//------------------------------//
// Prologue: The Birth of insanity incarnate 
// Story: Daydreamer Series: Story #1, Pathway to Madness 
// by Dalek-Galvo 
//------------------------------//


Twilight moaned. Right now, she was trying to clean the scratches on her body by picking the shards of glass out of her arms. Her father had gotten drunk again, and like always, she had been the center of his drunken tirades.							   He lashed out at everyone when he was drunk, but Twilight was his favorite target. Usually, he would beat her whenever she irritated him or did something wrong, and often called her the problem child of the family. Her being bullied or harassed by her classmates didn’t help, as this led him to calling her a crybaby. 

He would often say things like: 

"Why so serious!" or “Damn girl, woman up!”.She had learned to accept his behavior, but nevertheless, it hurt. 
But on this particular day, her father took it to the extreme and hit her on the head 3 times with a beer bottle. When he said: "When I'm done with you, you won't be crying anymore. Why don't we put a smile on that face.", Twilight knew there was a big difference from the other times. He had gone to grab a carving knife and Twilight honestly thought he was going to kill her, but thankfully her mother stopped him. Maybe this extreme situation was the turning point for her, or she had just gotten sick over his behavior over the time, but in the end, she finally told him that their relationship was over and kicked him out. Of course, he tried to resist, but soon, drunk as he was, stormed out of the house and vowed to return and to get back at them. Twilight Velvet walked over to Twilight's room and saw her sitting in a corner, sobbing deeply. Twilight Velvet sat next to her Daughter and tried to comfort her.
"Sweetie, you can calm down now, it's all over, he's not going to hurt us anymore." But Twilight wasn’t convinced.
"Haven’t you heard him? Oh no, it's far from over, he'll come back and he'll kill us."
“No sweetie, he was drunk, and didn’t know what he was saying.” 
Twilight didn’t reply, and all Velvet could do was to sit down and hug her bloody and bruised daughter as the night went on.
When Twilight finally could fall asleep, the nightmares began. She dreamed of her father, climbing through the window into her bedroom, armed with the same carving Knife, repeating the same phrase over and over again, like a mantra. "Let's put a smile on that face!" The nightmares all ended the same way: A Twilight, awakened by her own screams, every night, over and over again, with no end in sight.
Soon, the nightmares were affecting her mental health, whether due to the lack of sleep or lasting psychological trauma. She’d act hostile towards her teachers or random bypassers, but only if she actually left the house once. After seven weeks of sleep deprivation, she looked terrible. There were large bags under her eyes and her once lavender skin had lost its usual light purple color and darkened to a much duller shade of purple. And when her peers tried to bully her today, she just looked at them for a second and then continued on her way.
After school ended, while Twilight was taking her usual route home, a familiar voice caught her attention.
"Miss Sparkle," said Indigo Zap.
Twilight sighed. “Alright, what do you want?” Twilight’s voice was groggy, and she was tired, closing and then opening her eyes repeatedly.
"We don't like that you're not giving us our bonus money anymore. You have ignored all of our previous warnings, and this morning was the last one." Sour Sweet said in a threatening tone.
Indigo spoke again: “You see, it's not about the money, it’s about the other students. If they see you rebelling against us, and we do nothing about it, they might get the wrong idea and even try to stand up for themselves. So. Why. Did. You. Not. Pay. Your. Fee!” At this, Twilight couldn’t help it and laughed.
"Ooooh, ok, this is just rich, first you pester and bully me every day at school, because for whatever reason you just want to make my life a living hell, and now, you're pissed off because I haven't paid your fucking extortion money.” Twilight’s anger and tone built up. “Yeah, thanks, but I didn't pay because 1) I stopped caring since my life has been nothing but a living tragedy already without you, and 2) I hate every single one of you because you are just egoistic assholes who care about nothing but yourselves, and especially not about me!" The Shadowbolts’ faces became a sour grimace. 
"Oh, that's how you want to play this game," Indigo’s voice was calm, yet threatening. "Well, let's see if you're still so rude to us when we're done with you!"
Twilight shouted a “Go to hell!”, but little did she know that her opponents came prepared.
The shadowbolts pinned her down while Sour Sweet searched her bag for the anesthetic she had brought with her. After it had been injected into Twilight's bloodstream, she got immediately knocked unconscious, and the shadowbolts put her in a bag and loaded her into the trunk of Sunny Flares car, leaving no clue to their or Twilight’s whereabouts.
When Twilight finally woke up from the effects of the drug, she noticed that she was in some kind of chemical factory. Next, she saw the faces of the shadowbolts looking down at her.
This caused her to go into full panic mode. "W-what are you doing? Why have you brought me here? Please, just leave me alone, I want to go home."
"Well Twilight, I'll tell you why we brought you here. Since we don’t like little know-it-alls like you, and we especially don’t like rebellious ones, so we took the liberty of reading your academic file. And we found some, really, interesting stuff on it. For example, we found that your father was once a worker of this factory, and do you want to know what's in those vats?," Indigo said in a sinister tone of voice. "Some really dangerous chemicals that will most certainly kill you. So, we thought that we could end your suffering here and now," Sour Sweet said. "But before that, I just want to ask, have you watched the news today?"
"N-n-no, I h-haven't," Twilight stammered. "Why?"
"Because we heard that your sweet and innocent bitch of a mother was murdered today, by your father in a drunken rage. I just wanted to let you know that." Indigo said with an evil grin on her face.
Twilight, after hearing this, started wailing with uncontrollable tears, knowing that she would never ever see her mother again.
"Alright, enough with this sad whining, let's just dump her in the vat and end this already," an contemptuous Sour Sweet said.
"Umm, girls, I think we're taking this a little bit too far," Sugarcoat said, since she was afraid, as they were about to take an innocent life.
"Ohh, so you want to join her in the dumping?" Indigo barked.

"No" 

"Then help me dump her," Indigo said.
Then, the shadowbolts surrounded Twilight, picked her up, and carried her to the large vat of purple chemicals.

"Please, stop, I'm begging you!" Twilight screamed in horror, as she was dumped in the chemical vat.


Sour Sweet laughed. “You should have begged when you had the chance to."

"Cmon, girls, let's get out of here before we're caught." Indigo Zap said. As they left, Sugarcoat, Sunny Flare, and Lemon Zest looked back at the chemical vat with faces of dismay and anguish bot only Sugarcoat said: 

"I'm sorry, I hope you'll forgive me."

There was a large tube outside the factory that connected the vats to the lake nearby, and a few moments later, out of this tube came a dark purple figure and fell into the polluted freshwater.
Twilight rushed to the lake surface, and then to the lake’s shore. She tumbled, trying to get back on her feet and began to cough and gag from the chemicals she had swallowed.

"Oh my god, this burns," Twilight moaned, slowly going from staggering to walking. 

"My whole body is aching and itching all over, what's hap-," Twilight froze when she looked at her reflection in the lake. Her skin was a dark purple, she had blue eyes with purple pupils, and due to the chemical burns she’d suffered, she looked like she had a Glasgow smile. Merely looking at herself awoke something in Twilight, something that made Twilight feel like her entire life was nothing but a demented gag, and she was the punchline of it all. This was enough for her to finally snap.

Twilight let out maniacal laughter. 

“Mwahahaha, this was supposed to kill me, huh? My mothers dead, good one, ha ha ha, good one, what a joke on me, ha ha ha, my life's just a big, funny joke, hahaha"  
Twilight chuckled, while her last shards of sanity finally shattered to pieces.
Then, she looked forward, with a glint in her eyes. The shadowbolts wanted to take a life, just because they hated someone for being different, but little did they know that they instead created a monster, ready to take revenge on the city that had caused pain for so long. And this monster would do it with a big, fat, "SMILE,"  laughing the whole way.