Author's Note

One more chapter of scene-setting, and a well-deserved comeuppance to boot… sexytimes start next chapter. You can wait that long, can’t you?

Heavily edited, expanded and re-released as a part of a story revamp on November 21, 2020

2: Midnight Rising - v2

One thing I learned from my own little episode at the Fall Formal is that when magic takes hold of you like that, it remakes you. Not into something new, but in some ways the purest expression of your inner self.

Whereas I became a raging she-demon in reflection of my inner evil (though I’ve had at least a few boys tell me I was sexy like that!), in Twilight’s case, she had raven wings and dominatrix apparel; her previously bunned-up hair turning into shimmering pink and purple flames. She even gained a pair of virtual glasses consisting of fiery purple auras surrounding her suddenly glowing gaze.

But what looked the most ominous to me was her horn. Alicorn-length and sharp with both a few oval notches and a deep groove running base to tip, it looked anything but friendly, glowing the same pale green as her eyes.

Her transformation completed, I gaped, as in that moment, I beheld… myself. True, Twilight was no she-demon like I had been, but in some ways, she was even worse. For she wasn’t driven by ambition or thoughts of conquest and power, or even by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which was the only pleasure or purpose she’d ever known.

As we were all about to learn, she had become a spirit of pure passion and impulse, perhaps best described as a corrupted human version of Princess Twilight with all limits and restraints removed.

* * * * *

You know, the whole nature-vs-nurture argument has always struck me as beside the point, for I’m a firm believer that we’re ultimately the sum of our own choices. But sometimes, those choices are never made, and this was the result. It was what Twilight—Princess Twilight—might have become if she had not found friends.

If she had no conscience or self-control, and if every single inhibition and internal barrier she ever had was removed all at once.

I watched as her expression changed, a maniacal grin as I’d never seen from her breaking out across her face, and she gave a cackle that made me cringe, hearing once again an echo of my old self. “You were right, Sunset Shimmer! I didn’t understand magic before. But I do now!”

With that, she shattered the Wondercolts mascot statue that sat atop the now-inactive portal with a single magical bolt, ripping open a fresh portal in its place. But this was no benign or natural gateway; this was a tear in the very fabric of space and time through which I could see Equestria itself; a tear that disrupted all around it and caused a sudden wind to come up with dark clouds forming swiftly overhead in the magic-agitated atmosphere.

Coward that she was, Cinch backed away.

“Hey! Where are you going?!” I heard Sunny Flare ask, sparing a glance at her even as she backed away from Twilight along with the rest of her classmates.

But Cinch looked back only briefly. “Anywhere to avoid that monster! And I suggest you do the same!” she said as she turned to run.

Her retreat did not go unnoticed. “You’re not going anywhere, you evil and ugly crow!” the magically corrupted Twilight all but cackled. Her horn lit up as a wave of coruscating violet energy was emitted from her raised hand, causing stone walls to erupt out of the ground in front of Cinch, blocking her path. “None of you are!” she then added, containing an acre-sized chunk of schoolyard behind an identical wall, too high to climb.

A lucky few students had already run away, but the bulk of us were trapped within. And worse for us, as it turned out, Spike was trapped outside; I caught a glimpse of him awakening over in the motocross area and beholding Twilight’s transformed state with a look of shock and horror before the wall rose in front of him, cutting him off from us.

Trapped as the altered Twilight approached, Cinch tried resorting to her usual bluster. “Twilight Sparkle, what are you doing? Release me at once!” she demanded even as she was cornered, pressed back against the wall.

“Twilight?” the creature that Twilight Sparkle had become echoed with a derisive laugh. “Your Twilight is no more, Abacus Cinch! My new name is Midnight Sparkle. Appropriate, don’t you think, since my birth marks the beginning of a new day!” With those words, she released a fresh wave of magic that bowled us all over again, openly revelling in her newfound power.

“Well, whatever you are, let us go! You have no right to keep us here! Release me at once, or I’ll…” Cinch’s voice trailed off as she realized how useless her usual threats were now.

“Or you’ll what?” Twilight—or Midnight—talked back to her Principal for what had to be the first time in her life, cackling again as she spoke. “Give me demerits? Or maybe detention? Or how about making me clean up the boys’ locker rooms?” she suggested mildly, but in mocking tones, making clear how feeble such threats were to her now, only for her eyes to narrow and aura to intensify as anger abruptly took hold of her.

“Or maybe just blackmail me? Threaten to withhold my recommendation to Everton if I didn’t compete?” She bared her teeth and lightning flashed overhead in direct reflection of her growing rage, making Cinch cringe again and her students stare at their Principal in shock, suddenly backing away from her further as they sensed Midnight’s wrath about to unleash.

“She… what?” Dean Cadance was beside herself, but Twilight ignored her as she suddenly picked Cinch up in her magical grasp. She dangled her Principal by a leg over an open portal that appeared to empty right into the Everfree Forest, threatening to drop her in.

I didn’t know what she’d look like as a pony and wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. But then again, would passage through these torn-open interdimensional portals even cause a transformation? I couldn’t help but wonder, but that was a question for later as Cinch looked up at Midnight in very real fear, her glasses falling from her face to be lost in the portal below as her skirt inverted along with her, falling down over her midsection to reveal a set of surprisingly racy and lacy red panties and garters, which she hurriedly reached up to try to push her skirt back over to cover.

“I am your Principal! You… you can’t do this!” she claimed with a sudden, fierce blush on her cheeks, her skirt billowing hard with a sudden gust of wind.

“Oh, can’t I?” a smirking Midnight asked, pretending to drop her for a moment to prove that she not only could, she would, earning a startled and half-swallowed shriek from Cinch before her leg was caught again, causing her skirt to fall away a second time. “Though in truth, for what you did to me, simple banishment to a magical wilderness seems too good for you!”

“Twilight, no!” Dean Cadance shouted out over the growing gale, getting the corrupted Twilight’s attention. And to my surprise, Midnight’s expression softened at least slightly as she took in her school’s second-in-command. Apparently, she respected her Dean far more than Cinch, but we would quickly learn that even that only went so far. “I’ll make sure Superintendent Faust and Dean Sombra at Everfree University hear about this, and then she’ll be dismissed! You have every right to be angry at her, but please don’t hurt her!”

“Fine,” Midnight relented with a glance down at her, moving her Principal back over Terra Firma, only to smile as an idea took hold of her. And was it my imagination, or did her gaze linger on her school head’s garters for a moment? “You were always nice to me, Mi Amore Cadenza, so as a courtesy, I’ll do as you ask. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do other things…” she mused, then got an evil grin, the wind around her turning abruptly chill.

“You know what, Abacus Cinch? The other students always said you had a heart of stone, and now I’m going to prove it!” She then dropped Cinch back to the ground. The soon-to-be-defrocked school head scrambled away, standing up as a prelude to attempting to flee again, but that didn’t mean she was out of danger. Far from it as Midnight’s horn flared while she raised an arm, palm pointed outward; she then fired another magical beam at her Headmistress before any of us could stop her.

Not that any of us could.

The beam hit Cinch and suddenly, her legs turned to stone, fusing themselves to the ground beneath as the effect crept outwards from her. The effect slowly crept up her body, incrementally turning her into a statue as her horrified students watched, her billowing skirt solidifying into slate to permanently reveal her lace undergarments. “Please!” she pleaded, genuine fear on her face as her torso slowly turned to stone and her upraised arms swiftly followed, futilely trying to both ward off the petrifying effect and push her now-unyielding skirt back down.

“You can be Valedictorian! Graduate magna cum laude! No, maxima cum laude! Have your recommendation to Everton! Anything you want!” she pleaded increasingly desperately as the transformation overtook her head, finally silencing her; leaving her but a stone sculpture in the schoolyard.

Twilight, or the creature she had turned into, cackled again, and for the first time I saw a look of genuine malice in her eyes as she took revenge for her Headmistress’s extortion. “And what good does that do me now?” she asked with great glee, watching with satisfaction as Cinch’s face froze into a frightened expression, her features etched in stone that was a perfect likeness of her right down to the mole on her cheek.

Midnight then floated down before her petrified Principal and smirked at her over crossed arms. “Just so you know, Abacus Cinch, I’ve left you imprisoned but aware. I know you can hear me, so I’d just like to say that you were right about one thing—I would have regretted not giving in. For then I’d never know this power!”

The expression on her face was gleeful asshe then began firing bolts in every direction that ripped open countless additional portals to Equestria. Fissures formed in the air itself, expanding and lengthening with tearing sounds; jagged rifts also erupted out of the very ground, chasing the students who increasingly had nowhere to run.

One portal even opened with what sounded like a rip of rending fabric right where we were standing, forcing us to dive out of the way, while another exploded into existence right at the top of the school steps, chasing the Crystal Prep Dean and two CHS principals inside through the same doorway I’d once destroyed. I could later see them watching through windows, the anguish in their eyes as they were unable to summon help or save their students; just as much a captive audience as we were.

Midnight, however, didn't seem to care as she continued to test the limits of her seemingly godlike powers. “And who needs Everton anyway? I have a new course of study now, and it’s magic!” she added, releasing a series of fireworks from her new horn that burst over the schoolyard very brightly, showering us all with magical sparks that tingled a bit when they touched.

In fact, they felt almost… sexual?

I finally recovered my voice at that moment. “Twilight, you can’t do this!” I pleaded as she paused long enough to watch the spread of the portals, the students and staff from both schools now looking at her in very real fear.

A few were trying to climb the unscalable wall or call for help on their cellphones, only to find they had no connection—as I had already learned in the course of trying to study the pony-up phenomenon of my friends, magic interfered with electronics and electromagnetic signals, crippling them or even outright destroying them if the range was close enough. I’d been working on ways to shield them, as we didn’t want our smartphones fried whenever we ponied up, but I hadn’t succeeded yet.

Unless directly part of that magic like our musical instruments, plugged-in electronics often went haywire, but detached ones like cellphones that used little power could still use their local functions… though I couldn’t imagine what good that would do us here. “Please stop!” I called to her again, struggling to make myself heard over the crackling of the portals and still-whipping wind.

She paused just long enough to turn her glowing gaze on me. “And why should I, Sunset Shimmer? There’s a whole other world right there, and it’s just brimming with magic!” she emphasized her point by ripping open additional portals, delighting in each new rift that appeared, each showing a different area of not just Equestria but the lands beyond. At least one pony on the other side noticed and stopped short, but I couldn’t afford to worry about that then. “Magic that is my very birthright to possess and master!”

I sensed there was little point in reasoning with her, but I tried anyway. “But you’re destroying this world to get it!” I motioned to the still-spreading rifts around us.

“So what? There’s a whole different world there, one I’ve been searching for all my life! It has magic, and I want to understand and acquire it all!” With those words, she ripped open the biggest rift of all, the very ground of the schoolyard collapsing into a portal over a town I recognized as Ponyville—our Twilight’s home, slabs of sidewalk concrete falling into it and several teetering students threatening to do the same.

If nothing else, I realized, Twilight’s actions had finally brought the two normally implacable rival schools together as they helped each other, rescuing those in danger of falling through the rapidly growing rifts. But if this continued…

“Sunset? What do we do?” Applejack asked, but I didn’t have an immediate answer.

“I’m thinking…” My mind raced, as I knew we had to do something. Twilight—no, Midnight—was out of control with not a hint of concern or conscience on her face. Drunk on her newly discovered power, she was ripping holes between the dimensions, tearing open ever-more portals into Equestria, not caring one whit about what would happen to those on this side of the portal.

Except insofar as she could get a little payback for years of pranks and emotional abuse from her fellow Crystal Prep students, as would soon become plain. I think it became plain to her at that moment as well, as I saw a look of childlike glee cross her face with the sudden realization that using her new power, she could do literally anything she wanted.

Anything… I realized with a chill as she turned her attention from the stone-rendered Cinch and the portals to her former classmates, the ones I’d gathered had either barely tolerated or outright tormented her.

I knew from my own bitter experience what often happened when the tables were turned between the bullies and the bullied, and that was a fact that was far from lost on Twilight herself as she suddenly relented her efforts and alit on the base of the ruined Wondercolts statue, the spread of the portals briefly ceasing to everyone’s great relief.

That relief was short-lived as she crossed her legs and rested her cheek on her gloved hand, giving a chilling smile as she looked out lazily over her cowering captives.

Focusing in particular, I noticed with a sudden sense of dread, on her classmates. “So then… before I depart this world forever, just what am I to do with all of you…?”

Picture credit:http://siansaar.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Midnight-Sparkle-566037503