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"You're so smooth-brained, it's unbelievable how badly I botched raising you. If you don't clean your room by the time you get home from school tomorrow, then you can consider yourself kicked out, do you understand me?!"

Cozy Glow didn't respond, which earned her a slap on the cheek.

"HUH?!"

"...Mhm."

"Good."

Cozy bit her lip for a moment. "But...it's winter, and-"

"Here's a news flash for you: I don't give a shit!" Warm Embrace turned on her heels and began trotting away. "You're a pegasus. When it comes to the weather, you can fend for yourself, unlike those sorry earth ponies and unicorns out there."

Not having the heart to say anything else, Cozy made her way up to her room. She tried not to cry, because crying meant you were a weakling, but by the time she closed the door behind her, she was well past that point.

"When's Dad gonna come home?"

The rhetorical question was a whisper.

"...Dad's not coming home."

The answer was just as much.

She remembered the night when she was woken up by her father coming into her room and telling her he was going to run away. He would find a motel somewhere nearby, he had said. He didn't have enough bits to secure a more permanent living area, but perhaps ponies were willing to cut a deal with him. He kissed her on the forehead lovingly, trotted out, and never looked back.

Her throat closed up. She pounded the ground twice, her little body heaving with sobs. All this because she didn't feel like cleaning her room. It was fine, surely? Some stuffed animals on the ground, some books she forgot to put away when she was done reading them, but nothing that would indicate she was some kind of a hoarder.

...Maybe she was a hoarder.

The name, spoken by her mother, bounced around in her brain for the better part of an hour.

"Oh, please, I apologize for my daughter. She has some mental degradation and it can be hard for her to behave in public."

"It's no problem! However, I will have to ask you to pay for that item. We have a 'you break it, you buy it' policy at Maneard's."

"Right, right. Give me one minute."

Cozy looked away. She wanted to apologize to the cashier, but the words wouldn't come out. She saw a few other fillies and colts with their families, laughing and running and asking if they could buy this and that and the other thing. The bile of jealousy began to rise, not just because of the leash that was tied around her, but because those children had families that loved them. And what did she get? The short end of the stick. Why did she have to be cursed like this? With a mother who had an ironic name and a father who left while he still could?

Her father...he had control. He was a full-grown pony. He could leave whenever he wanted, do whatever he wanted to, go wherever he wanted to go.

As much of a filly as she was, Cozy wanted that freedom, too. She wanted to leave. She wanted to go and live in a place where she could support herself.

There was only one pony that stood in her way, a pony that was currently dragging her out of the store and was almost certainly plotting a fitting punishment for her little punching bag. Said punching bag didn't say anything, but did begin walking in order to keep up with the brisk trot of her captor.

The bile of jealousy was gone.

And what festered in its place was pure rage.

Reading the documented cases of abuse by ponies over the years, Cozy only found a select few that dealt with the abused killing their abuser and freeing themselves from their confines. She quickly realized that simply fleeing from them was not an option, because what was stopping them from coming to find you and hurt you again? If she ran away and left her mother behind, she had to wait for nature to take its course.

That would not do. No longer did Cozy want to constantly be putting her hooves up in an effort to stop her mother's hoof from crushing her. She wanted to raise her legs up to their full height, sending her mother toppling onto her back and flailing like a stranded turtle.

She wanted control. And control meant that her mother's life had to be sacrificed.

There were many ways to kill a pony. Poison in food or drink, a knife through the body, or a simple hip-check off of an elevated surface were three of the more torturous ways of doing it, something that would make the victim suffer until the gift of life was taken from them. That was the category Cozy was looking for. The problem, then, was deciding on a course of action.

By that point, news of the Bearers of Harmony and their actions had spread, as did their backstories. Cozy knew them well from when her dad had told the story of a young pegasus named Fluttershy specifically, how she had fallen all the way to the ground but had gotten saved by a horde of animals before she made impact.

Please. Her mother drove away animals more than she brought them in. There would be no pony around who could save her, and Cozy would make sure of it.

The setup was removed from the equation entirely -- Warm Embrace had been sitting on a cloud, watching the sunset, like any ordinary pegasus would of their own volition. She was alone, just as she had driven away friends and family alike who wanted nothing to do with her.

Cozy was no weather pony. Being a pegasus, though, she knew a few things about how weather in Equestria was made.

For example, "may lightning strike you down" could just as easily become literal if given the right circumstances.

Cozy had waited until a day came when thunderstorms ravaged the area, because that meant she could grab a cloud that still had some kick left in it and give it her own brand of kicking. She tried to make her wing flaps quiet as she hovered above her target, glaring at the cloud as though trying to make it cease its thunderous rumbling.

When she was sure she had proper aim, she began flying up into the sky as quietly as she could, then curved downwards and began her quick descent. Her front hooves struck the cloud, which sent down a lightning bolt that landed mere inches from the pony she dared to call her mother all this time.

Warm Embrace stumbled backwards with a gasp, and before she knew it, she was plummeting towards the ground with a screech. Cozy hovered just above the cloud, watching her fall with an innocent expression splayed across her face.

The screech eventually faded away into nothingness, and Cozy began descending once more.

Some pegasi who were skilled enough with their wings could right themselves immediately after falling from the sky or tumbling head over heels. Cozy was not one of them. Her dad could, and he tried to teach her too, but she just couldn't come to her senses in time as she did somersaults and watched the world spin and spin in her vision.

At the very least, though, when Cozy began falling, her dad would always be there to catch her. Her mother, much less so. Her mother would push her off the cloud and watch her fall, letting her laugh ring through the open air. The only thing that stopped her were the legal obligations, of course. Legal obligations stopped Cozy from receiving the worst of the worst. Legal obligations were a barrier.

But they only went one way. And as she kept staring, kept waiting for her mother to shoot up into the sky and come at her with the speed and grace of a Wonderbolt, her heart began to beat faster and faster, until she sighed in relief.

Warm Embrace did not survive the fall. Her body splayed out on the ground, blood forming a pool around her, ponies gathering around her and expressing reactions of shock and grief.

"Golly," Cozy remarked, landing with her hooves touching the blood as tears began to pool in her eyes. "Can somepony pretty please get her medical attention?"

Cozy left the next day.

She didn't stick around for the funeral. She didn't stick around to see what would happen to the house now that the only living adult was now dead. She gathered up her things, got a wagon, and began her journey towards a town she had only been informed of by her dad once before.

Realistically, she could try and find her dad. It was possible that any mare or stallion who asked her about her lineage would hoof her back to him because he was her legal guardian, unless she happened to lie and state that she was an orphan.

But seeing her mother lying on the ground, and bobbing and weaving her way through the emotions ponies should have, awakened something in her. A realization that she was now free of the control of somepony else, and yet had control herself at the same time. A realization that she could share the wealth and control ponies just as her mother did, but better. Like a princess, even. Like Mommy's and Daddy's little princess.

Ordering funeral arrangements, and advocating for the one that hurt her so to the point of screaming and crying in ponies' faces, was only the beginning of a long, long adrenaline high.

And when she arrived in a quaint down-to-earth town and found that it had a school she could attend, she knew exactly what she was going to do.

A friendship school meant lots of ponies. Teachers who would teach, but who also had control over what they taught and to who. A principal who had even more control. And the students, who willingly went and submitted their own autonomy to these supreme authorities for the sake of getting knowledge about a subject that would help them in life.

It was so flawed, when she thought about it.

She could make it better.

She would make it better.