Sweetie Belle wasn't usually this angry, not even on her grouchiest of mornings. And for the life of her, she couldn't quite figure out why.

Maybe it was the way the light shone through her windows, positioned just right so that it landed directly in her eyes.

She reached up to rub away the sleep, feeling about her face with an irked groan. Her mask had fallen away sometime in the night. Sweetie reached out to search blindly about for it, her hooves finding only the sheets.

No luck. It must have fallen by the side of the bed again.

The sun came up too early in the summertime.

Maybe it was the sounds filtering from the radio alarm that soured her mood. It was a pretty rude awakening - precisely the reason she'd bought it in the first place. It was also the last thing she wanted right now, waking up to the jingles and chipper voices of some Manehattan talk show.

Just what were they talking about, anyway? She tilted an ear in the direction of the speakers, where she heard mares fawning over...what, exactly? Garden parties? Some sort of festival in Appleloosa?

Oh, who cared? Was this really all that anypony wanted to talk about?

Something stirred within Sweetie, welling deep in her chest like a bubbling pool of magma. It began as a low growl deep from Sweetie's belly, quickly erupting into a roar of impotent, seething rage directed at the ceiling. It was a cry of anger - hollow and empty anger, but anger all the same - that sprang forth from somewhere deep within.

That was it, Sweetie realized. That was what was eating at her this morning.

Dissatisfaction. Frustration. A resentment that had been there scratching at the surface for a long, long time. It was the same sort of feeling that woke a pony at night. The sort that opened her eyes into a pitiless darkness and made her kick impotently into the sheets and grit her teeth until they threatened to crack.

It wasn't anything she could put a name to. It was harsh, brutal, eating away at her like a hundred burning rats. It was red-hot discontent, a slow burning rage at just how little there was to look forward to. How she had nothing, was nothing. How nothing seemed to really, truly mean anything.

Certainly not in Ponyville. Ponyville! Phonyville was more like it! Not in a town whose biggest worry was what color frosting you put on your cake! Ugh!

How was a pony supposed to go out there and do things, when this was all they had to look forward to? Ponyville was where dreams went to die, drowned in a sea of namby-pamby goodness. The same thing, day in and day out.

Sweetie Belle squeezed her eyes shut, turned to her side and kicked at the wall with all the fury she could muster. The wall responded in kind with a dull, unsympathetic thud, wholly unperturbed by her temper.

She winced. That hurt.

The kick had done its job. The edge of her anger was gone, driven away by the soreness in her hind hoof.

Enough moping. Time to wake up and smell the roses.

Sweetie didn't get out of bed as much as she simply rolled off, landing on the floor with her legs sprawled out, muzzle scrunched up in displeasure. She got to her hooves with a vigorous shake of her mane, glaring towards the mirror in the corner. She frowned at the messy-maned unicorn she saw there, who returned her emerald-eyed glare.

She was a mess. It was a good thing Rarity wasn't around to see this.

Somewhere at the edge of her awareness, it registered that the radio was still blaring. She directed her attention towards it, making her way over. Sweetie's magic enveloped the little dial in a silver glow as she turned it to and fro, scanning the airwaves.

A cooking show here, a droning news broadcast there - something about Yakyakistan, she couldn't be bothered to figure out what exactly - and some soda pop nonsense that barely passed for music. Voices, more and more of them, each shriller and more grating than the last.

After a while, they all began to sound the same, blending together into a whiny mishmash. Always just a little too chipper, too polished to be real. An irate jab with Sweetie’s hoof silenced them - and sent the dial flying to another corner of the room. She could only growl as she turned away, in no mood to chase down the errant bit of plastic.

Why couldn't they play some real music? Like Sapphire Shores? Or Show Tunes?

Show Tunes. Now there was a pony worth her salt. A fleeting smile formed on Sweetie's muzzle as she thought upon all those lovely fantasies, following in her hooves, having a stage all to herself, but...oh, who was she kidding? Back to Equestria with her.

An object brushed against the edge of Sweetie’s hoof, and she glanced downwards. It was a magazine, Cherchez la Filly. One of the many trashy rags Rarity had lying around. Everypony had their guilty pleasures, and this was her sister's.

“Get the Love You Deserve!” advertised the text above a sultry-eyed unicorn mare, all too pretty in pink. “Be Beautiful!” The mare's big goo-goo eyes were enough to make Sweetie gag.

Beautiful! As if they even knew what the word meant, the ruffians! As if everypony didn’t already know that chest fluff wasn’t all potions and magic! She took her time to stomp hard upon the magazine as she stepped out of her room.

Ruffians?

A snort escaped Sweetie’s nostrils in a derisive puff. Rarity really was rubbing off on her.

But that was far, far enough of that. It was time to wash herself, get away from all this. To the only ones who really seemed to understand what was really happening here.

She would wash up and find something to eat. Then it would be off to Sweet Apple Acres, to the old clubhouse where her friends would be waiting.

Author's Note

So maybe I'm the heretic, Equestria
I've had enough of the stale soppy mania
Now everypony do the Pony Polka
And whip your tail to the sugar-sweet hysteria!