//------------------------------//
// Element of Guilt 
// Story: Elements of Redemption 
// by Draxonos135 
//------------------------------//

Wallflower Blush landed face-first on a football field, one that seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, judging by the lack of buildings, or really, anything in the horizon.

Unlike Flash, Wallflower didn't waste time calling the names of everyone else. Instead, she silently looked around the scenery before she came to a rather obvious conclusion:

"It's deserted."

"Well, aren't we perceptive?"

Wallflower snapped at the source of the question, who turned out to be none other than the donkey himself.

"Donkey!" Wallflower snapped. "Are you the reason I got teleported to wherever this is?!"

"Why don't you take another look at the scenery?" the donkey suggested as he calmly trotted to the girl. "Maybe you'll recognize where you went?"

"What is there to recognize?" Wallflower rolled her eyes. "We're in the middle of-"

However, once she looked again, there was at least one building connected to the field, a building that sent shivers down her spine.

"Crystal Prep Academy!"

"The message didn't teleport you and the others at random," the donkey spoke. "In the brief moment its light connected with you, it saw your place of origin, and took you there."

"Well, I guess it missed something by a longshot, because I'm not a student of this academy."

The donkey lowered his eyelids. "You're right: you weren't a student."

An intense gust of wind blew, forcing Wallflower to closer her eyes.

Once the gust finished and she opened her eyes again, the building, while still fairly similar in structure, now had a different atmosphere to it.

An atmosphere that attracted Wallflower to it.

"You were something else."

She and the donkey looked through the window, and saw the students of Crystal Prep Academy as children, each wearing smaller versions of their uniforms.

And as Wallflower slowly gained a smile, the donkey explained.

"Crystal Prep Academy wasn't always an educational building. It once started as an orphanage, opened by Cadence and Cinch, so parentless children wouldn't have to go through the same homelessness that they once did."

The donkey turned to Wallflower, who was positively beaming a glowing smile.

"And one of these orphans was a certain little Wallflower Blush."

"It's exactly how I remember it!" Wallflower chirped, paying no attention to the donkey. "There's Sour Sweet, and Lemon Zest, Suri Polomare, Sugarcoat, Sunny Flare, all of the Shadowbolts are there! They're..."

Wallflower's smile slowly turned into a frown, before she left the window and walked away.

"They're nothing more than illusions, aren't they?"

She glared at the donkey.

"This is all your doing to try and convince me to become one of those "elements of redemption," isn't it?"

"Well, I can't say I have nothing to do with this vision," the donkey answered. "But the things we see are things that happened in the past. Things that you remember."

"Yeah, the good things at least," Wallflower growled. "But if there's one thing I know about visions, is that they only show good things moments before they show the bad ones."

She turned to the donkey and folded her arms.

"So, go ahead, bring up the one memory of this place I regret. The one thing I've never been able to forget!"

The donkey raised an eyebrow as another gust of wind made Wallflower repeat the last motions: close her eyes, open them when it was done, and now they were in the middle of a snowy day.

A day Wallflower recognized so well, it made her go from angry to terrified in an instant.

"W-Wait, I-I didn't mean it for real! You didn't have to bring this up! Go back to the other thing!"

"You said it yourself, Wallflower Blush," the donkey stated as Wallflower desperately glanced between him and the windows. "The good memories are shown before the bad ones."

"Y-You don't understand, this is the memory that's been in the back of my head since I arrived at Canterlot High School! The one memory that made studying and just being there even more difficult!"

"Wallflower, we have to witness this memory. Only then can you truly understand why you were picked as the element of Guilt."

Having no other option but to remember the past, Wallflower took a deep breath and prepared for the heartbreak that would follow.

She and the donkey watched as a younger Wallflower broke out through a window, with the shadowbolts watching her as she ran as fast as she could, until she disappeared into the darkness.

"I believe you don't need this explained to you, right?" the donkey asked. "You know what happened here."

Wallflower lowered her head.

"Cinch was a very strict woman. No matter what I did, I just wasn't up to her standards. So, I had to run away, before she continued to make me feel like I was worthless."

Wallflower sniffed.

"I didn't want to run away. I didn't want to abandon the Shadowbolts... but I had no choice."

Suddenly, a snowstorm happened, causing Wallflower to once again cover her eyes.

This time, once she opened them, she found herself in the middle of the hallway of Canterlot High School, where her, now a little bit closer to her current age, leaned against a locker as she watched her fellow classmates walk by, completely ignoring her existence.

And then the donkey appeared by her side.

"Once you ran away from the orphanage, you "transferred" to Canterlot High School, hoping that you could gain a sense of freedom that the academy lacked."

"And I'd be lying if I said I didn't get the sense that I was free," Wallflower smiled. "I could dress however I wanted, I didn't need to follow a schedule as strict as before, I was even allowed to make my own club... even though nearly nobody joined it."

Wallflower's smile turned into a frown.

"But with all this freedom came the feeling of not being noticed. Back in the orphanage, the Shadowbolts and I were inseparable. But once I reached Canterlot High School, I was lucky if somebody spoke to me without me speaking to them first."

"In exchange for having freedom, people rarely managed to remember you," the donkey spoke. "And that fed the feeling of guilt inside you: guilt of running away, of abandoning your old friends."

The scenery transformed into the memory stone.

"And need it be mentioned what happened with this particular artifact?"

Wallflower looked at the figure incredulously, only returning to reality once the background returned to Crystal Prep Academy.

"No, I used it to mess with everyone's memories, and it got worse and worse the longer I did it."

Wallflower sighed.

"Now, it's one of the things I regret the most."

The donkey smiled.

"And that guilt, shall now be your strength."

Wallflower raised an eyebrow.

"Open your palms and concentrate."

Wallflower rolled her eyes and obliged, opening her palms and taking a deep breath to "concentrate," whatever the donkey meant.

A couple seconds later, green spheres of energy emerged from her palms.

"Whoa!"

"Whoa" indeed. What you're seeing now are spheres made of your own guilt, which you can use in order to spread the feeling of guilt to another person, or group of people, assuming there's more than one remorseless person in the room."

Wallflower's shoulder began glowing green, something the girl didn't even notice as she asked.

"But, why would I have to weaponize my guilt?"

The donkey frowned.

"Even with karma as a reaction, without guilt as a foundation, the path to redemption will be hollow."

The glow on Wallflower's shoulder transformed into the shape of the memory stone, from the rock.

"From now on, it'll be your job to make people feel guilty for their actions."

Wallflower looked at her shoulder, then turned around to see the donkey disappear, before she herself vanished as well.