//------------------------------//
// (Present Chapter 5): Time-Release Formula 
// Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic 
// by Shadestyle 
//------------------------------//

Deep within the Everfree Forest, a cauldron bubbles within a hollowed out tree.  Surrounding the cauldron are all manner of masks, ritual items, and most abundantly, bottles and bottles of potions and large urns of herbs.  But the most curious feature of this strange abode is its sole resident, a Zebra, wearing golden rings around her neck and hoof, and with an expression of contentment that few individuals would hold naturally within the Everfree.

Her quiet singing is accompanied by the symphony of rustling brush and the chirping of insects as she slowly meanders around her home with ease and comfort borne of one living there a long time, easily maneuvering around the various floorbound pots to retrieve incomplete unguents and apothecarial goods to place in the cauldron, to create a mixture whose purpose is unknown, but presumably one that the zebra has in mind, making it.

Her careful brewing is interrupted briefly by a knocking at her door.  A forceful, but not altogether impatient knock.

"Who is knocking at my door? ~ State your business, I implore," She asks, walking over to her home's entrance and preparing to open it for the visitor.

Said visitor pauses for an oddly long moment, mumbling to themselves, before speaking up.  "I seek Zecora. ~ The master of alchemy. ~ I mean you no harm."

Is that Hayku?  Zecora opens the door, unsure what to expect.  What few expectations she musters up are dashed when she sees a figure that until today, had only been described to her in old, old stories.

The ominous presence is somewhat broken up by the sight of the pony visibly counting out syllables to themselves before speaking.

"Just the mare I seek. ~ Did I interrupt something? ~ Sorry if I did,"  Weiss says.

Zecora stares for a moment, before waving them in cautiously, choosing her words carefully to not disrespect the powerful unicorn.

"What I brew is fine so far. ~  It can wait for Weiss Noir," She claims, walking inside and closing the door firmly when he enters her home.

Zecora drags out a straw mat for herself and the guest, nervously eyeing them constantly as they wait with an amiable expression.  "I beg you, pardon the mess. ~ I haven't cleaned yet, I confess."

As she sits down, and, thankfully, he does too, he starts to state his business. "You can't help but think; ~ What reason I would come here ~ ...But you've heard of me."

"Your homeland has none. ~ No tales about Weiss Noir. ~ We must share a friend?"  Weiss probes conversationally.

Zecora shakes her head.  "I know the one called Malusi. ~ My mother spoke of you, you see."

"Exiled for theft and treachery, ~ you trusted her, and set her free."

"Though she fought and robbed and bit, ~ you laughed and made a game of it."

Weiss's eyes widen at this, and he quickly musters his words.  "She still walks the earth? ~ She made her fountain of youth? ~ Where does she live now?"

Zecora shakes her head sadly.  "She spoke of her dearest friend. ~ Fondness held until the end."

"Of vital youth, she was not bereft..."

Zecora remembers the moment sadly.  "A potion blew up, no trace was left."

Weiss's formerly hopeful face is forced back into neutrality.

"So she's dead, then,"  He states the most obvious interpretation of Zecora's words, dropping the act.  "A shame."

He shakes his head.  "No matter.  I have need of a master alchemist.  I trust your mother taught you what she knew?"

The zebra nods.  "Potions, brews, and alchemy. ~ She left her every skill with me."

"Good," He nods, before his expression becomes unhappy.

"But first, I need to know what day you planned on going to Ponyville this week.  There are fates I won't allow the offspring of Malusi to suffer."

Zecora looks confused at this, before looking to her urn of hay.  It has been getting fairly low.





Celestia sits on her throne, bored out her mind, and anxious as to the events of the past few weeks.

"-Therefore, I believe the tariffs on gelatin imported from Hissrael shouldn't be decreased, but instead, increased further, we have no need for their goods when-"

It's enough to make her thankful for her mastery of Viceroy Visor's Viewtiful Visage spell, without which it would be much more obvious that she isn't actually paying attention to the latest scheme from her little nobles.

After she had accidentally rolled her eyes at Ambassador Fern two-hundred years ago, she had decided it wasn't feasible to keep a serene expression for all eternity without a touch of magical assistance, thousands of years of practice on poker nights or not.

'Ugh.  I liked it better when it was called As-Nags.  Saddle Arabians really knew how to hold-em.'  Celestia thinks to herself as the pony in front of her rabbles on.

"-after all, even measly farmers can manage something as simple as increasing production of plants that are suitable substitutes for their highly unethical-"

Oh dear.  She better take care of this before continuing the rest of her internal monologue.

"Chancellor Bitter Pill, I do hope you are not disparaging the practices of our dear friends, the Great Snakes of Hissrael," Celestia chides lightly.

"It would be unfair to call their methods unethical, when they are the foremost experts in medicine and lacusurgy in the world.  Even a princess needs a touch-up now and again, as my visit to their facilities last year can attest to."

"Their work in the, and I use this word with the greatest of confidence, ethical  treatment of their donors and patients has revolutionized the field of carnivorous products and thaumaturgically aided catch-and-release hunting across the globe."

"That is to imply, Chancellor, that I am afraid I will have to reject your proposal on numerous grounds.  The increase of tariffs on byproducts from Hissrael would cause great strain on the medical and confectionery industries, which would of course make difficult the continuation of the basal remedium cost act as the price of producing most medicines is made far greater."

The Chancellor is, against every bit of reason, logic, and over one-thousand years of Celestia's historic skill at picking apart these scams on record, stunned at her swift and brief dismantling of his proposal.

When he just stands there like a rube instead of getting the hay out of her court, Celestia's serene face doesn't express her displeasure sufficiently, forcing her to use polite words to finish the job.  

"You have my permission to leave, Chancellor, and I hope your day finds you well,"  She finishes gracefully, the flushed pony performing an act that "commoners" might call "running" as he vacates the room.

Finally, the last pony enters as the former one leaves.  Celestia may have found it odd that this pony explicitly requested she be seen last, but supposed that it was not too unreasonable a demand at the time.

The cloaked figure slowly walks up to her throne, and when she speaks, Celestia's breath freezes in her throat.

"Hello, Princess Celestia," They nod, pulling down their hood.

"S-"

"Sunset?  Is it really you?" Celestia says, with a soft tone seemingly intended to not make the phantasm before her disappear.

The unicorn shakes her head.  "No.  Well, not exactly."

The unicorn pauses, trying to gather her words appropriately for the ruler of Equestria.  "I am Sunset Shimmer, but not the one you know,"  She explains.

"I come from a time several years in the future, where Equestria, and indeed, this entire world, has been destroyed, left a barren wasteland with no life."

Celestia is shocked at this, searching them for any deception, but finding none.  "But how can this be so?  How could this have come to pass?"

Sunset looks nervous at this, and pulls out a scroll, one stamped in purple wax with a symbol that makes Celestia's annoyance rise.  An emblem shaped like a horseshoe, with two small devil horns attached to the top, as though it were a headband.

"I was given this list of things that I can't tell anyone, and, well, that's on the list.  All I can do is ask you, have you taken on a new student, and has she become the bearer of the Element of Magic, alongside her five friends who now bear the other Elements in a town called Ponyville?"

Celestia balks at this, but nods in response to her question, making Sunset sigh in relief.

"Then the horrific future I come from cannot come to pass in this timeline."

Celestia finds herself so very, deeply confused and wanting to understand just what is going on.

"Is there anything you can tell me Sunset?"

She nods.  "I can tell you what happened to bring me here."





She didn't understand.  How could this have happened in such a short time?  The minute she came through the portal, she felt a horrible, yawning emptiness from the world around her.

The castle she entered into was nothing but ruined crystal, with no traces to indicate that any ponies lived here.

It took her a day before she finally accepted that, for some reason, the portal back to the other world was not functioning at all, and that it had become inert the moment she left it.  The magic in the land was too atrophied and broken to sustain its enchantments.  It took her two days to realize that there was nothing left alive in this world, everything boiled and baked by the sun, which had been sitting in the sky unmoving since she came here.

It took her a week before she could no longer find food in this wasteland.

It took two weeks for her body to weaken to the point where she could not endure traveling any further.

And on the third week, she had been found by Weiss Noir, an individual who had survived this horrible world's fate by virtue of being sealed away the entire time it had been happening.

He explained to the starving Sunset that he had only two real options for her.  He could give her a swift end, or, (and he explained that he really wasn't a fan of the second idea) do something extraordinarily dumb that may save her life.

She chose the latter.

When she did, he looked vaguely annoyed, but had soon dragged her into the melted slush of the frozen north, to a flooded cavern that he had dried with gouts of black fire.

Inside the cavern, in a secret room hidden away, he revealed the Time Machine to her, and explained his displeasure at using the machine for any reason, even as he wrote out a detailed list of things she both needed to know, and that she must never reveal.

By this point, she was too delirious to care or really listen to his ranting, desperate after the pain of hunger and the despair of seeing Equestria's cruel fate had crushed her former ambitions into dust.

He ordered her to make her way to Celestia, the one pony who both knew her and would be able to help her afterwards to determine where exactly it is that she ended up after using his faulty Time Machine.

He had a smug expression as he used a marker to draw the word "Hope!" on the side of the machine in English instead of Equish, something her dazed mind only vaguely noted as being unusual after years on the other side of the portal that led to the human world.

"Sunset Shimmer," He said, after manually shoving her into the cockpit of the machine and dialing it to take her to the Prime Timeline during the current era.

"There is a sizable chance that in the future, relatively speaking, events will occur that might prevent this timeline from ever existing, if time travel works that way.  If that happens, you yourself may cease to be as well.  I don't have a solution to preventing that here.  This isn't your salvation, it's a bandaid.  It could be years, or it could be tomorrow.  Find Celestia, if there's a single pony on this planet who has had the time to crack the nut on paradox management, it's an immortal like her.  And if she doesn't have a solution... Enjoy your time as well as you can, leave no regrets behind... And eat a ton of food."

"This thing is pretty inaccurate too.  You might end up a few years behind where I'm aiming.  If the world doesn't look like a shithole, crack that scroll I gave you and get to reading, because I don't want you pissing away the Prime timeline with more butterflies than absolutely necessary."

And those were his last words to Sunset Shimmer before the world beyond the cockpit of the Time Machine faded away, and transformed into an expanse of apple trees.





Celestia takes all of this in stoically, though all she wants to do is embrace her former student and not let go until it is time to lower the sun.

'I see.  So Weiss awakens to find a world in which he cannot vex and taunt me with my mistakes, and settles for the next best thing.'  She can't help but think cynically.

"It seems, Sunset, that even among the ponies I could have been in other times, I have still failed you in every respect,"  Celestia says morosely.

"I am afraid I have not spearheaded many advancements in the arcane arts of time manipulation, despite my extreme age."

Sunset dips her head at this.  "Then what will become of me, Princess?"

Celestia stands up from her throne, unable to withstand the cold authority of sitting above her former student a second longer as she walks down and next to them, laying a wing over Sunset Shimmer's back.

"If there is anything that can be done, then I will have it done.  Even if it means dealing with him."

"If I know Weiss Noir, he has given you a password to ensure his compliance in this era.  He loves to hear his ridiculous stories cited to him too much to do otherwise,"  Celestia states with confidence, surprising Sunset a bit as, yes, he actually did give her a strange password that he claimed would make him trust and help her...

"If I must go there myself and demand it of him, you will receive not only my focus, and that of those under my authority, but his as well."

She continues with something to lighten the mood a bit.  "And a few years from now, when we are all laughing about this together, you can help me win over the Sunset Shimmer of this era as well when she returns,"  She smirks at her now-embarrassed former student, who inadvertently proved with her existence that Sunset is likely to make a return in this world as well.

Celestia has a strange thought for a moment, which she can't help but voice.  "Did you say he wrote in... English?  You could read his writing?"

Sunset nods at that.   "Yes, he had written the word "Hope" on the machine, but it was in English, I don't know how he knew that language, I've only ever seen it used on the other side of the portal."

Celestia balks at this.  Perhaps Sunset could read... That white book.  

The one she had found in the ruins of the Shadow Realm alongside an ornate, unreadable copy of what she believed to be the Grimoire Noir, Weiss's famous primer on black magic.

Celestia then has a second odd thought which temporarily quashes the first one.  "Sunset, you said you had arrived in a Time Traveling machine, yes?"

Sunset nods at that once more.

"Where exactly did you leave it?" Celestia queries.

Sunset shrugs.  "In the middle of some sort of apple tree forest.  I assumed nobody would find it there in the middle of nowhere."

Celestia feels a chill run down her spine for a reason she can't quite figure out.





A week after the events of today, in Sweet Apple Acres, the crusaders peek out over the edge of the weird cart they found and hopped inside of moments ago, spotting themselves walking up to another one of the weird cart.  This prompts them to come to a realization as the other versions of them explore the device, and then accidentally activate it when Scootaloo falls inside and hits a lever.

They turn to each other, and, as if reading each other's minds, shout in tandem.

"Cutie Mark Crusaders Time Travelers, Yaaay!"





Celestia shakes her head.  "Well, no matter.  You have gone through a terrible trial, Sunset, wherever you choose to take your path from here, know that you have my support."

"But before any more of that business can be dealt with, I require that you accompany me to the royal doctor.  You should know better than to consider apples alone a cure for malnutrition of your severity."

Chiding complete, the pair exit Celestia's throne room, a reunion years in the making, gratefully achieved years earlier.





Zecora finds herself uncomprehending of what exactly it is Weiss intends to do, considering that most of his rant had been about some sort of disrespect being inflicted on her.

This was an odd thought to Zecora, who honestly hadn't noticed.  Being the daughter of Zebrica's Thiefwitch Malusi hadn't afforded her the best treatment among her people, and the strange cowardly behavior of Ponyville when she had visited each month had been a step up from that.

She wonders if the ponies think her ears are for show, as she hears loud whispering coming from a building nearby, which she looks over to.  She spots one of them looking right at her, but they quickly duck down.

Shrugging, she decides to check a few spots for Sleepy Shoots, the plants sent into dormancy by ponies constantly walking over them being a valuable component in some of her potions.

Digging around, she doesn't find any this time, and eventually decides to simply leave when she unfortunately isn't able to corner some stammering shopkeeper to sell her some hay.  A not altogether uncommon occurrence.

Looks like she'll be eating mushroom stew this month.

Surprisingly, it seems several ponies had been following her to her home out of sight.  Something that hasn't happened to her since her time living in Zebrica.

"Applebloom?" The orange one says to the small one, before shouting further as she runs directly into a patch of Poison Joke.

"Applebloom, get over here right now!" They continue, dragging the small child behind them into the flowers.

Oh dear.  Zecora had better take care of this before continuing the rest of her internal monologue.

"You pony folk, you must beware! ~ Those flowers' jokes are most unfair!" She warns, making them all scowl at her, except for the child, who actually looks down to heed her warning.

The orange one shouts at her, even as she's walking away.  "You keep your creepy mumbo jumbo to yourself, y'hear?!"

Zecora opts not to respond to the bait, simply walking home.  And taking an alternate route there to keep those ponies from following her and ruining her house of course.





The next night, Twilight Sparkle finds herself tossing and turning in fitful sleep as the day's memories run through her unconscious mind, and she recalls how everypony spoke of the Zebra and her evil curses.

When she awakes blearily, she walks over to her mirror to begin the day, spotting her messy bedhead.

"Maybe Zecora cursed my hair," She chuckles, combing it back into place.

When she sees what really happened to her, her amusement ceases.

"Or she cursed my horn!" Twilight shouts, looking at the now sagging and softened appendage poking from her forehead, spotted with blue spots.

Minutes later, she's scrambling through her library, turning out book after book searching for a solution.

"No... No!  None of these books have an answer! Ugh! There has to be a rational explanation for this, an allergic reaction, a virus?!"

Before Spike can speak up with his own potential answer, she hears a loud, angry knocking at the door.

"Ugh, who could that possibly be at a time like this?" Twilight says, walking over to the door.

"I'm sorry, but I'm very busy right now, could you..." Twilight trails off.

The Master Sword teleports in front of Twilight automatically, but with her horn in the condition that it is, she fails to levitate it into her grip and it clatters to the floor.

Weiss ignores this, stepping forward with his draconic arms at his sides and an honest sneer on his face.

"I would have words with you, Twilight," He says, as Twilight backs up fearfully.

Spike jumps in at this point.  "Hey, you stay away from Twilight!"

Weiss almost smirks at that, before levitating the dragon out of his way without breaking eye contact.

Twilight glares at him after seeing him manhandle her assistant. "What do you want, Weiss?"

Weiss shakes his head.  "Simple.  You don't believe that you've been cursed, I don't believe you've been cursed, and since meeting Zecora, certain information that has come to light has left me disgusted with your town's behavior towards her."

He clenches and unclenches his claw, visibly resisting the urge to perform an act of intimidation he'll regret.

"So you're going to do something for me that you're already willing to do.  I simply want the process streamlined.  You're going to go to Zecora for a cure, you're going to stop your friends from breaking into her home and accosting her, and then you're going to personally disperse every rumor about that Zebra that you discover to be untrue."

Twilight can't help but be weirded out by the villain's behavior.  Why would he care what Ponyville thinks about Zecora?  Why would Zecora have a cure for this?

Taking her pause for hesitation, Weiss continues.

"And if you don't, then Spike calling you Twilight Wiggle is going to be the least of your concerns."

Spike has to hold back sniggers at this, prompting Twilight to glare back at him for a moment.

"Let me assure you one last time.  This is not one of my games.  There are no tricks that I have hidden among my words, no truths I have spoken in this meeting that hold hidden meanings."

"I trust that your rationality and reason will win out over prejudice and fearmongering in this situation.  And no, I don't really care if you tell your friends about this discussion."  Weiss finishes, before exploding into smoke that leaves Twilight and Spike coughing loudly.

"Ith ath thuth!" Pinkie Pie shouts, bursting through the door with a swollen, blue-spotted tongue, followed by the rest of Twilight's friends.

"A thirst? Ahuhuhuh, I guess that WOULD lead to dry mouth!" Spike guffaws at Pinkie, and then even moreso at the rest of them.

Twilight questions her with concern.  "What happened Pinkie?"

"Thecora, the puth ath curth on ne!" Pinkie explains, sputtering with every word.

Spike, in the line of fire, complains.  "Say it, don't spray it Pinkie!"

Rainbow Dash crashes into a wall, her wings poking out of her chest instead of her back making her continued ability to fly somewhat impressive, despite its clumsiness.

"Ow!  What she's-"  She crashes into another wall.

"Ow! -trying to say is, Zecora slapped us with a curse!"  She finishes before smashing into the floor, dazed.

Rarity blows a few of her massive, lengthy dreadlocks out of her face.  "I'm in agreement, I'm afraid."

Twilight and Spike look at Rarity's new do' with no small amount of shock.

A tiny Applejack stands on a fully grown, blue-spotted Applebloom's back, shouting in a squeaky tone as she hops onto a table.  "When I say I told you so Twilight, boy do I mean I told you so!"

"We've been cursed!" She finishes.

Twilight looks confused as she spots the two remaining individuals in the room.  "But Gilda and Fluttershy look perfectly alright?"

Rainbow nods upside down from her place wedged inside a bookshelf.  "Yeah, those two look just fine!"

Twilight decides to pose a question to the other two, to make sure of their health.  "Are you two alright?"

Fluttershy shakes her head, while Gilda refuses to look anyone in the eye.

"Would you care to tell us what's wrong?"  Twilight presses.

Gilda growls oddly, before speaking in a svette, silk-coated knockout of a voice that would make Jessica Rabbit envious.  "No, not really."

Fluttershy takes that as her cue to speak in a baritone low enough to confuse whales.  "We don't wanna talk about it."

Spike can take no more of this, and falls to the ground, helpless with laughter.

"This is hilarious!  I mean, look at everyone, we've got Hairity, Rainbow Crash, Appletini, Spitty Pie, Flutterguy, Girlda, Applebloomed, and Twilight Wiggle!"

"Ha ha ha," Twilight laughs sarcastically.  "Spike, knock it off.  We need to figure out a solution to this!"  Twilight grimaces.

Rainbow groans, plastered to the ceiling.  "I think we'll find a cure to this curse at Zecora's place."

Twilight growls.  "It's not a curse!"

Applejack nods.  "We'll go to Zecora's place and make her get rid of this hex!"

Twilight feels a migraine coming on, she just knows it.  "It's not a hex either!"

While everyone else is arguing, Applebloom looks disappointed in herself.  "This is all my fault. If I hadn't followed Zecora in the first place, none of this would have happened. I just gotta fix this,"  She says miserably, slowly plodding out of the room.

Applejack spots this, mumbling to herself.  "Now where does she think she's going?"  Applejack tries to jump over to catch her, but Applebloom's longer legs take her out of Applejack's reach, leaving her to plop to the floor as the age-altered filly exits the library.





At Applejack's behest when the others finally spot her, they group up and make the trek into the forest to find Applebloom and, most likely Zecora with her.

Rarity speaks up at the sight of Zecora's hut.  "My, what a ghastly abode."

As they approach, Twilight looks uncomfortable at the sight of Zecora's odd decor, and of the Zebra herself singing in a foreign language to herself as she tends to the bubbling pot in the middle of the room.

"Now do you believe us, Twi?" Applejack states simply, from atop Rarity's head.

"Frightening masks, confusing incantations, a cauldron full of mysterious liquids?" Twilight asks rhetorically with a sigh.  'Not to mention whatever relationship she has with Weiss...'

"Everything does seem to indicate that Zecora is... bad. Or... what if Zecora is just making some stew?" She states hopefully.

Zecora takes this opportunity to add some words of her own, as she tests the fluid inside the cauldron with a hooftip.  "I think its heat now should excel. ~ In solving the pony problem well."

Applebloom looks exhausted as she drags in a small pot of something which Zecora adds to the mix.

"Or maybe she's making something much worse..!" Twilight groans at Zecora's words, trying to figure out how that could be interpreted as something other than a threat.

"She's makin' Applebloom do her dirty work!" Applejack shouts.

"We gotta get her outta there asap!" Applejack continues, grabbing two of Rarity's dreadlocks and snapping them like reins, prompting the unicorn to jolt forward in shock, before bumping into Twilight, who blocks the way.

"No, something about this is off," Twilight says suddenly.

She thinks back to Weiss's words, and how he described almost this exact situation coming to pass.

"This isn't a curse, and there's one way to prove it.  By acting rationally," She says firmly, turning around, and knocking on the door instead of letting the others bash it down.

The rest of her friends practically squeal in fear at her ruining their element of surprise, before Applebloom opens the door.

"Oh, hey girls!" She says happily.

Zecora peaks over her shoulder with a faint smile.  "Ahh, it is the ones that we await. ~ Come in, your woes, I'll soon abate."

Applebloom nods happily, confusing them all.  "Yeah, I helped Zecora make a cure fer our problem, It's just an herbal bubble bath!"

Twilight looks confused.  "If the cure is just an herbal remedy, then what's the cause?"

Zecora takes the opportunity to explain, elaborating on the warning she had given previously.  "It is as I warned you there. ~ The leaves of blue are most unfair."

"So can somepony explain it in plain talk?" Applejack asks.

Applebloom decides to fill the part.  "It's those flowers we were all standin' in.  They're called Poison Joke, because they play little jokes on you!"

Applejack deadpans.  "Little, huh?"

They all laugh at this.

Applebloom gets their attention.  "Now come on everypony.  That cauldron's the biggest pot Zecora's got, so we'll have to do it one at a time.  I hate to say it, but bein' old sucks!  I been tired the whole time!"

The laugh even louder at that, but before long, they all take a dip in the pot, one at a time, and begin the process of curing themselves of the affliction caused by the Poison Joke.

As Twilight dries off, she turns to Zecora.  "Zecora, we need to talk.  I think some ponies have been getting funny ideas about you that need to be cleared up."

When Zecora comprehends what Twilight is saying, and spots the sheepish looks of her friends, she becomes quietly grateful.





When Zecora returns home after a very exciting day in Ponyville, she spots Weiss sitting on a log nearby.

He speaks after a moment in silent thought.  "Your day was good, yes? ~ I did everything I could. ~ I hope it was enough."

Zecora nods at that.  "I know not what you have done, ~ but among my friends, I think you're one."

Weiss nods back with relief, and stops speaking in prose long enough to talk from the heart.  "If at any time you need anything, any request at all, just contact me."

"My honor demands I do nothing less for my best friend's only daughter.  What whispering embers of the Shadow Realm live on through me, they are your ally."

Zecora pauses for a moment to think about that, before speaking plainly as she shakes her head with closed eyes.  "There is nothing now which I require, ~ if that should change, you'll hear my desire."

When she opens them again, Weiss is gone, as though he had never been there at all.





Dear Princess Celestia,
My friends and I all learned an important lesson this week:  Prejudice can drive ponies to dark places, whether they are on the receiving or delivering end.  And if you give in to superstition and rumors, you'll find even genuinely bad ponies standing up to call you out on it.  There are few things that hurt as badly as someone assuming the worst of you, and there is nothing worse than missing the opportunity to make a new friend because you believed tall tales about the content of their character.

Your faithful student,
Twilight WiggleSparkle