Their Last Day of School
...
“ClockistickingTwilight. Clock is TICK-innnggg!” the crazy mare yammered to herself, her voice ringing with instability. “Keepittogether!”
With hairs in her mane and tail curling out in various directions, her teeth bared in a manic grin, and her pupils constricted to show a disturbing percentage of white in her eyes, she frantically paced the library, straining her disheveled mind to produce a solution to a problem that didn't exist. The only ideas that would be coming out of her today would inevitably be products of insanity. Unfortunately, such a thought occurred to her when she remembered what she kept in a certain trunk against the wall of her room. A squiggly grin crept onto her face.
“If I can't find a friendship problem,” she said, opening the trunk with her magic while rubbing her hooves together gleefully, “I'll make a friendship problem!”
She levitated her Smarty Pants doll into her forelegs and stared at it fondly. She was just about to say something aloud when she froze. A curious sound reached her ears. The sun-warmed day was mostly quiet, almost worryingly quiet, and just above the gentle gusts of wind and the chirping of birds she could hear the carefree sound of children laughing. With speed granted by insanity, she shot over to her second-story window to confirm that, less than a block-length away, three young fillies were smacking a ball around between them.
Children. They had so much trouble making friends. Twilight remembered this very clearly from her childhood. That was why Smarty Pants had been such a comfort to her. They were playing just fine together now, but there would be many times in their young lives when sharing wouldn't be so easy, and they would not have the experience and intelligence necessary to overcome the more complex issues of friendship.
Twilight let her intense gaze lift from the three happy fillies until it rested on the roof of Ponyville's schoolhouse, visible just above the treeline.
“And what better place to find an infestation of friendship problems than a SHCOOL?” she practically shrieked to herself. Then a disconcerting thought occurred to her. “But wait … I don't go to school. And I'm not a teacher. And it's not like I can just waltz up to the children and interrupt their education or playtime in the middle of school hours.” Her ears flopped around as half-backed thought jumped through her head. There was only one solution. She would simply have to find a way to isolate herself with those children, solve whatever friendship problem they were having, and return them to school.
The door downstairs opened.
Twilight say there, motionless but for her ears, as somepony trotted into the library.
“Twilight Sparkle? Are you here?
Twilight's ears shot straight up when she recognized the voice. It was Cheerilee, the schoolteacher at Ponyville Elementary. The summoned mare picked herself up and went downstairs to meet her guest.
“Hello, Miss Cheerilee, what can I do for her?” she asked with deceptive normality.
Cheerilee perked up at seeing the pony she'd come for. She balked at the sight of the librarian's mane and overzealous stare, but quickly composed herself. “Oh, nothing much, I just wanted to confirm that you would be attending next week's town council meeting. Especially for when we discuss the recent decrease in funding for our school system.” A mild frown dampened her usually cheerful demeanor, and Twilight mirrored her with an exaggerated frown while nodding sympathetically. “The schoolhouse has taken a slight blow, so I was hoping you could say something in hopes of balancing out the town's budget. You're an awfully influential pony in this community, so I can over personally to see if you were interested.”
“I will most definitely be in attendance,” Twilight assured her with a toothy grin that made Cheerilee raise an eyebrow. “I don't like to brag, but I do recognize the influence I have, and I consider it a responsibility to use it appropriately.” She turned her snout down and looked at the schoolteacher a little more bashfully. “Even so, I'm still flattered that you came to my door to … tell me … that...”
Her voice tapered off and her intense stare withdrew into itself. An idea had just struck her in the back of the skull. A wonderful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. Slowly, a grin crept up onto her face. The goddesses of good fortune had smiled on her by sending the teacher of Ponyville Elementary right to her door, and she was smiling right back.
“Actually, Miss Cheerilee, now that you're here, there's something more that I just remembered I wanted to discuss with you.”
The pony being addressed backed away a few steps, suddenly put off by the librarian's creepy stare and skin-stretching grin. “O-oh, that's nice, but I'm sure it can wait, Twilight, I have a few more errands to run before I get tomorrow's lesson plans organized.”
“Oh, no, not at all, this will only take a minute! We can have some tea, maybe figure out what I'll need to say at the town council meeting. See, I wanted to speak with you about becoming a member of the school board.”
Cheerilee angled her head away, trying to look at the librarian while not completely facing her. “But you're the personal student of Princess Celestia, surely the responsibilities that come from such a position keep you more than busy at it is.” She voiced it as an inquiry.
“Ohhh, nononono, not at all! Well, sometimes. But that should only make it clear how important education is to me!”
An ear twitched. Her smile was forced and far too broad. The black pinpoints of her pupils seemed to bore into Cheerilee's head. But despite her better judgment, she acquiesced. “Very well, I suppose I could stay for a short while.”
“Great! Juuuust great. I'll put the kettle on and we'll have a niiiice little chat. Make yourself at home!”
As Cheerilee nervously seated herself on a couch and tried to convince herself that Twilight Sparkle was probably just overstressed, Twilight herself proceeded into the kitchen. She stopped in the entryway. She stood there as her narrowed eyes swept the room. A sparkly magic glow encased the knife set and pulled out all six blades, only to return them to their wooden block when none were suitable. Then Twilight got a much more delicious idea. Still completely motionless but for the glow of her horn, the cupboard below the knife set opened up and out floated a small meat cleaver. Spike was a growing dragon and couldn't get the nutrition he needed exclusively from gems anymore.
Levitating the cleaver near her face, Twilight's eyes ran up and down its gleaming blade. Satisfied, she grinned to herself. Then she turned on the spot and walked straight back into the library's sitting room. If anyone had been left standing in the kitchen at that time, they would have heard silence for about three seconds. Then, through the kitchen doorway, they would have heard Cheerilee's voice.
“Twilight? You didn't even go into the kitchen, why were you just standing there? Are you al … Twilight? Ohmygoode-AAAAGGGHHH!”
***
The next morning wasn't so sunny. The sky was gray and thick with rainclouds, lending a depressing quality to every young student's walk to school. Conversation inside between the children consisted of murmurs. Some of those murmurs were about why Cheerilee was so late today. Their parents had dropped them off and left, so the fact that these kids were completely alone without an adult around was troubling. They also complained that their classroom was abnormally chilly. Very few of them heard the creak of rusty hinges as the door to the cellar opened outside.
Finally, students' chattering died down as Twilight Sparkle clopped into the building. She was looking relatively normal, but some of the children in the front row experienced some uneasiness looking at her.
“Hey, children!” Twilight announced brightly, but not warmly. “I'm sure you're all wondering where Miss Cheerilee is today, and the sad news is, she woke up this morning very sick and didn't have time to tell anyone that she would be absent. So I volunteered to be your substitute teacher!”
The children glanced at one another, buying into the excuse for their normal teacher's absence but not exactly content with this substitute.
She placed her bag on the desk and trotted around to the front to get a better look at her precious students. “Since Miss Cheerilee didn't have time to fill me in on her lesson plan, I thought we'd do something different today. As most of you my know, I am a student of the magic of friendship, so today we're going to be learning ALL ABOUT friendship! And we even have a special learning station that I set up last night where we can do this. So, if you will all follow me outside and into the cellar, we can take attendance and get started!” She headed back out side into the gloomy morning. “Come along, class, don't drag those little hooves!”
Her voice was full of chipper energy, but her whole demeanor was very shitfy and twitchy, so it was with great unease that the manipulable colts and fillies got up from their desks and proceeded out into the gloomy morning and around to the back of the schoolhouse where the cellar door was propped open. Beyond the cold, damp cements steps, the room beneath was far, far darker than the cheerfully familiar classroom.
“Miss Twilight, why in the world is it pitch black down here?” Diamond Tiara asked in her typically snooty voice.
“Yeah, could'ja turn the lights on, Miss Twilight?” Apple Bloom asked more respectfully.
Some of the other kids added their mutual agreement.
“I'll wait a little bit before I do that,” their teacher answered. “I need to wait for all of you to get into position before I show you rotten little spoilsports what's down here!”
The children didn't know what else to do but obey the adult, so they stood around in the dark, waiting patiently until all nine foals were gathered together, unable to see anything.
“All here? Good.” There was a silence that made their skin crawl as Twilight trotted over to the light switch located at the foot of the stairs. “Now we can get started!”
A single fluorescent bulb strained pitifully from the ceiling, but lit just enough of the basement to be manageable. Appropriately, the far corners were left in pitch-black shadow.
The young ponies looked around, but couldn't see exactly what they were supposed to be learning from. At the other side of the room, the furnace had been disassembled and its grate had been bolted to the floor for some reason. The glow of heat emanated from it. This explained why it had been so cold upstairs. Most disturbing was a table in the center with four manacles hanging off its sides by chains.
Twist stuttered, “Um, M-M-Mith Twilight, why doeth that table have chainth and handcuffth on it?”
Sweetie Belle was the first to notice something was strange about the floor, so she added, “Yeah, and why are we standing in a circle made from all these weird marks and symbols?” Indeed, Twilight had positioned her class within a wide ring that was composed from arcane symbols.
“Welllll, some of the lessons I have planned might be a little too much for some of you to comprehend right away,” said Twilight, walking up to her students in a strange, wobbly gait. She thrust her face at the kids, grinning freakishly and scanning them with wild eyes, making them shrink back from her. “And we can't just have you leaving class when we're supposed to be learning about friendship! After all, what's more important than friendship?”
Scootaloo, usually the bold and courageous one, was anything but as she stepped forward. “Um, Miss Twilight, could we...maybe...get a different substitute teacher? Somepony who's a little bit more like Miss Cheerilee?”
Twilight's mouth became a squiggly line as her curious eyes settled on the orange filly. Finally she stood up and said, “Young lady, that is a very rude thing to say. I am you substitute teacher today, and whether you're comfortable with me or not, your stuck with me. In fact, how about you be the first student to participate!”
Scootaloo suddenly became panicked as she was levitated up and out of the circle (the purpose of which was still a mystery) and floated over to the grate in the floor.
“Miss Twilight, what are you doin' with her?” Apple Bloom asked, panic-stricken as well.
Without answering, Twilight stopped before the heavy wrought-iron trapdoor with the helpless filly floating next to her, wings flapping as a reflex to her alarm. Twilight turned to the rest of her class.
“Now pay attention, boys and girls. Last night I took the liberty of tweaking the school's heating system a little to suit our lesson plans.”
Double-tasking with her magic, Twilight pried up the massive grate, revealing a square hole cut into the floor from which flames arose, warming the room and washing Scootaloo with slightly more intense heat. She began to kick and squirm in the magic's grasp, now fully consumed with terror and gaping at her friends. “Guys? Guys!?” she cried, desperate for someone to put a stop to whatever was happening. Here eyes were wide with terror and confusion, sweat was beading on her orange coat, and her wings were flapping madly.
“Miss Twilight, stop!!” shrieked Sweetie Belle.
“You stay put, all of you,” the insane mare said sternly. She used her magic to seal all eight sets of hooves to the floor, seeming to forget the purpose of the circle. “Here is the lesson: friendship can be a source of great strength, and it can make ponies push themselves to heights they never thought themselves capable of. What we're going to find out here is whether or not young Scootaloo can use the inspiration her friends give her to overcome her handicap and actually manage to fly. Here we go!”
With that, poor Scootaloo was held over the open flames and released. Her wings were a blur as she moved them harder and faster than she ever had in her life, yet she was still sinking lower and lower into the fire pit.
“NOOO! SCOOTALOO!!”
“MISS TWILIGHT, STOP THIS NOW!”
“You're not supposed to be yelling at me, you're supposed to be giving your friend an emotional boost,” Twilight said to her class. She looked down into the pit at the doomed filly, whose sweat was beginning to evaporate from her coat as flames licked her body. “Come on, Scootaloo, if you don't fly yourself out of there, you'll never see your friends again.” She turned back to the other children and said, “Come on, encourage her!”
While Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Twist, and even Snips continued shouting at their friend and at their horrible teacher, Scootaloo was sinking ever deeper into the scorching heat. If she had had any oxygen to scream, she would have started long ago, as the tips of her feathers were starting to blacked and her coat was becoming crispy. Twilight just sat at the edge of the pit, calmly looking down at the flightless pegasus while she failed her assigned task. Then, exhaustion caught up to her tiny malformed body, and she fell.
The colts and fillies watched as their friend disappeared into the fire pit and her hoarse screams and shrieks of agony reached up from it. Twilight turned and kicked the grate, tilting it on its hinges and slamming it shut on Scootaloo. The filly's cries were muffled, but not gone. As they persisted, the young ponies huddled in the circle were now one hundred percent sure that this was all wrong, and turned to make a break for it.
But as soon as the first ones stepped across the line of the circle, their bodies were suddenly coccooned by a black substance that looked like swarming insects. As the others watched, Silver Spoon, Snails, and Truffle were held in place by the black magic and lifted helplessly in the air so their scrambling hooves could get no traction. The three young ponies screamed at the tops of their lungs. The ponies who had held back covered their ears, not wanting to hear it. Then the screaming stopped and the substance fled the three bodies, letting them drop to the floor with soft thuds. Every inch of their coats was covered in bright red bite marks that penetrated their flesh. They lay just outside of the arcane circle, still miles from the safety they had been trying to achieve.
Twilight turned to what remained of her students. “Well, she failed that assignment, but at least we learned something SPECIAL from it. She's given us a very good friendship problem we can solve later!” She noticed the three students who had tried to get away. “Ah! Now you can see how important it is to stay put! We still have many things to learn about friendship!”
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle clung to each other in terror, Diamond Tiara was staring into space, apparently traumatized, Snips was staring with tear-filled eyes at the lifeless form of Snails, and Twist was barely holding back sobs.
Twilight whirled on the spot and headed away. “Guess what? We're getting a new student today, so howabout we let him introduce himself to the class, hmm?” From one of the invisible corners of the basement a small rodent cage was pulled, rather than levitated, by Twilight's magic. It scraped along the solid floor and came to a stop at Twilight's hooves. Inside, a purple and green baby dragon was scrunched up in the cramped space, but still had plenty of room to shake in terror. His face was covered in red hoof marks from where his caretaker had struck him hours ago.
“Spike!” the two Cutie Mark Crusaders cried.
“Oh, good, you two already know him,” said Twilight. “You can tell the other children all about him later, so we won't have to waste time on introductions.”
“T-Twilight, wh-why are you doing this? I-I-I'm scared! I w-wanna go home!”
“Nonsense, Spike you've been home-schooled looonnng enough. It's time you got some real, hardy experience!”
Using magic again, she levitated him out of the cage despite his desperate clinging to stay in its nonexistent safety, hovered him over the table, and slammed him down flat on his back. Chains snakes up and latched their manacles onto all four of the baby dragon's limbs, holding him in place. Then she bounded up onto the table to stand directly over his terrified form.
“Twilight, let me GO! PLEASE!”
Twilight ignored him, gazing instead upon her terrified students. “Now, kids, this next lesson is a little different. We're going to learn how friendships can be destroyed. And how better to learn than to see one torn apart right before your eyes!?” She shoved her head forward and tilted it crazily, her flat herbivorous teeth looking far scarier than they had any right to.
The kids shrank back. Twilight straightened back up, then positioned herself over Spike. “Twilight...p-please don't do this...”
Ignoring his whimpering pleas, Twilight reached down and began stroking the scales between his stubby legs. Spike's face stretched into an expression of complete and utter confusion, pleading for answers, while a smiling Twilight kept an intense stare focused on his groin. Fresh tears leaked down Spike's scaly cheeks, yet it wasn't long before his whimpering turned inevitably to moans and his body reacted to the gentle, stimulating touch of Twilight's soft hoof. His dragon member soon peeked out from between scales that no one other than him was allowed to touch. He tilted his head back and squeezed his leaking eyes shut, his heavy breathing now caused less by terror and more by what Twilight was doing to him.
The look of madness on the insane unicorn's face slowly changed as she worked away at her dragon. Her pupils constricted to tiny dots, boring down on Spike, and her smile thinned out and stretched to the furthest corners of her cheeks until it resembled a crescent moon. Her face now looked as though it was split in half by a banana.
Once the baby dragon was standing at full mast against his will, Twilight raised her rump from where it was seated on his legs and slid herself onto him with a firm shove, straddling his hips and connecting their bodies.
Spike's breath hitched and he grimaced. Not a single muscle in Twilight's new face so much as budged.
Steadily, she began bouncing in place, sliding his member in and out while fuzzy skin slapped against scales. The muscles in her body stretched and contracted firmly as she moved with calm certainly, maintaining absolute control over her own body and over Spike. Her closest friend was now swearing as more tears leaked out of his eyes. Twilight lowered her upper body until Spike's small form was nearly hidden from view beneath her. Their snouts were close to touching and their heaving breaths made the air warm between them.
“Spike,” she said in a low voice. “Look at me.”
Her disobedient dragon gritted his teeth and turned his head, keeping his eyes squeezed shut.
“Don't make me slap you again,” she calmly persisted.
Spike slowly turned his head up and peeled his eyes open. He cringed at the sight of a madmare just a few inches from his own face, her maniacal grin nothing but white and her eyes drilling through his own. The crazy, terrifyingly blank expression certainly helped him fight the urge to hold back the pressure that was building in his tiny, scaly body as his closest friend mashed herself down on him, but it was building anyway. His body and his emotions were fighting tooth and claw, and he couldn't decide anymore if he was in heaven or hell.
Finally, the pressure broke and he released himself into her. She did the female equivalent with a moan of satisfaction. Twilight leaned in a little closer to her number one assistant and whispered, “Good boy.” Then she kissed him on the lips and arose from the table, leaving Spike gasping and crying at the same time, still chained down.
The children, for their part, didn't even understand what they had just witnessed. All they knew was that it was something wrong. But this was the first time they had gotten a good look at their teacher's catlike grin and her intense, penetrating stare, and they shrank away from it.
Grinning at her traumatized students without even glancing back at Spike, Twilight asked, “So, Spike, do you consider me your best friend in the whole world anymore?” She got no response, and continued, “There, you see, class? After allowing sinful, disgusting flesh-play into our pure and innocent friendship, Spike and I are no longer friends. That's another wonderful friendship problem we have to fix! We're learning SOOO much today. Now...ontothenextlesson!”
The remaining children clung to one another for some hopeless semblance of safety and comfort, but Twilight's magic grabbed hold of two of them and pulled them from the circle, keeping her purple aura around their bodies to keep them safe from the circle's effects.
Apple Bloom screamed at seeing two of her closest friends pulled away from her. “NO! Twilight, please don't hurt them! Take me instead!”
“Silly filly, this next lesson focuses especially on you!” Twilight said as Twist and Sweetie Belle were slammed into wooden chairs and clinking sets of chains snaked up to bind them in place. Both young fillies winced from the pain. The rusty metal links were digging into their flesh.
“Here's the problem,” she continued. “You have to chose with one of your friends dies, and which one is allowed to take her seat again. But the TWIST, no pun intended, is that your moral dilemma isn't as simple as it looks. Sweetie Belle is your last best friends, and you do ALLL sorts of things together. But this little nerd Twist USED to be your very best friend because the only thing that ever held you together was being outsiders, and she probably hates you for not spending time with her anymore. If you choose Sweetie Belle, then you'll never get to reconcile with poor Twist, and that guilt will eat away at you for the rest of you happy little life. But if you choose Twist, then you'll lose the only friend whom you enjoy spending time with. Oooo, this is a tricky one!”
Apple Bloom glanced helplessly between her panicked friends. She was petrified, sick, and very confused, and had no idea what to do.
“Chop, chop, Apple Bloom. If you can't pick one, they both die.”
“Ah...Ah can't! I don't know why this is happening! Why can'cha let them both go?!”
“Because, young lady, your education should be taken seriously. What would you sister think?”
At the mention of family, Apple Bloom realized that she would probably never see her strong, dependable, warmhearted sibling ever again. She and the rest of her friends would be tortured to death in a cold basement where Cheerilee used to spend six smile-filled hours every morning filling their heads with knowledge. She there were already tears leaking out of her eyes, but now she was genuinely crying.
“Ah j-j-just w-wanna go h-home...” she sobbed with a shuddering breath.
“Sorry, skipping class is against the rules,” Twilight admonished. Her beaming eyes and sliver-like smile stayed in place.
“Wh-wh-why can't you just l-let us g-go?” the young filly pleaded.
For the first time, Twilight Sparkle frowned. “Are you saying you refuse to complete your assignment?” she asked blankly.
“Yes! Ah just want you t'let us go home! Please!”
Twilight turned her nose up authoritatively. “I'm sorry, but that's not possible. School hours are not over yet, and if you refuse to cooperate, then there has to be consequences.” Her horn lit up suddenly the chains wrapped around her friends began to tighten.
“NO!” Apple Bloom screamed.
Twilight glanced back and forth between the two restrained children as the chains constricted around their bodies. They were wheezing and making choking sounds, and the chain links themselves were now cutting into their flesh.
“Miss Twilight, PLEASE! Let'em go! Ah'll complete the assignment!”
“You should have completed it ten seconds ago,” Twilight admonished.
The chains continued shrinking, relentlessly compacting the flesh within them. By this point, sickening snaps could be heard from both fillies as ribs and other bones gave way. They couldn't even inhale to cry out in pain because all the air had been squeezed out of them. It all ended with a morbid series of crunches and two watery gasps escaping from them. Then they were just limp dolls, their lifeless eyes and mouths agape.
Apple Bloom clenched her eyes shut and lowered her muzzle to the cold floor, fighting to hold down the nausea that threatened to consume her. Diamond Tiara wasn't so strong. She was near the edge of the circle, getting rid of the fancy breakfast her parents had made for her that morning.
Finished with the children, Twilight glanced over her shoulder at Spike, who had his head turned away and was also retching over the edge of the table. He had tried not to watch, but he had heard it all. Twilight faced her class again.
“It looks like my number one assistant has been busy emptying his stomach. That's good news, because it mean he has plenty of room in it for our next lesson!”
Apple Bloom was keeping her eyes shut and slowly shaking her head, trying to deny that any of this was happening.
Come on, Number One Assistant, up and at'em!” A magical glow encased Spike's body as the manacles unlatched themselves and fell away. Against his will yet again, Spike's body forced itself up, slid from the table, and marched over to stand close to Twilight, but nearer to the children. His body was moving like a toy soldier, but his eyes, free from Twilight's control, were filled to their brims with dread. Twilight spike to her class for the final time.
“I'm certain you all have noticed that Spike is not like the rest of us. He is a dragon, and being a dragon, he has a sliiightly different diet than us ponies. He's a predator, which means he needs to start eating meat! Show'em your teeth, Spike.” She used her magic to stretch the corners of his mouth painfully out to both sides, forcing Spike's face into a bizarre grimace that did its job: exposing his sharp teeth.
Snips, being very aware of his round shape, saw what was coming and was now sweating and hyperventilating like mad. Fear had never had a tighter grip on him. He'd experienced nightmares about this sort of thing.
“Here is the nature of our next lesson: most of you are friends with Spike, correct? We are now going to see if your friendship with him can stay intact after you witness him doing something primal, disgusting, and unforgivable.” Her still-smiling lips pursed as her narrowed eyes scanned her three remaining students. They settled on Diamond Tiara. “I think we'll start with you, young lady. If there's still room, then we'll move on to the chubby one.”
Diamond Tiara uttered a squeak of terror as her eyes now fixed on Spike. More significantly, on his teeth.
“Since Spike typically incorporates gemstones into his diet, and has to chew them with those teeth to ingest them, even diamonds, which have a higher tensile strength than any other mineral! So you can only imagine how easy it will be for him to chomp down on pony flesh! Or eat a cracker.”
Under Twilight's control, the baby dragon lurched unwillingly toward the aptly-named filly like a reanimated monster. Tiny, previously harmless claws reached out for her as he stepped over the arcane barrier that prevented them from getting out. And just like that the predator was inside with the children.
Diamond Tiara, her mind cleansed by pure terror, didn't even realize that she could have crossed the barrier and used Twilight's own curse to end it before Spike's teeth sank into her. All she could do for the final thirty seconds of her life was scream. The other kids did the same. As crunching, ripping noises filled the basement of the brightly-colored schoolhouse, red fluid poured across the arcane markings, and the shrieks of three children blended together in a mixture of agony, horror, and sobbing, respectively. Twilight sat and watched. She observed with a blank stare and a broad white grin, thinking about friendship.
***
That day, many parents noticed that their children were not coming home from school. It was a chilly and depressing day, so the first theory of those who were concerned was that their kids were walking slowly along their memorized routes. The hands on hundreds of clocks all across town scraped the hours away until they were bordering on evening. The clouds were thick and the wind was picking up, so most of these parents decided to take matters into their own hooves and see what was taking so long for their youngsters to get home.
The adults approached the building from various directions at relatively the same time. Some were chatting idly about the issue at hoof, and how it would need to be brought up at the next town council meeting.
One at a time, each set of hooves froze to the ground and emotions froze along with them. They stood outside in the cool weather, staring uncomprehendingly at what Ponyville's house of learning had become.
Red and orange leaves had departed their branches in the autumn season, leaving the charcoal-colored trees looking like wicked claws reaching around the sides of the building to pull it into the earth. The schoolhouse's iron weathervane stabbed into the sky like a knife, and high up against the gray, overcast sky, the corpses of three young ponies had been impaled on its various points. The wind turned them gently, making their lifeless legs dangle with the soft creaking of the weather instrument. At the opposite end of the roof, the bell tower had been relieved of its bell, and in its place were tied three nooses from which another trio of foals hung in a swaying cluster. The others had been staked to the roof by large spikes driven through different parts of their cold bodies.
The blood from these corpses had long since drained from them and dried upon the slate-gray singles, creating dark crimson streaks.
In a municipality where laughing, singing, and friendly words were the norm, cries of emotional agony rose up and characterized the most unbearable moment in Ponyville's history of grim events. While hearts were being torn apart outside, at least one of those parents broke away from the throng of suffering and ran inside the building, possibly desperate for a reason behind the nightmarish images draped over it.
Within the front doors, beyond rows of empty desks that would never again be occupied by innocent young ponies who strained their undeveloped brains to conquer the earliest problems of their lives, Twilight Sparkle sat at the teacher's desk. Bizarre images were drawn on the blackboard behind her, diagrams that balanced somewhere between a spectrum of emotions and suggestions of morbid ways pony anatomy could be manipulated. A quiet sobbing could be heard coming from under her desk.
As soon as the pony had entered with a cold gust of wind, Twilight had looked up from the parchment she was magically scrawling on. She set down her quill. “Ah, you're here to pick up your kids? Grrr-eat! They all behaved very badly today, so they got detention. These students of mine don't seem to know the first THING about friendship.” Her crescent-moon smile cut her face even further in half and her ears twitched. “But there is good news to report: I have all KINDS of problems now!”
***
Whether Twilight Sparkle was punished for her crimes, healed of her psychological affliction, or went on to commit further atrocities is not a widely discussed fact among the stricken population of Ponyville. Most don't even care if she was captured and imprisoned or if she escaped. They were traumatized to the point that they would rather forget everything about their childrens' last day of school. But what they will never forget is that the schoolhouse, still standing and visible to all, was shut down, boarded up, and condemned. It became a cold and sinister place that made ponies shudder just to be near it. And for as long as that building stood, the demonic visage of Twilight Sparkle would forevermore hang over the schoolhouse, peering down from the gray sky upon the shrine in which her horrific deeds took place, and she would always be grinning.
