It was cold and dark, all cries out for help were responded to with an echo. Cozy looked around, scared. This wasn’t a dream or Tartarus. Where was she? Finally, the mysterious voice that coerced her to take over the School of Friendship spoke up.
“What just happened back there, foal?”
“I-I’m not a foal,” Cozy responded, ignoring the question. “I’m almost thirteen!”
“Answer me!” The voice was starting to get angry.
“I-I don’t know,” Cozy said, obviously knowing what did happen.
“Don’t lie to me foal,” the voice demanded. “I can tell when you lie in here.”
“And where exactly is here?” Cozy inquired.
“We’re in your brain, foal,” the voice responded, slightly annoyed. “Your dream left you vulnerable, and your ‘friends’ using their magic to push me back allowed me to pull you to where I reside.”
“But why?!” Cozy asked, both scared and angry.
“So you can’t block me out!” The voice was on the verge of yelling. “If you had done your job properly, I’d be sitting on a celestiadamn throne!”
“You?”
“I mean we, you wanted power, didn’t you foal?”
Cozy had had enough. “I wanted friends. I thought power was the way to get them, but I was wrong! Ever since I met the Crusaders, I real—”
The voice cut Cozy off, still quite steamed. “Oh shut up foal, you don’t really care about friends do you? You’re just looking for a way to get back at your parents for abandoning you.”
This hurt Cozy deeply. As she started to cry she responded to the voice. “Don’t talk about them! They don’t care about me, so I shouldn’t care about them!”
The voice had an idea. “If you did become the empress of friendship like I wanted you to, you could have had revenge on them!”
“But I don’t want revenge,” Cozy was on the verge of sobbing. “I want a life away from them!”
“But they made you feel like shit. Isn’t it fair that you return the favor?” The voice knew Cozy was about to break.
“No, it is not!” Cozy’s voice was very unstable by now. “Just shut up!”
“Those students ruined your plans. How does that make you feel?” Almost there.
“They were your plans! Just leave me alone!” Cozy broke, she started sobbing, curled up in a ball in the middle of the black void, completely alone, with nopony to comfort her.
The voice chuckled, and the void disappeared, revealing Tartarus. Cozy continued sobbing in her cell, with Tirek watching in disgust.
This is the kid he decided to coerce? Tirek thought to himself. She can’t even go one night without crying her brains out. For fuck’s sake.
“I’m worried about Cozy,” Apple Bloom told Sweetie Belle, who was brushing her mane in front of a small mirror in the caboose. “She seems disturbed.”
“Disturbed?” Diamond Tiara interjected. “That poor girl is possessed. Didn’t you see her try to fight whatever we fought against?”
“Yeah, she did seem pretty scared,” Scootaloo said, busy preening herself.
Sweetie Belle set down her brush and exhaled sharply. “I just don’t know what to do! We’re just kids. Apple Bloom, you’re the oldest out of us, and you turned 15 just a few weeks ago! Why couldn’t our sisters have taken care of this?!”
Sweetie Belle was on the verge of breaking down when Diamond hugged her. “It’s gonna be okay, Sweetie. If the map thinks we can do it, then we can. You girls have hearts as strong as horses, right?”
This made Sweetie Belle smile, it had been a few years since the Equestria games, but the song they sang to help Scootaloo come around and come to the Crystal Empire still rang true in her heart.
“Yeah, we do,” Sweetie Belle replied. “Don’t we girls?”
“Yeah!” Apple Bloom and Scootaloo replied, high-hoofing Sweetie Belle. They held their hooves up to allow Diamond Tiara to join, who after a second of consideration, put her hoof up to theirs.
“Let’s go save Cozy,” the pink filly said confidently. “And kick the flank of whoever is inside her head!”
“Assuming we can get it out of there,” Scootaloo added. “We only seemed to push it deeper into her head.”
“But that was a dream, Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom pointed out, before realizing the corner she got herself into. “Who knows what will happen here in the real world.”
The fillies jumped when the cart’s breaks squeaked and slowed to a halt. Then there was knocking on the side of the caboose closest to the hoofcart. Braeburn was shouting something.
“Run! Go fast now!” Braeburn shouted, before jumping off the hoofcart. The fillies obeyed, jumping out of the caboose and running away from the tracks, just in time, too.
A train came barreling by, smashing the hoofcart and caboose, sending them flying into the air. However, the train didn’t go much further, its breaks has been on as it went by them. Before anypony could say anything, six ponies exited the train looking quite upset.
“Oh fuck,” said Scootaloo. “They found us.”