Sweetie Belle laid awake on her bed, thinking about the events that had occurred that day. She had felt compelled to ask Scootaloo to live with her but decided against it, after all Rarity would never agree to let a vampony live in the same household.
As she remembered the condition the house was in when they arrived, Battered and rotting in the Everfree forest, she partially regretted not asking Scootaloo and telling Rarity to go buck it if she was opposed to the idea.
Thinking back to her actions over the past week, she began to feel worse. Putting poison joke in the dye seemed like a brilliant solution at first, although Sweetie failed to take into account the randomness of the magical plant's effects. Instead of a harming effect as intended it merely made Scootaloo change colors all the time. Fortunately for Sweetie Scootaloo wasn't reading the book so she could pretend it was an accident that occurred while picking out ingredients.
She cried when she remembered the multiple poisons she gave her oldest friend. She knew she would certainly have lost both of her friends if Scootaloo noticed. Fortunately she didn't notice, although she did specify to use less spicy ingredients next time.
Tears flowed freely as the young unicorn realized the monster she had become. She would kill her closest friend without even giver her a chance to prove she wasn't evil. She started to consider herself a demon not worthy of living with ponies anymore. A voice in the back of her head told her she was wrong and that she was still a pony, that she could still redeem herself, but she ignored that.
Sweetie Belle got out of bed after nearly an hour of arguing with herself. She had finally silenced the part of her mind that told her she was still a pony and could still redeem herself for her actions.
She walked over to the mirror and looked her reflection in the eyes. Then for the first time in what felt like ages she smiled. She smiled despite the fact that she was slowly losing any sense of the things that made her a pony.
=
During class the next morning Applebloom was the only one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders that was capable of paying attention to the lesson about plants of the Everfree forest. Sweetie's conscience returned during breakfast and she couldn't think with her actions weighing on her.
Meanwhile Scootaloo was starving. She hadn't fed since the sleepover, and even then she only took what she needed. That amount would only last a few days at most if she avoided physical labor.
“What's up with you?” Applebloom asked her friends at Recess.
Before Sweetie could speak up Scootaloo answered, “I haven't fed since the sleepover and its starting to get to me. What about you Sweetie?”
Sweetie sighed, “Do you think I'm a monster?”
Applebloom was about to speak but once again Scootaloo answered first, “Sweets, if you were a monster you wouldn't be my best friend. Trust me when I say I've thought similar things about myself for obvious reasons.” The bell rang signaling the end of recess, “Tell you what, how about you stop by my place later and we can talk about this, okay.” Sweetie nodded as they reentered the school building.
The rest of school passed with very little incident apart from Sweetie Belle's guilty feeling at the mention of poison joke.
She arrived at Scootaloo's house later after changing her mind several times about whether she would actually even go. She walked in without knocking first assuming nopony would mind. After all Scootaloo did live alone.
She found Scootaloo sitting on the couch using magic to hold up the book she was reading titled 'A Basic Guide to Dark Magic'. She was so focused on the book that she didn't even notice Sweetie standing in front of her until she cleared her voice causing Scootaloo to drop the book and fall off the couch she was sitting on.
“Sweetie... how long have you been standing there?” Scootaloo asked with hints of surprise and a bit of anger in her voice.
“Sorry, I probably should have knocked first.” Sweetie said in response, blushing a little bit.
“It’s cool, the door probably would have broken off anyway.”
“So… um…” Sweetie said gesturing towards the book lying on the ground after Scootaloo dropped it, silently asking about it.
Scootaloo picked up the book and began looking for her place, “It’s actually pretty interesting. There’s lots of stuff in here I bet even Twilight doesn’t know, but enough about that, I wanted to talk to you. Sweetie Belle, you’re not a monster. A lot of ponies would consider me a monster if they knew what I was, so why would you think something like that?”
Sweetie sighed, “That poison joke in the dye wasn’t an accident when we were collecting ingredients, I put it in there on purpose.”
“Why would you do that?”
Sweetie looked up at her best friend, “The same reason I tried to poison you.”
The only thing Sweetie felt as she passed out was a pair of sharp objects piercing the skin on her neck.