Twilight bit her lip. “Well,” she finally said, “I hope you don’t hate me.”

“Whatever,” Starlight dully responded, walking away.

“Wait, Starlight, what’s that supposed to mean?” Twilight called back, but to no avail. Starlight just walked away, not saying anything more. She turned to Spike. “See, Spike? She hates me!”

“No she doesn’t!” Spike argued. “She just hates being a leader, that’s all.”

“I hope so,” Twilight whispered.

Twilight dropped her quill at the sound of Rainbow Dash yelling. She and Spike eyed each other and ran next door, to where Rainbow, Starlight, and Trixie were. “You can’t-” Rainbow started to say.

“What do I care?” Starlight interrupted, pointing to Trixie. Twilight gaped when she saw Trixie in the corner of the room, angry, but sad. Mostly sad. “It’s not like she’s-”

“Starlight, what did you do?” Twilight confronted Starlight. It took everything she had not to yell at her.

“Oh, I was just telling her how wrong she was when she told somepony that the best way to get over your problems is to ignore them,” she explained in an almost taunting voice.

“Screamed at her is more like it,” Rainbow Dash grumbled, crossing her arms.

Twilight shook her head in disbelief. “Starlight, what’s gotten into you? You’ve gone from stressed to annoyed to downright cruel!”

“And? She was wrong, and that’s that, right?” Starlight rolled her eyes, walking away from the whole scene. Everyone eyed her in shock, knowing that something was definitely wrong.

“I’m starting to regret that we made her the new headmare,” Spike noted, and almost everyone nodded in agreement. Twilight was too confused to nod, or do anything, for that matter. And anyways, she didn't agree with what Spike had said. Why would Starlight do this? she asked herself.

“I’m going to go talk to her,” Twilight declared.

“You’d better,” Rainbow Dash told her, and Twilight flew out of the room, looking for Starlight.

“Now, you can get back to counseling duties,” Spike told Trixie, who shook her head.

“I don’t think I can,” she said with a shaking voice. “Trixie’s best friend has just stopped being Trixie’s best friend.” Rainbow Dash and Spike watched as she walked out of the room, heartbroken, a tear dropping.

“Starlight!” Twilight called out. I only left a few seconds after her, she thought to herself. Then she heard voices from Pinkie Pie’s laughter class. Loud, angry voices. “Please don’t be Starlight,” she whispered, opening the door. And, of course, Starlight was in the room. But it wasn’t Starlight screaming, but instead two students.

Pinkie Pie tried to push Gallus away from Smolder, but she wasn’t strong enough. Twilight levitated the two away from each other, and set them on the ground on different sides of the room. Ocellus, who was currently disguised as a party canon, morphed back into her true form, breathing a sigh of relief. Twilight eyed Starlight, who had a smug smile on her face. “Really?” she asked, forming hundreds of suspicions.

“What?” Starlight shrugged, the same wicked look on her face. Twilight hated it.

Twilight turned away from Starlight, avoiding the question. “Pinkie Pie,” she asked, “what happened here?”

“Well, I went to go get cupcakes for our next activity, and I let Starlight watch over the students. But when I came back, those two were fighting,” Pinkie almost cried, leaving out the death of her cupcakes.

Twilight turned back to Starlight with the same look of suspicion. “And you didn’t try to stop them?”

“Why would I have? It was perfect in the room already,” she gleefully said, trotting away.

Pinkie gaped. “Did Starlight just say-”

“Yeah,” Twilight nodded, her ears bent down. “She did.”

Starlight stacked a few wooden blocks on her desk, taping a drawing of a target on it. Then, she took the kite that was near her hoof and folded it into an airplane. Then, she flew the airplane straight towards the block tower, destroying it. “Bullseye!” she beamed, hopping onto her bed.

She heard a knock on her door, and when she opened it, it was none other than Twilight herself. “Starlight, I wanted to talk,” she said. Starlight rolled her eyes but moved over on the bed, making room for Twilight. “Listen, about what you’ve been doing at the school…”

“It’s unacceptable, I know,” she mocked. “I don’t care about the rules. Just know that I’m ready to strike whenever I want, okay, Twilight?”

Twilight’s jaw touched the ground. “Are you saying you want to… hurt ponies?”

Starlight shrugged and laid down on her bed, faking a yawn. “Why not?”

Twilight gasped, walking out of the room. “Gosh, Spike,” she told Spike when she had closed the door behind her. “Starlight is acting really different.”

Spike still doubted Twilight, even after the incident with Trixie. “How so?”

“She wants to hurt ponies. She destroyed her kites and ripped pieces of paper. If you don’t believe me, just go ask Starlight yourself,” she said, marching away.

And Spike took that advice. He opened the door to her room and gaped. Twilight was right. Starlight had become the pony she used to be. He looked around at her room, at the ripped kite that was dangling from the ceiling. He looked down at the ground to see a shredded piece of paper. “Starlight?” he asked, now afraid.

“Yes, Spike?” she groaned from her bed.

“Are you… feeling okay?”

Starlight rolled over to face him. Spike winced at what he saw. An evil grin spread across her face, one that looked far worse than earlier this morning. In fact, it was oddly close to the smirk she had been wearing before she cast the spell that sent them to the alternate worlds where Twilight and her friends never met. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she responded after an eternity of silence. “I have what I want.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Spike anxiously asked, afraid to learn the answer.

“Why would I tell you?” she rhetorically asked.

Spike backed out of the room, as if Starlight was Garble 2.0. “Okay, goodbye!” he quickly shouted, closing the door behind him. He breathed a sigh of relief and caught up to Twilight in her room. “You were right,” he said. “I wonder what’s going to happen, now.”

Twilight was too concerned to congratulate herself on being correct. “Oh, I just hope she’s okay.”

Author's Note

It's so hard for me to write about Starlight being so cruel, but that's the whole point of this story. The pain of writing this! I hope you read all the way through this chapter, and if you did, than thank you very much. Don't worry, the next chapter will be based off of Starlight's intentions, so there won't be as much confusion and pain.