The children had been quietly sobbing for the past few minutes. They couldn’t even defend themselves from anything Twilight had said. They had really screwed up and been doing things so wrong.
Most of them were on their knees, but Peppermint and Plum were both on their bellies, their heads buried in their hooves.
Pound’s heart was aching. It felt just like when he and Pumpkin got kicked out of school, except this time he really felt he deserved everything that was said.
He tried to get up, but he just couldn’t find the strength. He felt too heavy.
Next to him Pumpkin was still crying. Everyone was crying. Everyone was in pain. He forced his head upwards, seeing Nega in a new light. He was suffering too; suffering because none of them could see him as anything more than a pest that needed to be squashed out of existence.
How would he feel if he thought that someone thought that way about him? He didn’t have to wonder. He had gone through it himself a few times.
The only way to help Nega through his pain was to help Mayhem through his. As long as there was a friend in need he couldn’t just lay down and wallow in his own pain. That wasn’t him. He never wanted it to be him.
He struggled hard, but he got to his hooves. The first few steps took everything he had, and he nearly tripped, but as purpose filled him walking came easier.
He stopped in front of Flurry, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “All of us are sinking into the darkness, and we could all use a little of your light.”
Flurry barely gave him a glance before looking back at the ground. “What’s the point? I only cared about my friends, not thinking about whether someone I didn’t really know needed that light too.
“Aunt Twilight is right. My cutie mark is just for show.”
“Flurry, your cutie mark isn’t just for show. It got us through this.”
“So what?” said Masky. “We were only heroes in a fantasy. What does it matter that we won a fake game?”
“We screwed up… that’s absolutely true. But… does that mean we’re just going to roll over and die? Every time it’s seemed hopeless that’s when love and friendship has given us the power to prevail.
“It’s not too late for us to come back from this.”
“Are you paying any attention at all to Nega?” asked Tree Leaf. “He’s destroying the world.”
“Mayhem did that at the end of the superhero adventure. It didn’t stop us from winning, did it?”
Pound gulped, letting out a little sob. “We… all of us… we forgot what we were really here for. We came here to fight for our friends and help them better their lives.
“Isn’t that….” He sniffed a few times as tears rolled down his face. “Isn’t that something still worth fighting for?”
The question hung in the air for a little while, before everyone slowly looked up at him.
Flash rubbed his face hard, forcing himself up on shaky hooves. “I… I said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t turn my back on my friends.
“It doesn’t matter the danger. I won’t abandon those I love.”
Pumpkin looked at Peppermint, still prostrate on the ground, and she also found strength returning to her. She fought past the despair threatening to engulf her and helped her friend up. Sweet Pea did the same for Spring Meadow.
One by one they all got up.
Flurry lit up her horn, light magic enveloping the area around them. They all welcomed its warmth.
Without needing to say a word they all moved into a circle shape, holding each other and welcoming the closeness as their hearts joined with each other.
It did make them feel a little better, but they were still very subdued.
“We can’t give up,” said Chocolate.
“No way,” said Sweet Pea. “We have to take responsibility for our mistakes.”
“If we can’t calm Nega down,” said Spring, “then all of Equestria will be in danger.”
“That’s important too,” said Flurry, “but we might also lose Mayhem.”
“That’s unacceptable,” said Peppermint.
“Got that right,” said Flash. “We’re not losing any friends.”
It suddenly got quieter. Nega was panting heavily, seemingly having worked out some of his feelings. He curled up into a ball and began sobbing.
This brought tears to all the children. They really had been too focused on beating Nega without thinking about his feelings. They worked so hard with the intention of making him vanish, not caring about how he might feel about that.
Flurry sniffed. “This feels… just like when I was about to forgive Mayhem. I went through that whole superhero story only seeing Mayhem as an irredeemable villain. I hated him for scaring me and threatening my friends.
“After we won and his evil attitude vanished I began to see who he was beneath that, my heart recognizing him as a friend and just wanting to make him hurt less.”
“Twilight was the only one willing to give him a chance,” said Plum. “She never forgot the magic of friendship.”
Sweet Pea sighed. “While we… we never gave him a chance. We thought he was just some evil thing to eliminate.”
“Even if we thought it was to help Mayhem it doesn’t make it right,” said Pumpkin.
“We really were acting like the villains to him,” said Spring Meadow, gulping. “After going through so much pain I really should have known better about how bad it feels to be treated that way.”
“I… I’ve been making him suffer,” said Mayhem. “I couldn’t find love for him… because I couldn’t find love for myself. All he had to feel from me is anger and unhappiness. It’s no surprise he’s getting so destructive. A build-up of negative feelings is what caused me to go bad the first time.”
Flash got a little smile on his face. “Well… it’s not too late to make amends, Mayhem. Nega has stopped blowing up everything in sight. So maybe now we can talk to him and help free him of his feelings.”
Pound pulled away, walking in front of Mayhem. “Our feelings for you are not conditional. You’re always going to be a friend to us. I mean, after what you pulled isn’t that clear enough?
“The six of us… we’ve had plenty of time to change our minds, haven’t we?” He bit his lip, then sighed. “Being a good friend is about being honest. And, being perfectly honest, I did feel some resentment for you in the days after the superhero adventure, even if I did forgive you.
“You hurt Pumpkin and did horrible things to all of us. It was really scary. After Twilight dropped us home me and Pumpkin just cried our eyes out when we saw our parents, thinking of how close we had come to never seeing them again.
“But at the end of it all I never stopped thinking about you as a friend, because I knew you regretted what you did.”
Pumpkin stood next to Pound. “We know the pain that Nega is feeling. We ran away from home on the night of our first day of school because everyone was mad at us for getting in a big fight.
“Our principal, our teacher, our parents, our aunt, and especially Twilight were all mad. We kept getting it from every direction.”
Her eyes clenched shut. “It hurt so much. We felt like unlovable monsters.”
Pound put a hoof around her. “That night, it felt like the two of us were the only things in the world that still cared about each other.”
Pumpkin wiped her eyes. “Maybe it’s not nearly as serious as what you did, but those feelings were terrible.
“We ran into Fluttershy shortly after that, and she showed us the light again. She didn’t know why we were upset, but she took us back to her house and gave us comforting until we were able to tell her what we did.”
Pound was looking at the ground, that moment still coming in loud and clear. “We were both so afraid. I mean, Fluttershy is the Element of Kindness. If…” He let out a little sob. “If even she felt we were disgusting after what we did then it would have been unbearable.”
“But she didn’t get mad. She told us she still loved us, even though we had screwed up. She even took us back home and helped us make up with our parents and Twilight.”
“It was such a relief.”
Pound sighed. “I guess… we just… forgot…” He sighed again. “Forgot how terrible that night felt. It’s been so long since then, and who wants to keep remembering terrible feelings like those?”
He put a hoof on Mayhem’s shoulder. “Our Auntie Pinkie was devastated by us running away. Anything could have happened to us when we were out there. It wasn’t the first time we had run away and scared her like that.”
“Even if the first time was just because we accidentally wrecked something she had worked hard on,” said Pumpkin. “She thought this might start becoming a pattern, like we’d start running away every time things got bad.”
“And she told us something very, very important. She made sure to drill it into our heads that she could never hate us. She only hated our bad behavior.”
“No matter how bad we got she told us that would always be true. She even said that if we turned evil she’d still believe that we were the children she loved deep down inside. It was a reminder of that promise that gave us the strength to overpower you when you first came out.”
Pound sat down and said, “It gave us strength to know that, no matter how far we fell, the adults in our lives would never abandon us or give up on us, and we want to give strength to you too.
“And so…” He moved his hoof in the usual pattern. “I Pinkie Promise to you that my love and friendship to you isn’t just conditional. I’ll always love you, now and forever. Even if you fall deep into the darkness I’ll fight to pull you out again. That’s a Pinkie Promise for life.”
Pumpkin moved her own hoof. “Same here.”
Mayhem’s eyes grew wet.
“What’s a Pinkie Promise?” asked Chocolate.
Pound turned to him. “You shouldn’t break promises in the first place, but a Pinkie Promise is special. Once made, you can never break it.”
“That sounds like a curse,” said Plum.
“Is it magic?” asked Sweet Pea.
Pumpkin shook her head. “It’s not a curse or magic. It’s just named after our Auntie Pinkie, because she takes her promises very, very seriously.
“Nothing forces you to keep it, but among her circle of friends we all take it just as seriously.”
Pound put a hoof to his heart. “A Pinkie Promise is something that you make with your whole heart and soul. It’s the ultimate act of trust, because you know once you make it you can never take it back.”
“But what happens if you try your best to keep it and you can’t?” asked Spring.
“Or something happens that makes it impossible to keep it?” asked Sweet Pea.
Pound scratched his head. “I… don’t know. We’ve never had a situation like that come up.”
“Hey!” said Flash. “Who cares about the ‘what if’s?’ I don’t. The most important thing is what that promise means. It’s a promise from the heart.
“I’m not afraid to make that commitment, so teach me the motions.”
Pumpkin nodded, moving her hoof in time with the words. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
Tree Leaf’s eyebrow rose. “Stick a cupcake in your eye?”
“Well, it’s not a literal cupcake.”
“Although,” Pound said with an awkward grin, “I have seen her do it literally.”
“Doesn’t that hurt though?” asked Peppermint, her eyes widening.
“I think she closes her eye first.”
Flash moved his hoof. “My Pinkie Promise is the same as theirs. I don’t back out on friends, and you’re a friend I don’t ever want to lose.”
“You’ve done so much for our family,” said Spring, doing the same motion.
“Ours too,” said Sweet Pea, doing the same.
One by one they each made their own promises, and with every one Mayhem felt more and more overwhelmed by their support.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Flurry, the last one. “Our hearts will always be with you, no matter how far apart we are.
“Now go beat…” She coughed. “Go defeat… um…” She scratched her head. “What should I say here?”
Pound snickered. “How about just ‘go make friends?’ That’s enough.”
Mayhem nodded. “I can feel all your hearts with me. This time… this time I’ll win him over.”
“Mayhem,” said the calm voice of Twilight.
Mayhem’s confidence immediately took a dip.
He looked around at his friends and found it again. “I… I know we let you down, Twilight, but we’re trying to make up for it.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“We know we messed up,” said Flurry. “We understand that now.”
“But we see where we went wrong,” said Tree Leaf. “Now we’re ready to try again and make things right.”
“No, you’re not,” Twilight said simply.
“Hey,” said Pumpkin.
“If Mayhem goes and confronts Nega again now he’ll still lose, one hundred percent.”
Mayhem’s face fell as he lost confidence again.
"That's why-"
“Shut up, Twilight!” Pound said angrily.
“Hmm,” Twilight muttered, her stoic expression not changing.
“So what we screwed up before? That doesn’t mean we’re giving up. No matter what it takes we’re going to emerge victorious, so we don't need these negative comments from you. You're acting like an uncaring jerk!”
The other children swarmed around Mayhem, throwing in their support as well. They had been scared of Twilight before, but now that they had sworn their support to him they wouldn’t let that fear hold them back.
Twilight shook her head, closing her eyes. "The fact that you don’t grasp my thoughts only goes to show how far you still are from victory.”
“We understand enough, Aunt Twilight,” Flurry said angrily. “Just because you’ve given up on Mayhem doesn’t mean we have. I expected more from you too instead of being so heartless.”
"Is that what you think?" Twilight’s horn began to glow, and while they felt a momentary fear they stood resolute.
All that happened was a bunch of arrows going in the eight compass directions appeared between them.
Twilight opened her eyes. “Let me ask you a simple question: what happens when you want to go somewhere and head in the wrong direction?”
“You… get lost?” Sweet Pea said hesitantly. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Not quite. When you go in the wrong direction you don't wind up at your intended destination.”
The arrow pointing north began to glow blue, while the one pointing south turned red. “Your objective was to help guide Mayhem up out of the darkness, so ideally you want to take the northern path. That’s the fastest route.
“However, you were going to the sides and slowly heading down. At the point where you declared your intentions to try to get rid of Nega through fighting you were cementing yourself into a path of no return. If you had taken the southern path then Nega’s power would have grown out of control. That’s why I had to step in.
“I’ll make this extremely clear. Whatever your feelings, or even my own feelings, I cannot let a threat to Ponyville or Equestria endanger others. If Nega’s power grew too great for me to overcome then I’d have to cut off the source of his power, and the only way to do that would be to eliminate Mayhem for good.”
A shiver went through the crowd.
“Do you get it? If I had really given up on Mayhem we wouldn’t be having a discussion. I’d be acting to stop the threat. I only moved to stop you from going onto the worst possible path.
“Your mindsets are better now. You’re finally starting to head upwards more than downwards, but you’re still at a steep angle. You’re not yet on the northern path.”
She sat down and shrugged. “I told myself that if you fought past the despair I created to focus on your bonds then you’d be ready to hear what you need to know to take the northern path rather than heading off in the wrong direction, but I guess I don't need to do that now.”
Sweet Pea’s eyebrow rose. “Why not?”
“Because you children clearly know better than me with all my years of experience, right? I’ve spent the past few months dedicated to helping Mayhem to improve himself, and chose to pardon him for the past rather than lock him up.”
She let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, Flurry, the hypocrisy you came at me with is just funny, considering how angry you got at the others for accusing you of not caring.”
She shook her head. “So, as you and Pound said, this heartless, uncaring jerk should just shut up and let you do what you want, right?"
Pound winced. He had gone a bit overboard. Flurry felt guilty for being so harsh. They could both see how hurt she looked.
He bowed to her, tears brimming in his eyes. “I’m really sorry, Twilight. I just get overprotective sometimes.
“Please don’t let my words stop you from helping Mayhem.”
Pumpkin pulled at him. “Don’t bow, dummy. You know what she really needs.”
Pound got up, walking to her and hugging her leg. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Flurry joined him on the other side. “Sorry, Aunt Twilight.”
Even though they hadn’t been nasty like the other two the rest of the children apologized too.
Twilight looked mollified. “I forgive you."
Flash tapped his hoof on the ground a few times, feeling annoyed even though he just apologized. "I think we deserve an apology too, Twilight."
"Why's that?" asked Chocolate.
"I admit we were dumb in deciding to get rid of Nega by force, but the whole reason things came to that is Twilight's fault in the first place."
Twilight sat down, and said calmly, "Why do you say that?"
"You yelled at us for not understanding what Nega is and how he was hurting so much inside and stuff, but how is that our fault? All we got to see of Nega is him trying to get rid of our friend. We never got to see him feeling sad and looking for support and asking for hugs. You chose to hide all that stuff from us and never tell us about it, and then yelled at us for not knowing stuff only you knew and kept to yourself."
He pointed a hoof at her. "So I think you're just as responsible as we are."
Now that Flash has said it and they had the chance to think about it they agreed, feeling anger creeping up in them.
Twilight let out a sigh and closed her eyes. "I kept it to myself because I had faith in you that you would come to understand things on your own. Given your history and all the struggles you went through in making friends I believed you would recognize someone only lashing out because of inner pain, especially when the end of your journey through the Crystal Empire was all about showing others the light.
"But... even so, I did have useful information that could have made you more sympathetic to Nega if I had let you know in the first place, and I have to take responsibility for my own choices."
She bowed to them. "I went a little too far earlier, and for that I'm sorry. I humbly ask for your forgiveness, so that together we can bring things to a close peacefully."
The children now swarmed around her, accepting her apology.
"So what's next, Twilight?" asked Plum.
"I asked you a simple question before," she replied. "I have one more for you: what do you want to ask me?”
They all looked confused. “What do we want to ask?” said Spring.
Twilight nodded. “Come on. It’s not that hard.”
None of them knew what she was talking about.
After about a minute Mayhem raised his claw. “Twilight?”
“Yes, Mayhem?”
“You contradicted yourself before, but you’re not dumb enough to not do it on purpose.”
“And where did I contradict myself?”
“You said if I went to confront Nega now I’d definitely, one hundred percent lose, but you also said you can’t let a threat to Ponyville remain. If it came down to it you said we wouldn’t be talking. You’d be acting to stop the threat.”
A hint of a smile crossed Twilight’s face. “Mmm-hmm. Go on.”
“Sooo… the fact that you’re still talking rather than taking me out means you do still think I can win, but I’m missing something. Something crucial. You even said that if we could come back after you yelled at all of us that you’d tell us what we needed to know to move on.”
Now Twilight had a genuine smile on her face. “Keep going. You’re almost there.”
Her change in attitude made him feel calmer too. “Right now Nega is between me and the north path, so at best I’ll veer off in the wrong direction. What do I need to know so I can take the north path?”
Twilight clapped. “That is the right question. You certainly are lacking something vital to subdue Nega. After all, if just getting encouragement from your friends was enough to defeat him then this would already be over.”
“But then… what should I do? What am I missing?”
“The thing you need, the thing that you’re missing, is the will to live.”