A Rogue Book Horse Returns
“Blame Google for this one.”
-Tom117z
“It no do Chinese good.”
-Skijarama.
“At least it can do more English than you, apparently.”
-Tom117z
“Whoosh.”
-Skijarama.
***
There was a time when Twilight Sparkle attempted to summon some ancient evil Sun Gods using a Death Altar she bought at a yard sale and powered with dark magic crystals. Turns out the death altar was a toy made by the Flim Flam brothers and didn’t actually summon evil sun Gods of whom she could teach the magic of friendship. So Twilight left the altar in a secret room in her basement to collect dust, disappointed and dejected by her lack of results. Then Tirek blew up her house.
Okay, all caught up? Good.
Several years later, Twilight found herself standing in front of the grassy patch where her lovely tree house used to be, Spike by her side holding a shovel in his claws and looking a little unnerved. It was the middle of the night, the moon high over their heads and casting everything in an eerie pale light. He looked up at her with a perplexed expression. “Are you sure we have to do this, Twilight?”
“Our new magical coffee maker isn’t going to power itself!” Twilight replied with a curt nod and eager smile. “We’re out of batteries, but magic crystals are a decent substitute. There should still be a few in the secret room I dug out beneath the library; I don’t think that took any damage when Tirek came by.”
“Those crystals whispered at you,” Spike deadpanned, passing the shovel from one claw to the other in a display on nervous energy. “That’s not a good thing.”
“That was because I loaded them up with the souls of all of the Pinkie clones we stuffed back in the mirror pool,” Twilight explained while lifting a shovel of her own and looking at it with scrutiny, examining the edge very closely. “Well, souls is the wrong word, since they were magic projections. More like their essence, but all of that energy was used up trying to power the Flim Flam Altar of Disappointment. They’re inert, now, and just need some generic magical charge until we can get some good AA batteries.”
“Wait, you put dozens of Pinkie Pies into that thing?” Spike said with, well… ‘mild’ concern.
Twilight went to answer, but then thought of something. “Huh… now that I think about it, there were no compartments for all that confetti to blow out from, the altar was just a dud replica.”
“So… the basement is now haunted by confetti throwing Pinkie Pie ghosts?” Spike said with no terror whatsoever.
“Less asking incriminating questions, more digging!” Twilight proclaimed with far too much enthusiasm, and Spike was forced to just sigh and go along with his mother/sister/slave master’s latest crazy scheme.
It didn’t take them too terribly long to find what they were looking for, and soon enough Twilight was nostalgically looking around her hoof-carved secret room. There were a few scorch marks on the walls, but nothing was seriously damaged.
Except for the altar. She pushed that over out of spite.
It even shattered from the barely substantial impact. Pfft, how did she ever fall for such an obvious con?
The crystals were easy to find, still in the weird little thingies that Twilight didn’t remember what she called them, and neither did she care since it was a DISGRACE TO SCIENCE, where she had put them to power the altar before. As predicted, they were dull and silent. Just a set of creepily dark gemstones. She gave a delightful little squee before plucking the gems from their place and turning back to Spike, who was absently looking at the tapestry that had once been used to hide the altar. “We’re good to go, my Spike!”
“You know we could have given less effort just to go to the local shop, right?” Spike deadpanned. “They have an entire shelf of batteries. It’s even on the way to this pla-”
“Spike,” Twilight interrupted, giving him a disapproving look. “What have we talked about?”
Spike shuffled in place uncomfortably. “Don’t argue with science.”
“Because what happens to those who argue with science?”
“Dissection, knowing you,” Spike muttered in a deadpan tone.
“What was that?”
“Nothing!” Spike said quickly. “We wear the dunce cap, obviously.”
“Good. And we don’t want that!” Twilight said, knowing he was actually right and she had just forgotten the shop was that close to begin with in her exuberance over the idea of getting the crystals to work in a coffee machine, but she was too embarrassed to let the drake know that. “Let’s get back to the castle, coffee won’t make itself!”
The two then exited their newly dug hole and returned to the castle. Little did they know that there was a young colt watching them from the cover of a nearby alleyway, eyes wide with horror. “Was she just robbing a grave?! I gotta tell Wing!” Cirrus whispered to himself before turning and shuffling off.
Completely oblivious to the colt’s misunderstanding, the pair just continued on back to the castle. But in the end it didn’t matter, Twilight would enjoy herself converting advanced magic crystals into AA equivalents for the fun of it, and would get her fill of coffee from the machine.
Because drinking coffee from a machine powered by strange magic couldn’t possibly have any side effects.
The following morning saw Starlight stepping into the kitchen of the Castle of Friendship a little later than normal, her eyes still struggling to stay open as she shrugged off the remnants of the sandmare. “Hey, Twilight…” she mumbled drowsily, catching sight of the alicorn sitting at a table with a mug of coffee, facing away from her.
“Did you know that I can see dead ponies?”
Starlight paused, with a hoof outstretched for their new coffee maker, noticing the weird dark gems that were loosely crammed into the AA battery slot. She then turned to Twilight with a raised eyebrow. “Uh… what?”
Twilight rotated in her chair, a creepily enormous grin on her face, her pupils the size of pinpricks and her face twitching erratically. “Dead ponies. I can see them. There’s one right next to you. She’s waving hi.”
Starlight looked to her side and saw nothing, then looked back at Twilight. “Are… you feeling okay?”
Twilight took a shaky swig of her coffee. “Never better! I’ve never seen so much stuff!” her eyes began to trail up towards the roof, her mouth forming an ‘o.’ “Ooooh…. Pretty,” she murmured before slurping some more coffee and giggling like a madpony.
Starlight slowly began to inch towards the fridge where they kept their calendar, her eyes never once leaving Twilight. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting kind of-”
“Weird, odd, eccentric, insane?!” Twilight finished, looking directly into Starlight’s eyes with her own. She slurped down some more coffee, then floated her mug over to the coffee machine for a refill. While it was getting a new serving, she kept talking. “Oh, I know I may sound like it, but that’s only because you don’t understand. I can see everything!” she looked up again, a dopey smile replacing her insane one. “That red dog is really big…”
Starlight risked a glance at the calendar and inwardly groaned.
Saturday. Of course.
“Seriously, Twilight, you’re acting weird,” Starlight said with a small amount of worry that was building quickly into a not so small amount after all. “And I know we can both get a little loopy when a potential scientific and magical breakthrough catches our eyes-”
“Or you want equality!” Twilight chirped with a far too wide smile and an eye twitch.
Starlight flinched. “Or… that. But this is crazy crazy. You know?”
“Do I know, though, you know?” Twilight answered, before giggling in a way that Starlight was sure a psychotic murderer would after butchering a victim.
Yeah, she was scared now.
“Morning ponies,” Spike said tiredly, stretching as he went for the coffee maker.
“Spike, wait!” Starlight warned, yanking Spike back with her magic. “Don’t touch that!”
“Gah! Starlight? Why’d you do that?! What’s your problem?”
“Yeah, Starlllllliiiiiight,” Twilight accused while… how could a pony’s neck twist that far? “You should let him. Let him know the wonders of the universe! Did you know it’s shaped like a waffle?” as she said this, she levitated her mug back to her and took another healthy swig, slurping quite audibly.
“That’s why,” Starlight informed Spike, pointing a hoof between the coffee maker and the delirious alicorn. “I think Berry Punch might have broken in and got to the coffee machine!”
Spike looked towards the coffee maker, and then understanding dawned on him. “Oh… Whoops.”
“Whoops!?” Starlight shouted incredulously. “What do you mean, ‘whoops’!?”
“Uh, funny story…” Spike said with a sheepish chuckle, all while Twilight decided it was more comfortable to sit on her seat with her head rather than her butt. “We went back to the old library, I think Twilight just wanted to see if those weird magic crystals she had could be made to run something as mundane as a coffee machine without, you know… exploding.”
“Crystals…?” Starlight muttered, looking at the weird objects in the battery slots more closely. “SPIKE! These are arcanium soul shards!”
“Uh… come again?”
Starlight groaned. “Spike, these crystals are used to contain energy for power, sure, which I might add means any and all energy, hence the term ‘soul shard’. Maud told me about them once, and they’re both rare and really powerful. Like, so powerful they would turn the caffeine in a single cup of coffee into the equivalent of a hundred! More, even!”
“Oh. That explains it.”
Starlight promptly facehooved. “Spike, why are you using them for coffee!?”
“Well, since the magical altar didn’t work…”
Twilight suddenly gasped as if realising something, sliding from her head into an actual sitting position and slamming her hooves onto the table. “THE ALTAR! It was real after all! The Sun Gods have given me their wisdom through the crystals!”
Starlight did a double take. “Uh… say what now?”
But Twilight was already gone, having bolted from her seat and out the window faster than they could ever register. And, well… what could the duo just do but sit there? Sit, and contemplate what a completely high off her ass alicorn was about to do to the poor unsuspecting town of Ponyville.
Mayor Mare had a perplexed look on her face as Twilight sauntered up onto the stage in front of the Ponyville Town Hall, an oddly eager and creepy grin on her face. “Mayor~! Thank you for seeing me so quickly!”
Mayor Mare blinked. “Twilight…? You didn’t ask for an audience.”
“But I did!” Twilight corrected her before gesturing vaguely at the air. “I wrote my request down on the fabric of reality and then sent it to you via messenger crab.”
Mayor Mare took a step back, feeling distinctly uncomfortable from Twilight’s behavior.
Plus, Twilight didn’t stop walking and was now getting really deep into the Mayor’s personal space. She put on a sheepish smile while slowly backing away. “O-oh, is that so? Well, ah, ahem, w-what do you n-need, Twilight?”
“SOULS!” Twilight excitedly announced while lifting a hoof into the air. She then stopped mid-air, not even falling to gravity as her wings kicked in, and hummed in contemplation. “And maybe hugs too. Can I hug a soul? Can I hug you?”
“Um-” Mayor Mare was abruptly silenced when Twilight wrapped her up in a bone-crushing hug, putting her lips next to the Mayor’s apprehensive ear.
She whispered something into the Mayor’s ear, dropped her to the ground and then scampered off the stage, leaving the poor mare to quietly weep in mild emotional distress, feeling quite violated.
Starlight and Spike came rushing onto the scene a minute later, looking around frantically. Starlight huffed out a breath of annoyance. “I hate looking for crazy ponies in town!”
“Wasn’t the last one you looked for Maud?”
“Yes,” Starlight responded through clenched teeth before hopping up onto the stage and approaching the mayor. “Mayor Mare, did Twilight pass through here?”
The Mayor, curled up into the fetal position and slowly rocking back and forth, pointed in the direction Twilight had went, shaking horribly. With the directions given, Starlight and Spike left the scene at a brisk gallop.
The Mayor just kept on rocking.
Maud Pie was walking along one of Ponyville’s many streets. There didn’t seem to be that many ponies around, almost like they were hiding from something. Was it time for Ponyville’s scheduled monster attack? No… Maud’s mental calendar noted that it wasn’t due until the next Saturday.
Maybe it was just a quiet day.
But still, her walk was almost over and she prepared to head back, ensuring that Boulder was still safely secured in her pocket.
“HIIII MAUD!” Princess Twilight said barely and inch from Maud’s face.
Maud blinked. “Hello, Princess. I did not see you there.”
“It’s because I’ve learnt how to put my hooves on silent!” Twilight claimed with a squee. “Did you know they have five hundred and seven different configurations!? I DO!”
“Legs do not have configurations like that. They are biological, not technological,” Maud said logically. “I find it strange that you would not know this, as one of the science world.”
“But this isn’t science, it’s liiiiiiife,” Twilight said as she put a hoof around a deadpan Maud. “The spirits told me so! And they have really bad breath! HEHEHEHE!”
“Ah, I see,” Maud said in understanding.
“YES, finally somepony can see as I do!” Twilight said dramatically, before looking up at nothing. “Yes, I know red doggo, you understand me…”
“You have clearly drunken coffee powered by an arcanium soul shard,” Maud noted factually. “That was not a good idea.”
“The Sun Gods have shown me the waaaaaaaay!” Twilight sang as she sauntered off, going in the general direction of the school house.
“Okay,” Maud said simply. “Bye.”
“That mare is a lunatic,” Boulder noted. “HAH! I bet she will feel just great in the morning!”
“MAUD!” Starlight shouted as she ran over with Spike clinging to her back, stopping for a moment to catch her breath. “Have you-”
“The school house,” Maud said, pointing in that direction.
“Uh, thanks!” Starlight responded, wasting no time in pursuit.
Then, completely unfazed as if what just happened was the most normal thing in the world, Maud continued her walk.
“She’s evil, I tell you!” Cirrus Ramble proclaimed to the unconvinced Cutie Mark Crusaders, with Little Wing nearby just giving the three other fillies a shrug. “She dug up a grave! I bet she’s a necromancer and is going to consume our souls!”
“Uh, ah don’t know about that,” Apple Bloom said with quite a bit of doubt. “Twilight can sure be an eccentric filly when she gets going with the science stuff, but she’s not evil or nuthin’.”
Cirrus growled in his throat and looked at Little Wing with pleading eyes. “Little Wing, come on, you believe me, don’t you?! You saw her lugging evil crystals to a death altar in her basement, remember?!”
“Yes, and now we’re all slaving away for our evil purple overlords,” Little Wing said with no small amount of sarcasm. “Come on, Cirrus. If she did anything bad, we would have seen it by now.”
“Smarty pants,” Cirrus rebuked while slamming one hoof into another. “The evil crystals that whispered at her. The evil altar with dark magic coming out of the eyes. NONE of that is at all suspicious to you? None of it at all? Really?”
Scootaloo shivered a little, recalling the smarty pants incident. “Okay, the whole thing with her doll was kinda…. Uh… creepy.”
“I really liked her mane…” Sweetie Belle muttered under her breath, drawing a raised eyebrow from Apple Bloom.
The farm filly chose to ignore Sweetie for the moment in favor of talking to Cirrus again. “Applejack said it was just an extreme case of one of her panic attacks. And nothin’ bad came as a result; just a night of weird fightin’ over a stuffed doll. Ah think yer-”
“HEY GIRLS!” Twilight’s voice suddenly shrieked at them while she cantered up to them, her eyes vibrating like vibrators. Cirrus swore they were even making the buzzing sound. “Oh, and boy,” the alicorn furthered before ruffling Cirrus’ mane. He immediately shrank away from her, going pale.
“Hey, Princess!” Little Wing chirped to the manic alicorn. “Settle a bet, would you? Cirrus thinks you’re evil!”
Twilight’s head turned towards the colt with an unnatural screech, and her body didn’t move a muscle as she did so. “Ohhhh, does he now…?”
“Please don’t eat my soul,” he whimpered, cowering even farther back. He swore he could see a slight red glow in her eyes.
“Eh, ignore him,” Scootaloo dismissed. “He’s crazy or something.”
“That’s mean, Scootaloo,” Sweetie Belle scolded. “But yeah, we know you’re not evil.”
“He just thinks that because of a death altar or something.”
“Death altar…” Twilight cooed, her smile growing to even wider proportions. “An altar to the Sun Gods. I was just going to teach them allllll about friendship…”
Little Wing shot Cirrus a smug smirk. “See? I told you-”
“But now they have shown me the truth!” Twilight suddenly added, cackling madly. “I AM THE PRINCESS OF THE EVIL SPIRITS!!!”
And then she fell flat on her face.
“Uh… is she alright?” Apple Bloom asked. “Should we call somepony?”
“Is… she dead…?” Little Wing asked as Cirrus just backed away, sneaking forward and poking the unmoving alicorn. As she did so, they didn’t pay much attention to the lilac unicorn and the baby dragon frantically running up to the group.
There was a flash, and Twilight was now standing on her hooves again, resuming her previous insane posture.
“I AM FINE!” Twilight announced in the Royal Canterlot Voice. “AND NOW WE SHALL- MNMNG!”
Twilight’s shouting was muffled when Spike forced a sack over Twilight’s head, Starlight, jumping on Twilight’s back as she tried to force the alicorn down. The five foals could only watch in amazement as Twilight bucked like a wild bull, trying to dislodge her two attackers.
“STARLIIIIIGHT!” Spike shouted as he was flipped about, holding onto the bag for dear life. “DETOX! NOW! PLEASE!”
“I’m… trying!” Starlight grunted, her horn lighting up with a lot of power, taking a moment to charge before unleashing a wave of energy over Twilight.
The alicorn went rigid, and then fell over like a scared goat.
Cirrus, while all of this was happening, silently sidled up to stand next to Little Wing. “We should run,” he whispered to her before taking her hoof and trying to drag her away from the scene.
“Nope!” Little Wing said with a joyful grin. “I’m having way too much fun!”
A groan came from the bag, and the muffled bit of speech.
“Uh, Spike,” Starlight addressed the dragon. “I think you can take the bag off now.”
Spike flushed. “Oh, right.”
He lifted the bag off of the alicorn’s head, who certainly looked worse for wear.
“Ughhh…” she moaned. “Did somepony get the plate of that ice cream truck…?”
The foals had no idea what that was, but it sounded delicious.
Starlight, on her part, just patted Twilight on the head. “Easy there, Princess. You’re probably gonna crash hard. You can see the veins in your eyes, they look all red and puffy.”
“Ngh…”
“C’mon, Twi, let’s get you home,” Spike said in a gentle voice while helping Twilight up, Starlight doing much the same. Twilight protested with low groans of discomfort, following the two of them back towards the castle while the group of foals just watched.
“...What the hay was that?” Scootaloo asked with a frown.
“EVIL!” Cirrus shouted out, pointing in Twilight’s direction.
“It’s all thumping…” Twilight moaned while reclining haphazardly on a couch, one of her forelegs draped over her eyes. “Make it stop…”
Starlight looked over at Spike. “Hey, go and get some ibuprofen, would you?” she said in a quiet voice, to which Spike saluted and ran off. With him gone, Starlight gingerly approached Twilight and pried her hoof away from her eyes with a gentle nudge of magic. Twilight opened her eyes a little, letting Starlight see just how bloodshot they were, and the veins that were visible against her cornea were glowing a little bit.
“Everything is red…” Twilight whimpered before closing her eyes again. “What did I do last night?”
“Try the last half an hour or so,” Starlight corrected while replacing Twilight’s leg over her eye. “You went and drank soul shard coffee.”
“Huh?”
Starlight bit her lip and hummed while trying to think of a good way to describe it. “Okay, think of the most powerful, stupidly strong coffee you can think of, and that multiply it by cancer,” she finally said, eliciting another groan from Twilight.
“That sounds bad…”
“What possessed you to do that? Powering the coffee maker with soul shards seems like an all-around bad idea,” Starlight questioned, shifting back a few feet.
Twilight mumbled something under her breath, gave a small burp and then groaned again.
Starlight furrowed her brow. “Huh?”
“I forgot where the store was…” Twilight shamefully admitted. “We were out of batteries, I forgot we had a store so close by, and went and dug up those crystals to serve as batteries for the coffee maker…”
“And she threatened me with the dunce cap,” Spike said with a huff.
“Where did you even get those things?” Starlight pressed, shaking her head in exasperation.
“The gem caves around the area,” Twilight muttered absently. “I filled them with the souls of a hundred clones of Pinkie Pie so I could talk to some ancient Sun Gods.”
Starlight froze, eyeing Twilight like a deer in the headlights. Then she stood up, trotted up to Twilight, and promptly smacked her on the back of the head with a nearby newspaper she had rolled up, drawing a yelp and whine of pain from her. Then, without another word, Starlight left the room, leaving Spike to be mildly confused when Twilight’s whimpers of discomfort had only gotten louder when he came back with the pain medication.
Starlight had destroyed the coffee machine.
***
“We write some shit, don’t we?”
-Tom117z
“Considering some of it gets featured… what does that say about us and our readers?”
-Skijarama
“That our breed of crazy attracts more of that breed of crazy. It figures, really.”
-Tom117z
“Eh. I suppose.”
-Skijarama
Author's Note
So we saw a Chinese translation of Change, and re translated it to English for fun with Google. Princess of the Changelings came out as Princess of the Evil Spirits, so Twilight was the Princess of the Evil Spirits.
Then this happened. It's dumb, we know. 
