Sparkswirl's empire

Twilight 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."