into Twilight's hoof. "Better call Pinkie?" reads Twilight from the card, "Seriously? That's the best you could come up with?" asks Twilight from Pinkie. "Hey, I'm a dirty lawyer. And what better catchphrase for a dirty lawyer, than---?" "Okay, I get it," cuts Twilight Pinkie off, "Now, what makes you think I even want to do this business anymore? And why do you think even if I do that I need you?" "Easy, same answer for the both questions - you need money, you don't wanna get caught and your hatred towards Celestia," pulls Pinkie out an answer on a second notice, "You see, now that Cadence has been murdered, Celestia is gonna start harassing you with stuff like emergency meetings and extra security and all that annoying Celestia crap that you don't want. But lucky for you, I'm a lawyer and I can represent you and make sure you can keep on cooking in the privacy." "Heh," chuckles Twilight, "And who's gonna be my lab assistan, you?" "Lab assistant?" looks Pinkie into Twilight's eyes askingly. "Yeah, I can't cook alone. Well I can, but it's a lot of work and I'm not capable of it all on my own. The quality of the product suffers from it, seemingly. Do you even know the first thing about cooking Spark?" questions Twilight Pinkie's power to help her. "Okay, listen, I might know what to do," flashes an idea in Pinkie's head, "just find a place, set up your lab and I'll send an assistant there." Twilight looks at Pinkie, questioning if she could truly get her a lab assistant who knows what they're doing and wouldn't squeal. There's a small silence, until Twilight finally nods and answers Pinkie, "Okay, get me a lab assistant and I'll make you my lawyer." "What we got on street?" takes Rainbow Dash a sip of coffee. "Well, the same old The Mineral story and," Lyra pauses. "And? What, The new The Rock story?" chuckles Rainbow Dash. "You know, if you'd just let me finish and wouldn't interupt me with your stupid bull crap---" Dash interrupts Lyra, "Okay, cut it off, party pooper, tell me what's up?" "There's a new name moving on the street. Goes with the best product I've and the street guys have ever seen. 78%" "78, huh? Oh boy, so what's the name?" gets Dash concerned. "Another stupid name like The Mineral. This one goes by the name Sparkswirl. Stupid made up names both. Checked already, there's no pony going by that name." "Well, whoever she is, she ain't no idiot. I did a check on what was left of the lab,everything was burnt and everything what wasn't, she took with her." "Why do you think she didn't burn everything?" asks Lyra. "Heh, years of experience," chuckles Rainbow Dash, "You see, the fire hadn't burned for long by the time we got there. Not long enough to burn everything you need in a spark lab, especially given the fact that some of the equipment is unflamable." "So, there's still proof out there?" asks Lyra. "Yeah, but for how long, that's the question. Whoever she was, she burnt down the entire lab, not leaving any proof thete. There are two options - she either took it all somewhere else to cook there or, she just needed time to dissolve the equipment some other way. Now, the first is the best case scenario for us, cause then we still have evidence. But we need to act fast, try to get much information as possible, so we could track down wherever these things are stored at currently," answers Dash, taking another sip out of the coffee. "Well, then we'd better get to work fast," shakes Lyra the file room keys. Twilight strolled through the sweet apple acres apple garden, looking around every now and then, making sure nopony is following her. After a long walk, she reached an open field between the trees. And there it was, the cutie mark crusaders treehouse. She pushed open the door, taking a peek inside the dusty room. She tooks out her hoofphone and quickdials Pinkie's number, "Found it, I'll send you the cordinates." Twilight can hear soft hoof knocks on the door. "Fluttershy?" is Twilight shocked upon opening the door. "Oh my," blushes Fluttershy. "Pinkie didn't send you, did she?" asks Twilight from Fluttershy. "Pinkie said I needed to bring some lab equipment here and help the cook with her cooking. I'm sorry," blushes Fluttershy even more. There's an awkward silence in the room, while both of them are trying to adjust to the other being interested in the process of the spark cooking. "Well," breaks Twilight the silence, "Lets set up the lab." As the cook finishes and Twilight tests the quality, she gets another surprise, "84%? That's 6% rise in quality," Twilight turns around and looks Fluttershy deep jnto the eye, "We must be the best Spark cooks in the world." "Oh, that's, umm, good," says Fluttershy in a quiet tone. Twilight rushes into euphoria, "Good? This is better than good, we're the best. We could---" "Not to burst your bubble, but we're out of supplies to make another batch," interupts Fluttershy Twilight's feelings of triumph. "What?" drops Twilight her front hooves back on the ground. "We're out of the green crystals and methylamine and a lot of other stuff as well," points Fluttershy towards empty barrels. Twilight's mind jumps to the moment where Cadence promised to keep her always supplied, reminding her, that without Cadence, there is nothing to make the product out of. "Could you excuse me?" asks Twilight, rushing out of the tree house and taking her hoofphone out of the pocket. "Pinkie Pinkman, how can I help you?" can she hear from the other end of the line. "Pinkman?" questions Twilight. "Oh, hey Twilight. Yeah, it's a lawyer name, I've got a rather shady clientel, if you catch my drift," reclines Pinkie in her chair. "Pinkie, we're out of supplies. We don't have anything to make the product out of," flips Twilight into the phone. "Whoa, hold off there. Don't worry, I'm your lawyer, I've got you covered. But remember, lawyer's cut is 17% out of the profit and I take care of almost your every problem," negotiates Pinkie. "Okay, 15%, 17%, whatever, just get me someone who can regularly supply the incridients for me," flips Twilight at Pinkie again. "Don't worry, only the very best for my client. Got you covered," says Pinkie the final lines, before ending the phone call. Twilight walks up to the old building again, feeling a gulp in her throat. She puts on her porkpie hat and sunglasses. Twilight walks past the security guys and to the second floor. "Here's the new product!" shouts Twilight, throwing a big bag of Spark on Bulk's table, "It's 84% now, so double the cost." Bulk looks at Twilight with an angry face, "What exactly is that? You come here alone now? And you demand double the pay? Who the buck do you think you are?" "I am Sparkswirl," says Twilight with an arrogant tone, "and if you want this product, you'll pay the double for it. This is the best product in the world and nowhere, I repeat, nowhere, can you get anything like it. Take a sniff." Bulk breaks rhe Spark crystal into little pieces and sniffs it in, "Tight! Tight! Tight! Yeah! Alright, keep bringing me that. Double, triple, whatever." "Okay, I'm gonna take triple," says Twilight with an arrogant smile. "You trying to push my buttons?" hits bulk his hoof on the table. "Hey, as I said, this is the best product in the world and I can sell it anytime anywhere with triple the price of what you gave me for the last batch. The question is, are you gonna be the one to buy it?" "Fine, I pay triple. You sure know the business, Sparkswirl," says Bulk, throwing a bag full of money at Twilight. Twilight picks up the bag in front of her hooves, lifts it up and smirks, "Glad to do business with you." "Hey, there you are!" shouts Pinkie upon Twilight's entry. "Meet your new supplier!" shouts Pinkie, pointing her front hooves at Rarity. "What's next, Applejack as a bodyguard?" bursts out Twilight. "No, no, no. I'm a professional and Applejack ain't in the circle. She's the honest pony, it wouldn't work out with her," bursts Pinkie into laughter. As the sun shines through the window a purple crystal brightens up. "What's this?" asks Twilight pointing her hoof at it. "Oh, it's a purple sparklamphine, I need it for my next design," looks Rarity at the crystal. "Could you get me 10 kilos of these in a week?" asks Twilight. "Well, I suppose I could," looks Rarity at the crystals, "what do you need them for?" "My grand recipe," answers Twilight with a slight smirk. "97%" shouts Twilight in euphoria after a sucessful cook, "13% rise in quality." At the moment Rarity walks in, carrying a barrel of purple sparklamphine. Twilight runs to Rarity, putting her hooves on her shoulder and looking into Rarity's eyes with a bright stare, "This crystal is the best thing that has happened in the entire Spark business!" "Glad you like it," answers Rarity, trying to push Twilight's hooves off her shoulders, "but I'd appreciate if you wouldn't touch me with your spark cooking hooves." Twilight's hoofphone starts ringing and as she picks it up, she can hear angry Trixie, "where exactly are you? Rainbow Dash came over 2 hours ago." "Oh, I totally forgot she was gonna come over today. Listen, I'll be right there," answers Twilight, ending the call to avoid any further questions. "Hey, Rarity, could you drop the Spark off to bulk? He's at that old building by the edge of ponyville, take Fluttershy with you," Twilight grabs Rarity into her arms, "You're good at negotiating right?" "Well, I've negotiated quite a few dress prices and---" "Good. Tell him the price has quintupled and that the product is now 97% pure," says Twilight, handing Rarity the bag of Spark and running out of the treehouse. Rarity is standing in front of the old building with Fluttershy standing next to her. "How disgusting," remarks Rarity looking at the building. As they walk in, they are being stopped by two guards. "Hey, get your dirty hooves off of me, I'm here to deliever the product," shouts Rarity. One of the guards takes the bag from her and walks up the stairs. Rarity and Fluttershy slowly follow him. Rarity can feel the disgusting dirt on the stairs runing her pedicure. "When this is over, I'm going right into the SPA," whispers she to Fluttershy. The guard throws the bag to Bulk. "This thing is 97% pure now and the price has quintupled," shouts Rarity. Bulk looks at Rarity and starts laughing, "Quintupled? What are you crazy?" "Hey, Twilight said it's quintupled, which means I'm going to her with the money she demanded for the product, weather you like it or not," looks Rarity at Bulk with an angry face. "Twilight? Sparkswirl's a princess? And moreso, now that her product is that pure, she is too good to come here by herself and sends her mules here?" laughs Bulk, while walking towards Rarity. "I ain't no mule, you roughian!" shouts Rarity at Bulk. "A tempered one, aren't you?" laughs Bulk into Rarity's face. "Maybe we should go," whispers Fluttershy. "We ain't going anywhere before this idiot pays up," whispers Rarity back. "Okay, you know what? I got your quintuple right here!" as he says those words, Bulk hits Rarity onto floor. "That's quintuple the hits I usually give for fuckers who try to screw me over," shouts Bulk, while beating the blood out of Rarity's mouth. "Please, stop!" shouts Fluttershy, trying to stop Bulk from hitting Rarity. "Okay, I stopped," stops Bulk hitting Rarity and walks back to his chair. Fluttershy looks at Rarity lying on the ground - Broken hooves, blood coming out of her mouth, broken teeth, messy hair and a black eye. "And that's basically the story," ends Rainbow Dash her story. "Sparkswirl, huh?" questions Spike. "Yeah, the clever ones usually always come up with some kind of irrelevant aliases. There's that one pony, goes by the name The Mineral, been trying to bring down his Spark operation for years now. Not a single clue found yet, whoever they're, they don't leave many clues," rambles Dash. "Hey, but maybe there's something to it? Those aliases couldn't come out of thin air, maybe there's some thin connection between the pony and the name," questions Spike once again. At that moment , the door flies open as Twilight walks in and puts her jacket on the coat rack. "Hey, Twi! What's up with you?" flied Dash to greet Twilight. Twilight quickly makes up a lie, "Nothing much, been helping Applejack at the farm again." "For Celestias sake, you're killing yourself there. You look exhausted. Are you sure you don't need any help? All you gotta do is ask. Remember, I'm always here for you, buddy," puts Dash her hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "No, it's fine. I've been sitting inside for so long anyway, it's good to get some physical excercise," makes Twilight quickly up and excuse. "Okay, just be careful. Quick changes aren't good for anypony," is Dash still concerned. As Twilight and Dash are talking, they're slowly moving towards the diner room. "Twilight, where have you been?" asks Trixie as soon as they enter the diner room. "Your brave mare has been working on the farm, bucking some apples," says Dash crashing down on a chair. "Yeah, actually AJ's planning to pay me for my work tomorrow. Then we can pay for the castle debt and maybe save some money aside," starts Twilight rambling, after sitting down. "Hey, you know, we got guns at work now. After what had happened to Cadance, you know, extra security measures. They're believing that the Spark market is becoming more violent, now that---," Rainbow Dash pauses. "Now that?" asks Twilight immidietly. "There's somepony new on the market, goes by the name Sparkswirl. Cooks the best god damn Spark out there," continues Dash, "Just today, our sources found the spark with the purity of 84% moving the streets. No wonder it's causing such a commotion. The purity level is incredible." "Whoever synthesized it, must be a really good chemist," adds Twilight, while sipping on wine. "Hey, what's that?" asks Rainbow Dash, pointing her hoof at the air and creating a sudden quietness around the table. "My hoofphone! Excuse me," shouts Twilight, jumping up from the table and transporting to the jacket. "Where is it?" looks Twilight through the pockets. She lifts up the phone and answers it, "Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle speaking, how may I help you?" "Hey, Twilight!" Can Twilight recognize Pinkie's voice, "We got a problem - one of your business partners decided to beat the crap out of one of your business associates. Long story short, you lost your suppliement network, at least temporarily and got screwed over from the money aspect." "What?" questions Twilight into the phone. "Bulk beat the crap out of Rarity. Rarity's in the hospital. Bulk took the Spark. Zero gain. Null profit earned," sums Pinkie up the current situation. Twilight can feel the world around her getting dizzy as she drops down the phone. "You alright?" can Twilight see a blurry Rainbow Dash coming from the distance. "I'm not, I'm not sure," says Twilight, resting her hoof onto the wall and trying to hold her body up. She feels her hoof slowly slipping away and the gravity forcing her down. As she can no longer resist, she falls down onto the floor and her eyes slowly close.