Author's Note

The idea for this story was conceived when I was joking about it with DJFireFrost on Steam Chat. He liked the idea so much he said "I will pay you to write this." so here we are.

Prologue: Captured

"No!" Double Diamond screamed as he saw Starlight Glimmer run into the cave. "We can't let her get away!"

"Diamond, wait!" Night Glider shouted after him as he pushed off on his skis, rocketing into the cave after the escaping mare.

Night Glider only rolled her eyes and let out a frustrated groan as she turned back to Sugar Belle and Party Favour. "You two, wait here with the others!" She took off after Double Diamond, leaving Party Favour and Sugar Belle with Twilight and her friends.

Meanwhile, Double Diamond was gaining ground on Starlight, fast. His skis weren't faring so well against the cave floor. Multiple stones, pebbles, and other debris scratched the underside, but he knew it was for a good cause. He could easily replace his skis. Thankfully, there was still a sufficient amount of snow and ice in the cave, and since his skis still had a small coat of wax on them, he found that he was slowly catching up on Starlight.

Double Diamond narrowed his eyes as her form kept getting closer and closer. He had to duck and weave through stalactites and stalagmites, his eyes glued to her all the while. The shortest distance between two points was a straight line, and every time he swerved around an obstacle, he cut the distance between his target and himself.

Eventually the cave began narrowing as the obstacles began dissipating, and Double Diamond crouched on his skis to centralize his body mass and create a smaller profile. He was taught as a young colt that would make him go faster, and it proved to be right in this case. He came within a body's length of Starlight as she turned her head and shot a beam of her magic at him, but Double Diamond anticipated her doing this and swerved just in time. It hit the a stalagmite behind him, blowing it to smithereens. ’Damn, that was close! I gotta make sure she doesn’t get the chance to do that again...’

Double Diamond was thrilled to see that everypony got along without any fighting or quarrelling, and that he could speak to everypony on an equal level, unlike before. However, part of him knew it was too good to be true, but he didn’t realise it until too late, which fueled his anger to a boiling point.

With a fiercely determined scowl plastered across his face, he waited just slightly longer before leaping up off his skis and pouncing on Starlight, sending the duo tumbling across the cave floor, hearing a satisfying “oof!” come from his prey.

He rolled with Starlight, several small cuts opening over his white coat from the rocks and stones of the cave floor. He came out on top, sitting over her waist, using his hooves to pin Starlight to the ground. She looked up in fright and shock, seeing the tall, white, strong stallion towering over her. An irate gaze seared straight through her.

Starlight tried to charge her spell in an attempt to steal Double Diamond's cutie mark, but he immediately caught on to what she was planning, and quickly reacted by striking her across the muzzle with his right hoof. Starlight gasped in pain as the magic faded from her horn, breaking what little concentration she had. Double Diamond forcibly rolled her head to the side and held her muzzle to the floor as he placed another one on her throat, cutting off her airway and holding her horn away from himself, all to prevent her from trying to cast again.

All that she could muster was pained grunts and half words as she felt her brain begin to get starved of oxygen.

"Diamond!" called a voice from behind him. He snapped his head back to see Night Glider looking around a little ways behind him. "Double Diamond, where'd you go?" he heard her call again.

"Over here!" he answered, removing his hoof from Starlight’s muzzle while keeping the other on her throat.

Night Glider caught up with him, flapping her wings as she hovered just above the stallion.

"What are you doing!?" she asked incredulously. "You're choking her! Stop! I want to see her dealt with, but this isn’t the way to do it!"

"If I let her go, she'll get away!" he retorted with a growl. "Or worse: steal our cutie marks. Again!"

"Just stop, please!" Night Glider pleaded. "She'll die if you keep that up!"

Double Diamond grumbled. "...Fine." He removed his hoof from her throat just as Starlight once again tried to charge a spell, but she never got the chance to complete it. He hit her again, the flat part of his hoof fully connecting just below her ear. Expecting her to keep struggling, he raised his hoof again for another strike, but paused when he realized she wasn’t fighting back.

"What did you do!?" Night Glider exclaimed. “Did you kill her?”

Double Diamond lowered his head and placed his ear next to Starlight’s mouth. He was relieved when he heard her breathing softly. "She’s fine. We don't have any rope, magic inhibitors, or anything to restrain her. How else are we going to get Starlight out of here without her trying to get one over on us?"

The pegasus deflated, lowering herself to the ground as she trotted up to Starlight. "I suppose you're right..." she half-heartedly said. "Let’s put her onto your back and get out of here."

With the aid of Night Glider, Double Diamond draped Starlight across his back. Night Glider tucked his skis under her wings as they made their way out. Several minutes later, they emerged from the mouth of the cave to find the rest of the ponies waiting for them. Gasps of horror and shock rang out as the crowd looked over the bruised and beaten Starlight Glimmer.

Twilight spoke up. "What happened to her?"

Night Glider went to open her mouth but she was cut off by Double Diamond. "She tripped and hit her head,” he lied. Night Glider shot him a look of disbelief. How could he have lied so easily when he hit her? “She's out cold for now, so we should get her back to our village before she can wake up," Diamond finished.

"Why? She needs to go to Canterlot to face trial!" Twilight protested, stomping her hoof for emphasis.

"Well, she can't go anywhere like this, can she?" Double Diamond answered. "Don't you need guards and proper transport for her anyway?"

Twilight looked down in defeat. "I... suppose you're right... What shall we do with her in the meantime?"

"We'll take her back to the village," Night Glider said. "We'll put her in the re-education room. There's... also some shackles in there too," she admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof.

"O-oh dear..." Fluttershy timidly added.

"Dear heavens," Rarity said aghast. "Why in Equestria would you need shackles!?"

"Sometimes the ponies aren't always as complacent as they could be. They'd make a racket, bang their heads against the wall, so we needed to keep them from hurting themselves. It also functioned as a jail of sorts. Fortunately only one or two have ever needed to be put in there. In hindsight," Night Glider added, “I don’t know why any of this was a good thing.”

Rarity cleared her throat. "Right then. I suppose we'd better get a move on."

It didn't take them too long to make their way back to the village. It took them about ten to fifteen minutes of running, but an hour of walking later put them within spitting distance of the row of terraced cottages. Double Diamond had to readjust the mare draped over his back a few times to prevent her from falling off.

"Let me take it from here," Twilight offered, levitating Starlight off of the stallion and into the air above her as they walked into the town, the dozens of residents crowding around them.

"There she is!" shouted one.

"What should we do with her?" asked another.

"Please, quiet down and listen!" Twilight commanded. The hustle and bustle died down as all eyes turned to her. "I will return in a few days with Princess Celestia—" several murmurs broke out in the crowd "—with the Solar Guards to take Starlight Glimmer back to Canterlot to face trial."

"She should face trial by our hooves for what she did!" somepony shouted.

"Yeah!" everypony chorused.

"As Princess, I cannot allow that to happen. It constitutes a confirmation bias and conflict of interest, and that wouldn't help at all. It needs to be a fair trial and not one influenced by your negativity towards her."

The majority of the crowd looked down at the ground dejectedly.

"Double Diamond and Night Glider, see to it that Starlight Glimmer is kept properly detained. I leave you two in charge until my return. Party Favour and Sugar Belle, make sure everything else goes smoothly in town, and try not to let anything happen to Starlight while I'm gone, okay?"

"Sure thing, Princess!" Party Favour exclaimed.

"Do you want us to guard her?" Sugar Belle asked.

"Strictly speaking, no, just make sure nothing happens to her." Sugar Belle just nodded in understanding. "Wait here, girls," she said to her friends, going over to the re-education room with Night Glider and Double Diamond.

The white stallion opened the door and allowed Twilight to enter first. He followed suit and Night Glider was the last to entre.

"Where do you keep the shackles?" Twilight asked.

"Oh, uhm… Let me just..." Night Glider flew up to the rafters, six piles of coiled chain draped over the beams attached with eyelets securing them to the central beam. Each length of clattering metal had one foreleg-sized cuff attached to it. Three eyelets on one side, three on the other; each opposite the other. She unfurled two of them and brought down three more items: a key, a small, simple-looking bracelet and a ring. "Prop her up against the wall, would you?"

Twilight gently placed Starlight against the wall opposite the bookcase. Double Diamond clamped the cuffs around Starlight's forelegs as she began to stir. Night Glider saw this and quickly placed the ring over Starlight's horn.

Twilight knew what it was, and she frowned. She never ever condoned the restriction of unicorn magic. It made her gut turn: not being able to use magic to perform the most basic of functions, or do any of the tasks she had grown so accustomed to doing with magic. It made her afraid of being unable to help herself when it was her magic that she needed to perform everything. She wondered why they hadn’t used the ring on her while she was locked up in this room.

"Wa-huh?" Starlight mumbled as she stirred awake. She tried casting a spell, but the feedback loop designed into the ring caused the spell to loop back into her horn, shocking her. The small bracelet was made unique to this ring. The purpose of which was to prevent the unicorn it was placed onto from removing the ring. The bracelet, once worn by Double Diamond, allowed him to safely remove the ring, otherwise any attempts without it would result in a shock.

Double Diamond managed to lock each cuff around her forelegs, then he took a cautious step back from Starlight. "Take the slack out," he told Night Glider. She went back up to the rafters and wound the chain around a pike buried in the rafter in the middle. There was enough slack that Starlight could move around the room, but not enough where she could get to the door or window to try and escape.

"Starlight Glimmer," Twilight proclaimed. "You will be held accountable for the use of dark magic here. Stealing magic is forbidden, but stealing cutie marks—somepony's identity—is another matter on a completely different level. You will remain here until I can return to properly escort you back to Canterlot.”

Starlight's ears folded back and she looked away in a reverie. She nodded dejectedly.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

"I just..." She trailed off. Her reason was the same before as it was now, and no matter how many times she told it to Twilight and everypony, nopony would see things from her perspective. But she hadn’t told them the whole story. Cutie marks not only mark a special talent, they're also the source of magic for that talent. Take it away, and you take away their magic. Every unicorn she used her spell on was left with basic telekinetic manipulation, and every pegasi was left with basic flight. "...wanted everypony to be equal and happy."

"Right… In the meantime, I'm leaving Night Glider and Double Diamond in charge of you until I get back." She curtly turned to leave the room to get back to her friends.

Night Glider gave a sharp tug at the chains to make sure they were secured and wouldn't budge, and the dark-blue mare left after Twilight in a more upbeat attitude now that Starlight was in chains.

Double Diamond checked the shackles to make sure they were indeed locked and wouldn't open. He leaned closer to Starlight and whispered into her ear. "I'll be back later to deal with you. Some of the other ponies and I in this village have got a score to settle."

Starlight Glimmer's eyes widened with horror at that statement. It could mean anything. What was he planning? What would he do to her?

He slipped on the little bracelet and took the key to the cuffs with him. Double Diamond closed the door behind him and locked it, leaving Starlight staring in fear after him.