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Twilight’s head rang like a struck gong as she staggered unsteadily to her hooves. “What in the name of ponykind just happened?”
Then she got a proper look at her surroundings, and her giddiness vanished. She was in what appeared to be some sort of cosmic plane. She gasped. Was she dead? Had solving Starswirl’s spell killed her? But that couldn’t be! She felt alive, at least so far as she could tell. Her heart was still beating, and she was breathing. This then had to be some other dimension. That was the only rational explanation.
As she turned this way and that, trying to get her bearings, she noticed screens appearing all around her, and she blinked. Those screens – or panels – were displaying almost every aspect of her life ever since she’d arrived in Ponyville; Nightmare Moon’s defeat, Discord’s defeat, the Grand Galloping Gala, her successful vanquishing of the Ursa Minor, and so on. The screens surrounded her in an ever increasing wall, and she studied them in fascination, amazed at how calm she looked, when in reality, she'd been half scared out of her fur at times.
“But why am I seeing this?” the purple unicorn finally wondered aloud.
At that, the screens vanished, and Twilight jumped. Her ears twitched, alerting her to the presence of another pony. She turned; Princess Celestia stood no more than a few paces behind her. “Princess!” Relieved, Twilight galloped to her, taking comfort in her mentor’s presence. “What’s going on? What in the name of ponykind was that spell? Are my friends okay?"
Celestia calmly corked her student’s babbling with a white hoof, her eyes twinkling with amusement. Twilight noticed there was actually more than a twinkle; there was a suspicious brightness very reminiscent of tears. “You’re here because you’ve done something today that not even an accomplished mage like Starswirl the Bearded could do. Starswirl was a solitary pony, much like yourself, and he did not desire any friends, just as you did. But unlike him, you went out and made friends, reluctantly at first, but over time, you took them to your heart, so much so that they became a part of you, and you, a part of them.” She smiled and took her hoof away, gesturing at the place where the screens had appeared. “What you saw was everything you did ever since coming to Ponyville, but more importantly, the lessons you learned. There was a very good reason why I sent you there, not just so you could be in the right place to redeem Luna, but also so you could make friends.”
“Well, that was plain from your letter,” Twilight retorted, now more relaxed. She even managed a grin. But there was a niggling suspicion dogging her tail. The Princess never did anything without a motive.
And her guess was borne out when Celestia spoke again. “I could not give you that book until you were ready,” she said. “So I watched and waited. And I saw you grow, and learn, and become the brilliant, accomplished mare you are today. Right from when you were a filly, I knew you had untapped potential. But I also knew that you could not do what you needed to do on your own.” She shrugged. “Of course, I didn’t know that a Sonic Rainboom would be happening on the day of your final test back in Canterlot, but ever since I heard the story, I understood that you had already formed a connection with your friends, even though it would be years before you met them.”
“And that connection, formed when I was a filly, helped me hatch the egg,” Twilight recalled, smiling fondly. But her smile soon died. “Princess, just what are you saying?”
Celestia nodded, as if reaching an important decision. “Your friends have helped you tremendously,” she said. “And it is because of them you learned the lessons needed to complete Starswirl’s spell.”
“Well, yes, but it was a group effort,” Twilight pointed out, now feeling more uneasy. “I just came up with the idea of getting the girls to remind themselves and each other just what their real talents were, and how much they all meant to each other. Once they understood, they did it all on their own. I was just there to make sure they got their Elements back to normal.”
“But it was you who came up with the idea,” Celestia reminded her. “That takes initiative, and a certain amount of guts. Even I couldn’t have dreamed up such a solution, let alone carry it out.”
Twilight sighed. No, because you’re scheming in the background, she thought bitterly, always planning the move of your pawns, making sure they’re just where you want them. “I’m flattered that you think so,” she said aloud, “but truth be known, it was just a wild guess. I had no idea if it was even going to work.”
Celestia put a hoof on her student’s shoulder. “What matters is that it did work,” she said gently. “And now you’re ready to take the next step in your journey. You’ve grown up now, and you’re ready for a new life.” She spread her wings briefly, but it was enough to set the alarm bells ringing in Twilight’s head. The purple unicorn immediately backed away.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Are you saying I’m going to … ascend?”
“You’ve earned it,” Celestia told her, her eyes brimming with pride, but there was a hint of puzzlement in her voice now. “You cannot think yourself unworthy of such a gift, can you?”
“This was your plan all along!” Twilight shot back, her shock giving way to anger. “You planned and schemed and set things up so I could reach this … pinnacle. Why?”
Now it was Celestia’s turn to back up, her eyes wide at the heat in Twilight’s voice. “Because I knew you had promise,” she said, her voice a little sharp with surprise. “Surely you knew, when I took you under my wing as my own personal student, that I had grand plans in store for you?”
“You never told me!” Twilight snapped, ears pinned against her skull. “You just said that I was a unicorn of exceptional skills, and that you would be pleased to make me your personal protégé. Even when you sent me to Ponyville, you never told me. You just said I had to make friends, and that I had to stop reading dusty old books!”
Celestia opened her mouth, but Twilight rode right over her, now in the throes of an anger that had been building up for quite some time. “You never even prepared me for the Everfree! Or for the Castle of the Two Sisters! And you sure as hay didn’t warn me that Nightmare Moon was going to try and stall us at every turn she could! And you conveniently forgot to mention that the Element of Magic would only appear when the other five were gathered! Good thing I had my friends with me, or we’d have been well and truly bucked!” Harsh language was not normally Twilight’s forte, but she was too mad to care. “And then let’s go on to Discord! What about him? You send us off with nothing more than a command to take him out. Fine! But you didn’t tell us that he hid the Elements in my own library!”
“That’s because I had no idea he would be so tricky!” Celestia snapped, now angry in her own turn. “How could you expect me to plan for something like that?”
“You faced him the first time around,” Twilight said, her voice frosty. “You knew him well enough to know that he’d pull a sneaky stunt like that. And you knew that he’d hide the Elements in the one place we’d have never thought to look, even though you knew that it was the most likely place in all of bucking Equestria! Even a hint as to where they were would’ve saved us!”
Twilight paused and took a deep breath. “And when I finally worked it out, all my friends were corrupted. So much so that I gave up. So what did you do? You sent all my friendship reports back to me, hoping that they would pick me up. Well congratulations. They did! But you didn’t even think what it would do to Spike to have all my correspondence sent back en masse, did you? Nope. You just piled it all on and made him suffer! He was sick for days afterward. At one point, I thought he was going to die!” Here she had to stop again. Watching the dragon she loved like a son go through the agony of all those regurgitated letters; seeing him curled up and pale in his basket, running a dangerously high fever, sweating as though he were in a volcano turned up to ten times its normal intensity… Hearing him crying out in the night, begging the letters to stop coming, even though the onslaught had stopped the day of Discord’s defeat … Twilight shoved the memory down.
“I’ll gloss over the minor incidents,” she resumed, her voice now ever icier. But there was nothing cold about the look she gave Celestia “But since we’re on the subject, how does today’s debacle tickle you? You send me a spell. You tell me it was an unfinished work by Starswirl the Bearded. You tell me nopony has ever been able to complete it, but you believe I might be able to solve it.”
Here she had to almost laugh. But she stamped the urge down, knowing how close to hysteria she was getting. Small wonder, after letting all her anger out like this. She was going to need a strong sleeping draught when she was done. “But then you forget that I’m inquisitive by nature. You didn’t warn me not to read the spell. You just assumed that I would have a look at it and then go away and work on it. But there is where you are oh-so-wrong. You know better than to send me something with so little information. And what did I do? I read it aloud, to test it and try to get a hint of what it might be about.”
And the Elements had consequently been mixed about, switching the destinies of her five best friends, causing them to take on tasks horrifically unsuited to them. And it had been Twilight who had come up with the solution, all because she remembered what her friends meant to her, and to each other. Getting Fluttershy to help Rainbow Dash had been the first step. After that, it had been a simple chain reaction, and one by one, her friends had regained their proper talents, and their proper cutie marks, and all had ended well.
And Twilight had gone home with her friends to finish the spell, now confident she understood its secrets. And here she was now. And she was furious.
“And now you tell me, years after the fact, that you had this planned for me, right from the moment I blew the roof off your school.” Twilight shook her head. “But did you prepare me? No. You dumped me in the deep end and hoped that I’d be able to keep my head above water. Lucky for you, I did. Else things would’ve ended up very differently, I’ll wager.”
“I certainly couldn’t step in every time there was a crisis,” Celestia protested, trying to recover some of her poise. “You would never have learned anything otherwise.”
“Warnings would have helped!” Twilight snapped. Then she sighed and shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going along with your plan. For far too long you’ve schemed behind my back, with little to no preparation for today.” She flung her head up, snorting. “And I wouldn’t have taken it anyway.”
Celestia looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “Twilight …”
“I said no!” Twilight stamped a hoof on the ground, tail swishing angrily back and forth. “Not without my friends. It’s them who’ve brought me this far, and it’s our friendship that’s taught me everything I need to know. And I will continue to learn from them. I don’t need a crown, or wings, to be the mare you want me to be. I can do it as a regular old unicorn. So you can forget ascending me.” She looked her now-former mentor in the eye. “I’m going my own way, and you can forget your Grand Plan. I’ll continue learning and growing, but I’m not coming to you for help anymore. I can figure it out on my own.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “I’ve been doing that practically ever since I moved to Ponyville. No sense in stopping a good thing, right?”
Celestia was silent for a very long time. Then she spoke, and her voice was subdued, almost as if she was just now figuring out how wrong she’d been. “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes now dimming with tears of pure sorrow. “You’re right.” She bowed her head. “I’ll send you back.”
The world disappeared in a blinding flash of light.219Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi2Lwq6ZlWp
219Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEchvlgL5SR
