Screwy Chaos

"Listen students," Sandbar told the crowd, "Professor Twilight told us to catch Starlight, so you should stay in the school hall for your own safety. None of you is allowed to leave without us knowing!"

He stepped here and there nervously, sometimes severely gazing at several students.

"That includes you, Precious-la!"

Sandbar especially glared at Precious-la, making clear that he wasn't joking. Precious-la nodded frantically, which slightly reassured Sandbar.

"We don't know, where she is, so she could be anywhere you're going, even in this room," Ocellus explained.

A lot of students gasped horrified and looked behind their shoulders for any Starlight.

"Thus, it's useful for you to stay here safely and collected. In case Starlight comes, you can overcome her together, but only here, nowhere else. Understood?"

The crowd nodded, some of them were still afraid. Ocellus glanced at Precious-la once again, like Sandbar did before, but she didn't say anything additional. The Young Six disappeared from the hall.

"We'll be back soon," Silverstream waved her claw and disappeared with her friends.

Silence. No one was talking, no one was moving one bit. But suddenly...

"Hey! Wait for me!!!" a voice screamed and she hastily ran in the same direction, the Young Six went to.

"Precious-la no!" a second student yelled, raising his hoof.

But Precious-la didn't return. She was already gone.

She hasted in the same direction, she thought the Young Six went, stopped and turned around, whether Starlight was anywhere. No Starlight.

"The Young Six are supposed to save the day from evil, but not me?" Precious-la mumbled to herself. "No problems at all. As a good friend, I will help them overcome their sorrows!"

She confidently rushed through the current corridor, went upstairs and rushed through another corridor into the opposite direction, but suddenly halted. She looked around, not so confident and proud anymore. Where are the Young Six?

"Wait, I thought, this is the way the Young Six went to. How could I not find them? Did I loose myself? Did I went a wrong path?" she asked herself.

"Well, still no problem," a voice said.

Precious-la assumed, that was her own voice in her head, so she decided sprinting the way back to the stairs. However, she maybe sprinted too far and instead of arriving at the stairs, she went upstairs before, she arrived at a place, where two corridors were crossing each other.

"I said it was no problem, if you stayed!" the same voice as before said, just more impatient.

Precious-la realized, it couldn't be her own and turned around. She froze. Starlight Glimmer stood right in front of her, with an equal mark as her cutie mark and a big staff holden by her magic.

"Well well well," Starlight said quietly and rotated her staff, "if it isn't our little hypocrite."

"I'm not a hypocrite!" Precious-la yelled. "I did say, that equality is good and equality is good!"

"But you didn't think, that cutie unmarking was good!; Starlight hissed hostily.

"No I didn't," Precious-la admitted bravely. "You can be equal without having to give up your cutie mark."

"LIAR!!" Starlight yelled and stabbed her staff into Precious-la's direction.

Luckily, Precious-la was able to perform a shield charm and avoid being unmarked. Starlight growled in anger.

"Cutie marks make us unique and special," Precious-la explained calmly.

"Yes and they destroy all the friendship and does. not. create. any. equality!" Starlight yelled angrily and fired a magic beam on Precious-la.

This time, Precious-la could reverse the charm towards Starlight, who dodged for not being hitted. The beam hitted the wall behind her, causing a hole.

"Oh, you seriously thought you could defeat such a gifted magician like me so easily with your silly spells?" Starlight laughted proudly.

"I'm the best student in my class, how dare you to use such a rude vocabulary on me?" Precious also said proudly.

"And now dare you to harm and insult my alter-ego, who is by the way the best student in the entire school!" another voice, which is creepy similar with her own, said proudly.

It was, it was...Precious-la? Starlight stared at the two identical looking Precious-las with widen eyes and opened mouth.

The second Precious-la pulled the first Precious-la on her left hoof and teleported away with her, into the school hall again. Once she released her awfully similar "twin", she turned into her original form, Ocellus the changeling.

"Ocellus!" Precious-la gasped loudly, delighted, "you saved me from that creepy creep! Thank you so much!!"

But Ocellus only stared severely at her. She was clearly upset, with an ounce of worry in her pupilless eyes.

"Stay here and don't dare to move!" she panted upsetly, flipped her notebook and soon teleported away.

Autumn Blaze noticed the unicorn and hastily came over.

"Are you completely mental or do you want to give up your cutie mark anyways?" she screamed horrified and pointed at her own equal mark.

Her body colors are already slightly fading away into a monotonous grey tone and her face was pale of fear and worry.

"You can't just disappear. You're not supposed to! None of us is supposed to!" she shouted clearly shocked with widened eyes.

"Technically, I'm supposed to, because the Young Six are my very good friends and friends help each other, right?" Precious-la explained calmly.

"Oh, that's fine..." Autumn Blaze replied shortly.

"What's up?"

Precious-la carefully looked at the kirin. Something was clearly bothering her.

"Nothing, it's fine."

Autumn Blaze turned away and trotted to the rest of the crowd. Precious-la wanted to talk to her, but soon, Yona rushed into the school hall, looking excited.

"We caught Starlight!" she yelled, bounced and stamped with her hooves on the ground, as always, when she's excited.

The crowd sighed delighted and quickly followed her into the school garden, but also stopped as quickly as they came. In front them them, Starlight was caught into a blue bubble prison created by the six artefacts.

She mutely screamed and yelled probably some nasty swear words and tried to free herself from her tricky prison, but the forces were too strong to let her free.

"You used the same artefacts, Cozy used to trap Starlight with, to trap Starlight with?" a student asked, looking confused.

Smolder nodded.

"That's the only way to make it impossible for her to escape, but it also doesn't do any harm to her either," she explained proudly.

"That's so amazing to actually see, how powerful the six artefacts are!" Precious-la screamed in delight. "I'm happy to help!"

"Hmpf...you didn't help!" Smolder hissed. "You brought yourself in danger and aren't even confessing it!"

"Ocellus told us everything about that!" Gallus said.

"I told everyone, including you, to stay in the school hall until we caught Starlight!" Ocellus said severely. "So, don't. ever. make. this. happen. again!"

Precious-la carefully glanced at Ocellus and nodded slowly.

"But I just wanted to help," she whispered so quietly, that the Young Six couldn't hear her.

However, she was interrupted by a pony, standing at the entrance to the school garden, his vine red robe waving in the slight wind.

"What is going on here?" Chancellor Neighsay asked.

He slowly went to the artefacts and carefully watched each of them.

"I didn't come to help you!" he exclaimed and pointed at the Young Six. "What did you do to Starlight?"

"Yona can explain!" Yona called out, rising her hoof.

"I don't want to hear your explanation, you dumb yak, who can't even properly speak our language," Neighsay said in a rude tone and went past her, not even giving her a glare.

"Hey Neigh, Yona isn't stupid!" Precious-la yelled in defense.

"I don't want to hear your explanation either. I don't want to hear the explanation of nocreature!" Neighsay said, especially emphasizing the word "creature".

"We don't care, if you're interested or not, we will explain you everything anyways!" Smolder yelled.

"I don't need any of your explanations," Neighsay interrupted the dragon while pointing at the Young Six again. "Princess Twilight Sparkle already explained everything to me."

Neighsay went to Starlight's bubble prison and looked at her. Starlight suddenly began to struggle even stronger against the forces and pointed angrily at Neighsay, insulting him with luckily mute swear words.

"Oh glad! You caught Starlight and Chancellor Neighsay also came for help!" Spike exclaimed.

The Young Six turned their heads and saw the Mane 6 have returned on the same spot, Neighsay entered the garden. The Mane 6 trotted hastily into their direction.

"So, obviously Starlight Glimmer decided to steal everycreature's cutie mark and replace them by equal marks!" Neighsay said in a severe tone.

He glanced at Starlight once again, who instantly gave him an angry glare. Twilight opened her mouth to answer, but Neighsay interrupted her.

"I already knew, this school will be a complete mess," he continued.

Now, nopony was about to say anything but only stared at the chancellor with confusion.

"How incompetent it is from you to let her be your student consellor," Neighsay continued.

Twilight gasped in shock and Starlight glared at Neighsay and angrily shook her hoof.

"Starlight normally isn't so. Today, it's an exception, th..." the princess explained, but Neighsay interrupted her again.

"Okay, I see. Well, that might be acceptable, but it was definitely incompetent from you to let these dangerous creatures be your students! Especially that Quirin or whatever she is," he offensively pointed at Autumn Blaze. "I'm just so glad, that she already got such a weird equal mark, so she can't get upset and destroy the school and possibly all Equestria!"

"What? But I changed! I learned to control my feelings!" Autumn Blaze tried to defend herself.

"You didn't and you will never be able to control that destructive energy in your genes," Neighsay whispered angrily, still pointing at Autumn Blaze.

"That's not true!" Autumn Blaze gasped.

"Now what's that for? You decided not to judge creatures by their race anymore!" Sandbar shouted, angry but still confused.

"Chancellor pony not 'not that bad pony' anymore Yona said," Yona said.

"How dare you!" Silverstream yelled offended.

Twilight slightly looked at the protesting students and pulled her friends aside.

"It's getting worse," she whispered. "Screwball must have stolen Neighsay's friendship experience."

"Speaking of Screwball," Rainbow Dash began. "We should tell our students about her now, because it's getting more worse!"

"Rainbow Dash has a point. They don't even know, what's going on," Applejack agreed with a glare at the arguing students.

"We promised Discord not to tell them anything about Screwball," Twilight said in a serious voice.

With these words, she turned to Autumn Blaze and Ocellus and made them clear to follow her. She first gave the already greyer Autumn Blaze the potion and explained everything. Autumn Blaze looked at it, but was still unsure, whether to drink it or not. Then, she showed Ocellus the note.

"You sent us this about your hive."

Ocellus nodded and took the paper.

"I write this as soon as King Thorax informed me about the changelings. Luckily, that little bird found me," Ocellus explained and pointed at Hummingbird.

He was lying under Fluttershy's wings all the time, calmly sleeping. Twilight began to explain something, but she got interrupted again. By Neighsay, who suddenly appeared behind her and Ocellus.

"You didn't only tolerate these highly dangerous Quirins, you also let those same changelings into your school, who once almost took over Canterlot! And now, they're returning, power hungry again. I know, Ocellus was nothing good."

He said, gazing disrespectfully at the young changeling, who was too scared, that she didn't know anything to say.

"Neigh, that's enough!" Precious-la suddenly yelled, obviously offended. "Ocellus and her friends saved everyone from Cozy Glow, including you, so shut up and leave my friends alone!"

"Get yourself out of this. You're not involved!" Ocellus screamed shocked as she found her voice again, trying to push Precious-la away.

"I just want to help you!" Precious-la defended.

"Get out!!" Ocellus shouted.

She pushes Precious-la out of the radius, out of all the problems and turned to Neighsay and Twilight again.

"I think, you shouldn't get yourself mixed into this, instead think of your friend Lithium," Autumn Blaze tried to calm her friend down.

Precious-la gasped in shock and facepalmed.

"Oh no I totally forgot!" she screamed.

"Lily should be here for a long time. How could it come, that she's not here yet? Didn't she come with the same train as you came?"

Autumn Blaze shrugged.

"It could be possible," she answered.

"Where is she?" Precious-la gasped. "I should write her a letter to check out, whether she's okay."

She instantly took out her notebook, randomly ripped off a page, hastily wrote a few words and folded the paper. She teleported to Spike to let him know about her letter and first disappeared to send her letter to Lithium.

"How could I forget her?" she asked herself as she came back again.

"Uhm...it's okay, seriously. No one is flawless and everyone could forget."

Autumn Blaze fried to explain rationally, but there was something bothering her.