“Alright girls, another job well done!” Twilight Sparkle said. She slammed the door of the Friendship Castle’s friendship dungeon, sealing the defeated cultists inside. “Looks like Cthubl’lekth the Eyeless won’t be getting resurrected this time!”
The girls cheered. They were tired, and sweaty, and a bit bedraggled after the day’s adventure. Curls of smoke rose from Pinkie Pie’s mane, a consequence of her heroic dive into the cultists’ sacred immolating brazier, extinguishing the howling flames with her poofy personality moments before the dire ritual's culmination.
“Ah admit, I thought we were toast there for a little while,” Applejack said. “Nice to know these old bones still got some kick in ‘em!”
“Posh, darling,” Rarity said. “Just because there’s a, quote, ‘new generation,’ and we’re all teachers now or rising to the tops of our respective careers, and the kids use new slang that we don’t understand, and music these days is so terrible compared with… Oh, Celestia, we are old, aren’t we?”
They laughed again, and even a few of the cultists chuckled, because maybe they weren’t so young anymore either. Eventually, though, silence returned. It sat heavily, uncomfortably. The girls exchanged glances and quickly found elsewhere to look.
Rainbow Dash broke the silence. “So, nopony’s gonna say it, huh?”
Twilight groaned. “Can we not do this? Or can it wait until after I’ve had a bath?”
“No, I wanna hear this too,” Applejack said. “Go on, sugar.”
“Yeah, okay.” Rainbow Dash turned to their seventh member. “Starlight?”
“Yes, Rainbow?” Starlight Glimmer’s serene expression betrayed nothing.
“You need to tell us anything?”
Starlight inspected the rim of her hoof. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What I mean is, when we busted into that hidden temple, I kind of expected the cultists to attack us or maybe flee or collapse the whole thing like in Daring Do.”
“Daring Do is fictional,” Starlight noted.
“Untrue, but regardless, what I did not expect them to do was point at you and shout, quote, ‘It’s Starlight-senpai!’ Did I get that right, Applejack?”
“Yup, that’s what they said.” She squinted at Starlight.
“I did think that was a little odd,” Fluttershy mumbled.
“Lots of ponies shout when they see me,” Starlight said. “Ponies cheer for you all the time.”
“That’s during Wonderbolts shows, not when I show up unexpectedly at cult rituals—”
“Okay, again, can we table this discussion?” Twilight said. “I get that ponies are concerned, but emotions are a bit frazzled right now and—”
“No, Twilight, I’m afraid I have to side with Rainbow Dash here,” Rarity said. “Starlight, you know I love you, but, um, you do have a bit of a history…”
“Oh, I see.” Starlight set her hoof down. “Because of my history, whenever cultists do something weird, I must be involved? It can’t just be that cults are strange and do things we don’t expect? Starlight Glimmer’s hidden hoof must somehow be pulling the strings. Is that what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying is,” Rainbow responded, “I want to know why they had a big portrait of you on the wall next to the mosaic of Cthubl’lekth.”
There was a mumbled chorus of agreement. Even Twilight nodded.
“Okay, that’s fair,” Starlight said. “The truth is, sometimes ponies come to me for advice, because they know I’m such a helpful mare and, frankly, a top-rate guidance counselor. They don’t have the organizational or motivational speaking skills they need to run good cults, which is a disaster waiting to happen, so I’ve been helping them. For free.”
The silence returned. Twilight pinched her muzzle with her hooves.
“Wait,” Pinkie said. “Cults, plural?”
* * *
Later, after Twilight had her bath and some aspirin, the girls reassembled in the Friendship Castle library. Starlight set a large accordion folder stuffed with dozens of individual files on the table.
“Okay,” she said. “Because you asked, these are all the cults I’ve been helping—”
“Are all of those in Ponyville?” Rarity asked. She stared at the thick folio.
“Oh, no.” Starlight pulled a few files out and set them aside, then slid the rest forward. “These are in Ponyville.”
“This seems like a lot of cults for a small town,” Applejack said. She pulled a file out and flipped through it. “The Vestal Society of the Sun?”
“Hey! That’s not a cult, that’s an educational organization,” Twilight said. She snatched the folder from Applejack’s hooves. “We meet weekly to affirm our adoration of Celestia, make plans to spread the Good News of her benevolent reign, appreciate the fancy gold masks we all get, and okay now that everypony’s staring at me I can see why it might be, uh, a bit mischaracterized. By outsiders.”
“Are any of these, you know, sexy cults?” Pinkie said. “Asking for a friend.”
“There are many kinds of cults,” Starlight said. She plucked out a file and slid it across the table to Pinkie. “Did you know that ‘cult’ shares the same root as the word ‘culture’? They both mean to grow or cultivate, and I think that’s beautiful. They’re a way for ponies who may not have direction or security to find something meaningful – a place of belonging, which always seems like it’s just out of reach in this rushed, modern era. And, I get it, cults have a bad reputation. My own cult at Our Town certainly didn’t help! But that’s why I work so hard to help fledgling cults now, to make sure they aren’t abusive or misguided. So they give ponies a place to grow together, a culture of their very own! And if that’s wrong, I don’t want to be—”
“Hang on,” Rainbow Dash said. She had a dictionary on the table. “Cult and Culture share the same root in the sense of a bacterial culture. Like, growing germs in a petri dish.”
The silence, long absent, returned. Starlight took the dictionary and read a while.
“Huh,” Starlight said. “Well, uh… can you girls wait here? There’re some rituals I need to go stop real quick.”
