//------------------------------//
// A Rocky Start 
// Story: The Celebration 
// by SpellBinder 
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Starlight had Barricaded herself in her bedroom back at the Friendship castle when she found out. Twilight and Celestia had just been down the hall on their way back to Starlight’s room in the medical wing when they heard her scream. They rushed down the hall to find Starlight had disappeared. They had no idea where she went until they heard loud rumbling come from the direction of Ponyville, almost as if something had exploded. Twilight hurriedly ran outside to see that everything was ok but knew that something was wrong. Starlight couldn’t have gotten far, not with her inexperience with Alicorn magic. Then she heard another loud boom and figured out what may have happened. With Starlight finding out she was an Alicorn, her emotions jumbled and caused the innate power to bubble to the surface, which meant Starlight was unintentionally breaking stuff in ways that were not normally possible.

“Princess, Starlight’s upset. We should have told her! Why did you make me dance around it! Now if she’s not careful, her emotions might unintentionally cause the destruction of Ponyville!” Twilight was outraged. Normally she trusted the princesses, but this felt like she was being betrayed. All Twilight wanted to do was help, but now it was next to impossible to get Starlight to listen to her.

“Twilight, you know why we had to do it this way. Her initial pool of magic was so large that if we had told her, it could have-”

“NO! WE DID NOT HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY! NORMALLY I TRUST YOUR JUDGEMENT, BUT IT FEELS LIKE I’M HELPLESS NOW! I JUST WANTED TO HELP STARLIGHT BUT NOW I’M LUCKY IF SHE’LL EVER TRUST ME AGAIN!” Twilight was in tears at this point. She hated seeing her friends upset, but usually she could deal with it if it wasn’t something she could handle. In this instance though, Twilight knew she could have helped, but was forced to sit on the sidelines and watch her friend get destroyed by her emotions. “I just wanted to help her... why won’t you let me… please…”

Celestia sighed. She shook her head. Today was going to be a long day. “Twilight, we told you why. This is what was best for her.” Celestia knew that at this point the only thing she could do was try and calm down Twilight.

“Best for her? Since when do you know what’s best for somepony when they nearly had their lives destroyed by a similar situation? I could have helped her this time...” They only had another 8 hours before the celebration began at this point. If they couldn’t get things under control by then, then this celebration would be remembered for all the wrong reasons.




Back at the Friendship castle, Starlight was irate. After 10 minutes of failed teleportation attempts, she had finally made it back to her room. She couldn’t believe it. The princesses had lied to her! And now she was one of them! They had the audacity to do this to her without even an explanation afterwards?

Starlight screamed at the top of her lungs. “AAAGGHHHH! HOW DARE THEY! I TRUSTED THEM, AND THEY USE THAT TRUST TO MANIPULATE ME!” She stomped her hooves in frustration; only to have the castle shake. “What?!? Since when could I do that!?!” She was so mad that it would be impossible to explain to anypony. “First my magic is on the fritz, and now I can create small earthquakes? What the heck? What is happening to me!?!?”

Starlight just flopped on her bed and, once again, she felt the castle shake. She sighed in anger and frustration. She decided to just sleep it off in hopes that it was all a dream, and that everything would go back to normal when she woke up. Unfortunately, she received a rather rude pull back to reality when she heard somepony knock on her bedroom door. “Ugh who is it?” Starlight asked in a rather irritated tone.

“Its Twilight…” She spoke in a small whisper, hoping to not anger Starlight more than she undoubtedly already was.

“What do you want?” She spat with venom in every word. “I can only imagine you’re here to lecture me or to try and regain the trust you lost an hour ago. But, I mean, who would be stupid enough to do that?”

Twilight just whimpered on the other side of the door, tears already falling, knowing that she had likely lost a friend. “I’m sorry… I wanted to tell you... I rea-”

“THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU!?! I’VE SPENT THE LAST HOUR IN MISERY BECAUSE EVERYTHING KEEPS GOING WRONG! I CAN HARDLY TAKE A STEP WITHOUT THE CASTLE SHAKING! I CAN’T EVEN LEVITATE ANYTHING WITHOUT IT BEING THROWN ACROSS MY ROOM! I trusted you above everyone else Twilight, and then you just straight up lie to me? Multiple times no less! You could have told me, but noooo, lied to me and danced around me like I was broken glass.Can I even call you a friend anymore? Should I?” Starlight, without thinking, had said something that would hurt Twilight for longer than she could imagine. And Twilight, because she blindly trusted another, had likely just lost a friend.

“I-I…” Before Twilight could say anything else, Starlight said three words that finally hurt twilight more than anything else ever had.

“Just go away.” That did it. Twilight was already having a tough time but hearing that caused her to have a total breakdown. The river of tears started flowing, and all Twilight could do was stare at Starlight’s door. Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, had just lost a friend. She couldn’t believe it at first, but then it hit her. She felt weak. As Twilight started getting up, she just collapsed. The two things the she feared above all, was losing friends, and above that, losing Starlight, her pupil. Her worst fear had just come true.

Starlight was lying in bed and heard it. She heard Twilight try to get back up, then collapse. ‘Good.’ she thought, ‘maybe now she’ll learn her lesson.’ The problem with that thinking however, was that 30 minutes later, she could still hear Twilight outside of her door. She thought about getting up to tell Twilight to mope somewhere else, but then she heard little feet outside her door, followed by a rather young voice.

“Twilight! Are you ok! I’ve been looking all over for you! I got a letter from Celestia telling me that you got back, I couldn’t find you at first, but when I do, you’re like this! What happened?” It was Spike. Starlight figured he could get her out of there.

Twilight just looked up at Spike, and he gasped in horror. Never, in all the years he had lived with Twilight, had he ever seen her in such a state. He could hardly believe it, there wasn’t much that could actually phase Twilight in such a manner, so to see her in the state she was, was a surprise to say the least. She finally spoke after what seemed like an eternity.

“*sniff* Spi-ke. *sniff*” she choked out. It was barely more than a whisper. It was almost as if she had no energy, but Spike knew she hadn’t done too much that day. What exactly had happened that caused her to be in such a state? Spike wouldn’t find out though, as Starlight walked out of her bedroom, hoping to tell spike to hurry up, but when she actually saw Twilight, she choked up, with the only thing going through her mind being. ‘I caused this?’ Twilight was never one to lose her cool like that and seeing Twilight in such a disheveled state made Starlight tear up and start crying herself. Spike was about to question Starlight when she simply picked up Twilight on her back, not wanting to risk Twilight going through a wall, and brought her back into her bedroom.

Spike just stood there dumbfounded. “What just happened?” He had seen crazier things, but seeing Starlight not use magic to pick up Twilight told Spike that something really big had happened. He didn’t want to get caught up in anything, so he went back to doing his daily castle chores.

Starlight laid Twilight down on her bed and just looked at her. She laid there, tail in her hooves, eyes closed, and mane disheveled. Tears never stopped streaming down her face. Twilight looked up, and the only thing that she could say was “I’m so sorry.” every other second. Starlight almost felt bad. Almost. If she was even going to begin feeling sympathy, she would need to hear absolutely everything from Twilight.

“Twilight.” Twilight looked to where Starlight was sitting. “At this moment you have one chance to explain exactly what happened to me and why. If I think you’re lying in any way, the explanation will stop, and you will be required to leave my room until you feel like telling the truth. Is that understood?” Twilight could hardly believe it, Starlight was actually giving her a chance? She simply nodded, tears still filling her eyes. “Good. Start whenever you want.”





After an hour-long explanation, Starlight finally understood what had happened. “So, let me get this straight, it had been your idea to have me ascend, but you had no idea where to start. Is that correct?” Twilight nodded. “Then, after you talked to the princesses, they agreed to help, and set up a spell to cause my ascension?” Again, Twilight nodded. “Then after everything was finalized, you set up everything, not realizing what would happen to me?” Another nod. “You wanted to help but couldn’t bring yourself to distrust Celestia’s judgement on having me figure it out on my, so instead you tried to allude to it when we first talked after I woke up?” Twilight gave a final nod. “Ok, I have two more questions for you then. Number one, why did you keep trusting Celestia’s judgement? Why didn’t you trust yourself? And number two, what role am I exactly supposed to fill as a princess?” Starlight had been wondering that since she figured out she had wings.

Twilight had finally stopped crying after she realized Starlight still trusted her enough to explain everything. “To answer your first question, I trusted her over myself because she had gone through this situation before with me and Cadence. I figured she knew best, but when she just kept telling me to ignore everything, I started questioning her. And to be completely honest, I’m not even supposed to be here talking to you right now. I didn’t exactly leave on the best note with the princess… *ahem* Anyway, to answer your second question…” Twilight paused briefly.

“You are now the Princess of Magic.”