The next morning, I came downstairs to join everyone in the meal nook. My muscles felt a bit stiff—a side effect having lost all the hard-earned scars, calluses, and muscle of my life—but in spite of it, I slept quite well. In fact, I'd go so far as to guess that it was the best I'd slept in over eight years... and just like Luna promised, I had a nice, if silly dream about playing make-belief soldiers with a bunch of foals I'd never met. Not a single memory about my family.

That said, I was kinda surprised that there were two more faces at the table than normal. The two pegasi from the other day—Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy I think they were called—were sitting there, drinking coffee or tea, and looking kind of anxious. In fact, they all seemed a bit on edge, even Spike.

When she saw me walk in, Rainbow Dash winced, her eyes going to the cheek that was still a bit swollen. "Mornin' Twilight, Starlight, Spike," I said, climbing up onto the chair I'd taken to thinking of as my own. "What brings you two by, Miss Dash and Miss Fluttershy?"

As Starlight poured me a mug of highly sugared decaf, I noticed that Fluttershy looked like she wanted to pounce and hug me. I think the memory of a startled me throwing a certain pudgy earth-pony was enough for her to reign her in. That didn't stop her from speaking up. "We came to see how you were doing," she explained. "The whole town is talking about what happened. We can hardly believe it ourselves... one of our own friends..."

I rubbed my cheek subconsciously before picking up my coffee. "I'm not mad at Applejack or nothing," I said before enjoying a large pull of my weaksauce coffee. The sugar was tolerable in this format, but I still wasn't used to it, especially without the caffeine. "My father would hit me harder for less. So much as 'look at him in the wrong tone of voice' and out came he belt." That elicited a spit take and pained 'What?' from Dash, a wince from the other three, and a look of horror from Fluttershy. "I should've asked for clarification rather than assuming something and offending her. Doesn't make it right, but like I told Princess Luna... We <> had a saying: 'Talk shit, get hit.'" I shrugged and waited for the inevitable syrupy pancake to get sent my way. "I'll let her stew for a bit and then go try and clear the air with her."

"Anon," Dash said, having the grace to start cleaning herself with a napkin. "Applejack's in the Ponyville lockup. Has been since yesterday afternoon when a pair of night guards showed up at the farm. Everypony's been talking about it."

That actually surprised me, somewhat. That likely meant that the princess and the others had been watching me for at least that long. "Huh," I murmured as my pancake finally came my way. I glanced from Dash, to Fluttershy, and then Twilight. "When's the trial? At the very least, I wouldn't mind telling the judge that I don't want her family to be aversely impacted by this."

They all just gaped at me as I began to cut up a pancake and shovel it bit by bit into my mouth. Their brains had clearly begun to misfire, since they all just sat there, staring as I ate. It was kinda creepy, but then again, horse-world did a very good job of creeping me out, either with its weird parallels to earth, or the societal differences. Then again, thy probably aren't having an easy time processing my reasoning. I mean, here you had me, someone who had a very shitty home-life growing up, not wishing ill upon the family of an adult who'd attacked me.

"There is no trial, Anon." That was Twilight who spoke up. "Princess Luna witnessed the event firsthoof while observing your time at the farm. As soon as you fell asleep yesterday afternoon, she went to the lockup and had AJ brought there to face sentencing."

I blinked and put down my cutlery. This sorta complicated things... I would've liked to have volunteered at Sweet Apple Acres again, but I didn't imagine the Apples would be too happy to have my 'help' while one of their primary breadwinners was locked up. Not only that, but I'd be starting class with her sister on Tuesday. Would she harbour a grudge for inadvertently getting her big sister locked up?

For that matter, I still can't quite wrap my mind around why she struck me. There are plenty of ways to snap someone out of a panic attack, and none of them involve a good smack like she gave me. If she were raised in an environment of physical punishment, it could have been a learned reaction, but... No. Then there was the look on her face when it happened. She looked just as scared and confused as I'd been.

"That thing possessed not one but two of mah friends."

Again, I found her words echoing in my mind. One of those friends was clearly Princess Luna, but the other could be any number of ponies. They could even have been in this very room, and I wouldn't know. But even then, would that be reason to lose control like that? There had to be something more to it... but the only things I knew that drove people to do inexplicably stupid things like that were drugs and love. She didn't seem like a tweaker, so... No, it's not my business.

With sigh, I drained the last of my coffee. "What's the damage?" I asked, staring down at my unfinished pancake. "How much is this gonna hurt her family?"

"She's been sentenced to ten days in the lockup, a public apology in front of the town, and five months probation," Twilight said in a solemn voice. "The princess considered lenience, but wanted to impress upon ponies that nopony is above reproach. Any future incidents involving a foal will likely result in her being considered for the foal abuse register."

There was no hiding my wince from the others. I wasn't a moron; I knew what that would do to their family. Either AJ would be forced to move out, or Apple Bloom—at least I think that's what her name was—would probably be removed from the household. She'd probably sooner move out than allow her family to be torn apart like that.

Gripping the edge of the crystalline table with one hoof, I leaned into my other. I didn't really know how to process this. Part of me felt guilty, since my words had apparently prodded something that she was likely hiding from even herself. At the same time though, that didn't excuse what she did, so why should I feel bad for her? So what if her reputation was tarnished and she became a pariah? Why should her life be ruined over one fuck-up when my father got away with it until the end of his life?

A cracking sound from the edge of the table snapped me out of my filly brain-meat emotion spiral. "Gah, this is so f—flipping stupid," I grunted, releasing the table and marveling that I'd actually managed to fracture part of the table with the grip of my hoof field. "I'm not sorry she ended up there, but I never wanted this for her." Glancing up at Twilight, I raised an eyebrow. "So are you guys going to check in with her today?"

To my surprise, Rainbow shook her head. This was the pony that was supposed to embody loyalty, and here she was indicating that they weren't going to go check in on their friend. "She can stew for a bit while we take care of things," she muttered. "But don't worry, kid. We're not abandoning her; just gotta talk to Pinkie and Rarity about it."

That... does not instill me with confidence. In fact, from someone like her, it almost makes me think of some hare-brained prison break-out movie. But that's ridiculous, right? Surely five national heroes, a princess included, aren't gonna be moronic enough to break the sixth out of jail when she's just gotta sit for ten days. Right?

Despite my curiosity, I honestly can't make myself care enough to ask. All this really means is that it's likely just gonna be me, Spike, and Starlight—unless either of them has plans—and that I can't have the discussion with Twilight and Starlight about starting my actual magical studies. That said, I also kinda don't wanna stay all holed up in the castle. I mean, if word really has gotten around town that I got smacked around, I'll probably be faced with ponies who feel bad for me, but if I stay inside until I start school, I'll probably just convince the town that I'm emotionally scarred.

Finished with my meal, I stacked the mug and cutlery onto the plate and carried it with my mouth over to the counter. I was still a bit disgruntled that there wasn't a way for me to reliably stand at the sink and clean my own dishes. Fact of the matter was, I was too short to reach the double sink even on my back hooves, and a simple stool wouldn't help like with the bathroom, since I'd regularly move from side-to-side. As it stands, I can't even wash my hooves in here. Maybe we can go out and price some timber for a raised platform that can be wheeled over and locked into position.

"I'm going to go get cleaned up and look for something to read," I said, exiting the room. "I'm starting to get bored just reading the learning aides. Need to find something with some actual depth to it."

I half-expected someone to encourage me to stay and continue to talk. After all, I was a child in their eyes—though some were certainly starting to come around—and ponies seemed to have a lot more empathy than I was used to seeing from people. That I wasn't being fussed over more by Fluttershy was surprising in and of itself, but if I had to guess, the group was still too shocked by their friend to act 'normally'.

Starlight left the table, moving to join me with her own mug of coffee. "I'll make sure she doesn't get up to any mischief," she said. "You guys worry about planning the intervention."

~ 08 ~

True to Starlight's word, the group—Spike included—took off not long after breakfast. She wouldn't, or couldn't, go into much detail over what 'the intervention' was about. What I could glean was that it as indeed an intervention for AJ, and that it had something to do with that second pony involved in the Nightmare business. There was no indication as to who that other pony was, or why Applejack needed the intervention regarding it, although I imagined that her smacking me yesterday had a lot to do with it.

Since I'd decided that anything past being hit wasn't my business, I decided not to pry any further. Instead, I spent much of the morning scouring Twilight's library for some fiction. It was a bit upsetting that there didn't seem to be a whole lot there. Most of it seemed to be academic, although there were a few select shelves that were dedicated to purely fictional content. There was that Daring Do series that I'd picked up at Rainbow's suggestion, but I wasn't really feeling it today. Other than that, there was a series by the name of Harry Trotter, a couple of comic book omnibuses that seemed to be dedicated to Equestria's equivalent of the Justice League of America and other similar things, and some of the foal reading aides that had been recently added for me. Nothing akin to Lord of the Rings or Redwall, so far as I could see.

That said, at the top of the shelf of the 'fiction section', there were a lot of books with pastel spines that I wasn't tall enough to read. If I had to guess, these were likely what my Mom would have called 'bodice rippers'. I'd known her to have a few, but I'd never taken any real interest due to romance not being my preferred genre. That being said, if they were being kept up high, they were likely to be of the smutty variety.

When I'd asked Starlight why there didn't seem to be much of a fiction section, she explained that the town's actual library, a place called Golden Oaks, had been destroyed a year or so ago. Apparently Twilight had gone to battle with a magic-devouring centaur, and the library had been just one of the casualties. Since then, much of Twilight's budget had been dedicated to replacing the books lost, but almost all of it was going towards replacing rare and historical texts first. When the fiction section was fully replaced, the princess apparently planned on opening her library fully to the public, so that Ponyville would not be deprived of such a valuable resource. Until then, there would only be the odd guest visiting to for research purposes.

That left me wondering what to do. Except for food-related businesses such as Sugar Cube Corner, there wasn't much in terms of shops open on a Sunday. As a farming town, Ponyville considered today a day of rest and family. That ruled out going out to the bookstore Twilight had pointed out during the short tour of town on Friday. Not that I had any bits to spend. That said, if I was legally her responsibility—her adopted child for all intents and purposes—I should at some point probably broach the topic of an allowance, or barring that, a wish list that I can earn towards with chores.

By midday, after deciding that I really didn't have much interest in reading more Daring Do at the moment or starting Harry Trotter, I was starting to get stir-crazy. I also had no interest in board games, I could only play solitaire for so long, and I couldn't get Starlight interested in blackjack or poker. If I had the gear for fishing, I'd have asked her if we could go out to a nearby lake or river, but that fell back to the spending money topic. Plus, I didn't know if you needed a permit to fish in Ponyville.

That said, I didn't reckon she, or Twilight for that matter, would let me out to just wander on my own for a while yet. It was one thing to state a plan of action like going to Applejack's and back, but I needed to earn their trust as well. I hadn't exactly done anything to earn that with the stunt yesterday morning, so it'd probably be a while yet before I'd be allowed to roam freely.

"Starlight, can we go out somewhere?" I finally asked as I began to pace. It was hard to believe that I'd gotten to the point of looking forward to school, if for nothing else than so I'd have a perpetual source of stimulation for part of the week. I even felt like my filly brain-meat was gonna make me start being petulant if something interesting didn't happen soon. "I'm starting to get to the point where I'll submit to eating sweets if it means I can get out and move around."

The mare seemed to consider it for a moment before using her magic to summon her bit-satchel from somewhere. She glanced inside, and then shrugged. "I know you've had some of Pinkie's baking, but you haven't been out to Sugar Cube Corner yet, have you?" she asked, smiling at my own wince at the name. "They have more than just pastries, Anon. They have milkshakes, muffins, banana bread. They even have all sorts of coffee-based beverages you might like."

My ears perked up at the mention of coffee. "Oh?" I asked, a smile spreading across my face. My tail might have begun to wag, for how much "Would you allow me to have a caffeinated drink for a change?"

She looked thoughtful for a moment, before nodding. "Aside from Rule #8 yesterday, you've been really well behaved, so I think you've earned it," Starlight said with a bit of a sly look, conjuring up a key that I imagined was for the front door. "I won't tell Twilight if you won't."

So out of the castle we went, out into a beautiful overcast autumn day. Whereas Twilight filled the air with stories about the town during our last trip out, Starlight was talking to me about magic. Instead of extolling its virtues, I was surprised to hear the mare—whose talent was quite clearly magi-centric—insisting on patience and prudence while learning and using it. As she put it, she didn't want to see me make the mistakes others had made.

She told me of a foolish pony who had started to hate cutie marks, believing them to be evil—a source of inequality, classism, and the destroyer of friendships. The pony created a small town intended to be a utopia of equality, but it wasn't enough. As ponies who'd been pushed out by those more effective with their cutie marks filtered in, so too did the inequality. Someone was always naturally better at something due to their marks, so the pony in the story created a spell to separate a pony from their mark.

They couldn't see that in robbing ponies of their talents, hopes, and dreams, they were creating an atmosphere of fear, unhappiness, and submission. Worse, they willfully ignored the immediate drop of the quality of life for all around. All of the food in 'Our Town' became atrocious, and all future buildings were shoddily constructed, yet everyone pretended to be happy. Every pony in town had become 'equal' except for the mastermind with the spell, and they'd lost hope as a result.

When a group of do-gooders returned the townspeople's cutie marks and drove the mad mage from the town, the mage began to plan the unthinkable. They'd researched the heroes, finding a common thread in how the group had earned their cutie marks, and hatched a plan to eliminate that thread. If those ponies had never interfered, they could have created true equality, or so they thought. But when they hatched their plan and tampered with time, the ripples were immense, and every time the leader of the group went back to stop her, they kept facing a new iteration of the present, each more terrible than the last. It wasn't until the mage was forced to see what their actions had wrought that they began to see the error of her ways and allowed time to take its natural course.

It was about partway through the story that I realised that the pony in the story was Starlight Glimmer, and the heroes were Twilight Sparkle and her friends. It was the little things, like how ashamed she looked when telling the story... or the fact that she referred to the town as 'Our Town'—surely that wasn't actually the name of the place... right? Then of course she'd slipped up towards the end, when she mentioned the name Sunburst and how their friendship had drifted apart when he got his cutie mark, spurring on the whole chain of events.

I know that she said she was trying to impress forethought and critical thinking before using magic, but as we entered Sugar Cube Corner, it occurred to me that she'd likely had an ulterior motive in telling the story. It likely was eating away at her that I was so concerned about whether or not my mind had been tampered with by the Princesses, and while she herself had actually done something not dissimilar. Maybe she was scared that someone was going to let it slip without giving me the whole story?

Admittedly, we'd only known one another for about a week, but the way she was always willing to help out with my learning or just being there for me had made a big impact on how I viewed her. While Twilight would never replace Mom, I think at some point I'd started to look up to Starlight like the big sister I'd never had. I'd never said as much, but I don't think she was oblivious enough to miss it entirely. Maybe that's why she wanted me to hear it from her?

For that matter, how did it make me feel about her? As we stood in line, waiting in line to be served by a tall yellow earth-pony stallion behind the counter, I ruminated on the implications of what she said. It was clearly and wholly within her abilities to exert some form of mind control. Yet, from everything she described, robbing ponies of their volition was a side-effect of what she'd done, rather than the end goal, and she seemed legitimately remorseful over it all.

I was about to ask her if she had told the story without names out of fear for how I'd react, when a charcoal grey pegasus colt with a white mane bumped roughly into me from the side. He'd come from the direction of the entrance, and ended up spilling a tray of drinks all over me and the ground between us. The jerk looked down at the mess and then up at me with rage. "Look what you did, you stupid muck-raker!" he yelled, drawing startled looks from almost everyone in the bakery. "Why can't useless ponies like you watch where they're going?"

A white pony with a charcoal mane stepped up beside him and also got into my face. "Yeah, what's your problem, runt?" he demanded, his amber eyes glinting maliciously in the shop-lights. This colt could have been the other's inverted double if not for the fact that this one was a unicorn. "You just bumped into us and wasted the allowance money we spent on this." He almost got nose-to-nose with me, but took special care never to touch me. "You owe us, kid."

I raised my eyebrows at them, but maintained a straight face. "Oh?" I asked with a sniff. I couldn't smell any of what the dark pegasus had spilled on me, giving me the distinct impression that it was dyed water, rather than an actual drink. Plus, my coat should have been starting to feel sticky, but it just felt wet. "How do you figure?" Starlight looked like she was going to step in, but I shot her a quick wink of my eye as I shook my head.

"What do you mean?" the first colt yelled, as if trying to draw attention. Like he didn't already have the entire shop's attention with that muck-raker slur. "You bumped into me! You spilled our drinks."

Again, I shook my head, and couldn't help but chuckle. Sitting on my haunches, I lifted my forehooves and shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about," I replied coolly. "I was standing here waiting in line with my big sis here, when you came from the entrance and walked into me. From where I'm standing, you're the one who needs to look where he's going." I made a show of rubbing my chin, as if suddenly realising something. "For that matter..."

I peered around the pony in front of me, toward the stallion behind the register. "Say, Mr. Shopkeeper, sir?" I asked in an innocent voice. "Have you actually served these two anything today?"

Suddenly, the pair of colts looked a lot less confident. Their eyes flicked from me to the shopkeeper, and then to each other. "No, I haven't," he said with a dawning look of shock. "Hey, what are you two trying to pull here?"

Visibly sweating now, the unicorn brother took a step back. "Well, uh..."

"The pink one served us!" the pegasus brother interrupted. "Yeah, that hyper pink mare that's always here served us earlier!"

The shopkeeper's eyes narrowed at the boys, and I could hold in my laughter no longer. "Wow, keep digging your own hole, boys," I said with a cackle. "Pretty sure Pinkie Pie is off with her friends today, and judging by the shopkeeper's expression, she was never on shift at all today." The stallion in question nodded, glaring at the pair. "Adorable attempt at a scam, boys, but you gotta pick your marks better and make sure your cover stories are airtight before they sink you. Also, never draw as much attention as you did with that slur"

With a sneer, I leaned forward and gently patted them on the cheeks and whispered. "Good luck pulling any sort of cons in Ponyville now, you little crooks," I whispered as a number of ponies in the room looked at the pair in shocked realisation. Evidently, they'd pulled this same scam on a few others who were present. It looked like one or two ponies at a table near the door were getting ready to make a grab for the little scoundrels "Word travels fast in towns like this. Final bit of advice? Run."

Run those boys did. Leaving behind the plastic tray and recyclable cups they'd no doubt been using repeatedly in their scam, the pair bolted out the door faster than I would've expected. There was even a cartoonish dust-cloud shaped like the colts left where they were standing, that's how quick they booked it. I imagined they could possibly even give Rainbow Dash a run for her money in a footrace—or was that hoof-race?

Things in the store eventually calmed down, and everyone in line was eventually served. As it turned out those boys seemed to pull the spillage scam every other day, but because it was always someone else manning the register, it seemed more infrequent than it was. The stallion at the counter, Mr. Carrot Cake, was even willing to comp my iced cappuccino, but I haggled him down to just a discount and a second raspberry jelly-filled donut.

Starlight, on the other hand, hadn't spoken much since I stopped her from intervening. She looked almost uneasy when we sat down at a table with our food and drink. Had the ease with which I turned that pair's scam on its head put her on her guard? Or was it something I said during it? Maybe I looked to be enjoying myself a little bit too much when I started putting them in their places?

"Starlight, listen," I said as I sipped at my icy coffee treat. "We all have things that we aren't proud of—bits of our past we'd like to make up for." Pausing to take a big bite of the sugar-powdered jelly-donut, I gave her a smile. "If I judged every person I met for the past they're trying to make up for, I'd be a hypocrite. I won't fault you for what you did, so long as you don't judge me for doing what I had to in order to get by."

"You called me your big sis," she murmured, still looking quite uncertain of herself. "Was that an act, or...?"

My smile never faded as I looked her in the eye. "I guess I did call you my big sister, didn't I?" It wasn't an answer in and of itself, but at the same time, I think that was all the answer she really needed. Like it or not, Starlight, Twilight, and Spike were probably the closest thing to family I had now. I'd never let Twilight supplant my memory of Mom, but there was no reason I couldn't begin treating them like family... right?

Author's Note

Not a whole lot I wanted to comment on here tonight, so there's not any numbering necessary. A lot of what went on is self-explanatory, but there is the issue of the twins introduced. It's kinda funny, but the moment I settled on Anon going to the school in Ponyville, I settled on Anonymous gaining a 'nemesis' before or during her her first time in school. Initially, I toyed with the idea of her going to war—so to speak—with one of the canon foals, be it Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, Rumble, or someone else. None of that really meshed with me, though, so I thought, why not construct some characters instead.

Then the idea of rather than just one pony, make it a set of twins. Almost immediately, the Yin/Yang motif was settled upon when I decided on a unicorn and pegasus. If you can believe it, the initial source of conflict between Anon and the Twins was to be the unicorn brother looking down Anon for having a magic-related mark as an earth-pony, but when I got the opportunity to introduce them early, the pair of brothers just being a bunch of brats and trying to pull a con on a new face in Ponyville just felt... Right.

I won't go further into the lore of the boys right now, but there is one thing I wanna say about them. Despite the fact that I've built their own little niche in the story, and even their cutie marks, I actually have not been able to come up with names for them. I mean, after the events of this ~~episode~~chapter, she'll likely be calling them Skim and Scam the next time she sees them, but I legitimately cannot come with actual names for these Canterlot brats forced to move to Ponyville with their folks.