Beads of sweat dripped from Twilight’s forehead as she dragged herself to Silver Shoals. She would have teleported herself there like she did the last time she visited her predecessor but, due to the sudden disappearance of magic (again), she had no choice but to travel on foot in the scorching summer weather. Gasping for air, she burst through the doors of the reception and collapsed onto the floor. In addition to nearly suffocating, she was very dehydrated and was in urgent need of a big pitcher of water. One that just so conveniently floated towards her not long after she fell to the floor.
“Thanks!” she panted as the pitcher poured itself into her mouth.
In her exhausted state, it slowly but suddenly occurred to her that the pitcher was floating. Magically floating. Suddenly, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that an alicorn was standing near the reception desk. While she could tell from the majestic figure that it was none other than Celestia herself, there was something off about her. Rather than the wavy mane and tail everypony was familiar with, they were engulfed in flames. Her warm eyes were replaced with small burning stars, each of which centred in two pits of darkness, and she wore armour that looked like it had been recently forged. It looked exactly like the nightmarish version of Celestia she briefly saw during King Sombra’s return.
“You’re welcome,” Celestia said calmly, her smile filled with rows of sharp teeth.
Twilight looked at her mentor with dread. Ever since her alicornification, she had been looking up how the biological process of an alicorn was different from that of the other pony races. In addition to never aging, with the closest equivalent being the Divine Transfiguration, alicorns could undergo a different type of metamorphosis if they allowed certain negative feelings to consume them.
“Celestia?” Twilight asked worryingly.
“How do you like my new look?” Celestia asked, “Doesn’t it show off my awesome power?”
Twilight just stared at her mentor in fear.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Celestia coldly stated, her smile changing to a frown.
Without hesitation, she blasted Twilight through the wall and flew through the hole she made before gracefully landing near her student. As a sadistic grin formed on her face, she raised a hoof to deal a crushing blow to her student’s skull. But it was blocked by Twilight quickly conjuring a force field. Perhaps it wasn’t a wise idea to have given her that pitcher.
“This isn’t you!” Twilight shouted.
Celestia cackled, “Of course, this is me! It’s only now that I have decided to stop hiding it. No more plans, no more second chances, no more getting other ponies to do my dirty work, and no more picking unworthy successors! It’s time to do what I should have done from the very beginning!”
Twilight, both hurt and confused, looked at her former mentor, “What do you mean ‘unworthy successors’?”
It was another day in Canterlot as Celestia went about on her daily trot. In addition to it being a very effective way of seeing how everypony was doing, it helped take her mind off her many regrets. From banishing her own sister when she turned into Nightmare Moon to her own pupil running away to another world simply because she wanted to be a princess sooner than Celestia had planned. While it was annoying that a key element to her plan had gone rogue, Celestia knew that Sunset had been a poor choice for her replacement anyway. She had too much of an ego problem, something Celestia should keep an eye out for when looking for Sunset’s replacement.
As luck would have it, a massive dragon popped out of the roof of the entrance exam room. Curious as to what’s going on, Celestia made her way towards the room. Inside the room was a small unicorn filly uncontrollably blasting magic left, right, and centre. Getting closer to the filly, Celestia gently placed her hoof on the filly’s shoulder and everything went back to normal.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the filly apologized, “I didn’t mean to-”
“You have a very special gift,” Celestia said softly, “I don’t think I’ve ever come across a unicorn with your raw abilities.”
That was a lie. The only other unicorn Celestia knew of who was that powerful was her own former pupil. But the filly before her had one thing Sunset lacked: Humility.
“But you need to learn to tame these abilities through focused study,” Celestia continued, “Twilight Sparkle, I’d like to make you my own personal protege here at the school.”
Impressed with her faithful student’s many feats of magic and friendship, ranging from freeing Luna of her corruption to having Discord voluntarily change his chaotic ways (after a brief instance of turning him into stone, of course), Celestia teleported Twilight to a secret dimension only Celestia knew of. Even though Celestia only used this secret dimension whenever she was bored of being cooped up in her castle all day and/or wasn't in the mood to interact with the commoners. Or if she felt like spying on ponies.
“Where am I?” Twilight asked, “What is this place?”
“Congratulations, Twilight,” Celestia said supportively, “I knew you could do it.”
Twilight was befuddled by the sudden situation, “I don’t understand. What did I do?”
“You did something today that’s never been done before,” Celestia replied, “Something a great unicorn like Star-Swirl the Bearded was not able to do, because he did not understand friendship like you do.”
That was a lie. While she was right in saying her own mentor knew nothing about friendship (otherwise, he would have made an effort to negotiate with every fiend he faced), she knew for a fact that one does not simply ascend to alicornhood just by creating new forms of magic. One must either be born an alicorn or be ascended by Celestia herself. She ought to know, she was the one that elevated Cadence from a pegasus to the Princess of Love. She would have made Cadence her successor right then and there but, since she was a pegasus instead of a unicorn, her magical abilities were very limited with the only spell she was good at being the one she accidentally made herself.
Which was a shame because, up until Twilight’s arrival, a love princess would have worked wonders for Celestia’s plan.
“So you see, Twilight,” Celestia explained as she circled her successor, “I had worked really hard for Equestria to bask in an age of harmony. Given how long it was, I honestly thought it would last forever. That I had finally proven Star-Swirl wrong!”
“What are you talking about?” Twilight asked, still confused by her kind mentor’s sudden turn to cruelty.
“Ever since I banished my own sister to the moon, I realized Star-Swirl’s ‘once a villain, always a villain’ mentality was wrong,” Celestia replied, “And with your sudden success in making friends out of enemies, I figured I was no longer needed as the ruler of Equestria. That I can finally rest after centuries of ponies being angry with each other for the smallest of reasons. Not all the ponies were angry at that time but the small minority of angry ponies fighting each other was growing bigger and harder to ignore. Then the Cozy Glow incident happened and then Discord released her and Tirek from Tartarus which caused the Windigoes to return.”
“But Discord meant well!” Twilight exclaimed, “And while it was wrong to throw Cozy Glow in Tartarus without trial, I did try and get her to change her ways.”
“No, you didn’t!” Celestia spat at Twilight, “All you did was say how bad you felt about not teaching her why it’s wrong to make friends for the sake of power.”
“Then why didn’t you teach her that?!” Twilight retorted.
Celestia lifted Twilight up from the ground and socked her right in the jaw, which sent her flying halfway across Silver Shoals.
“If I was capable of getting ponies and other creatures to reform willingly, wouldn’t you think I would have done so already?” Celestia asked haughtily, “In fact, what would I have needed with you and your friends?”
Due to the fact that she was halfway across Silver Shoals, Twilight was unable to hear Celestia’s rhetorical question. Annoyed at her sudden lack of an audience, Celestia flew all the way up in the air and whaled on Twilight.
“As I was saying,” Celestia continued to monologue, “I tried to use different methods from Star-Swirl and, for a time, succeeded. I thought the Windigo incident would be enough to stop everypony from judging each other based on race. That it was just a hiccup in the grand scheme of things. So when it looked like everypony was about to fall back into old habits, I spread pieces of Chrysalis’ throne all over Equestria so everypony can’t use their magic. Unfortunately, that made the situation worse.”
“Ya think?” Twilight dryly asked.”
“However, with no magic, nopony can stand up against me as I use the old way of doing things. I shall cleanse Equestria of these thankless, ungrateful, little SHITS!” Celestia exclaimed before cackling like a loon.
Twilight gasped. She couldn’t tell what was more shocking. The fact that Celestia had gone crazy or the fact that she said a swear word.
“And if you won’t help me, fine!” Celestia shouted before beating the living shit out of Twilight, “What’s a couple more centuries?”
Celestia continued to beat the living shit out of Twilight.
“I can always start again!” Celestia exclaimed before continuing to beat the living shit out of Twilight, “Find another protege to take my place!”
Celestia had beaten Twilight so thoroughly that her hooves were caked in blood. Also, she knocked out some of Twilight’s teeth.
“I don’t even know why we’re having this discussion!” Celestia exclaimed as she once again started to beat the living shit out of Twilight, “We will outlast every insignificant being on the planet! We’ll live to see this world crumble to dust and BLOW AWAY! You already know from experience that everypony you ever loved will be gone!”
In her hubris, and because she was about to cave Twilight’s skull in, Celestia failed to notice the lavender unicorn behind her that was wielding a Twilicane. With a swift stroke of the Twilicane, Izzy gave Celestia a compound elevated skull fracture. As Celestia fell down, Twilight looked at her unconscious former mentor before looking at Izzy. It shouldn’t have worked considering Celestia was wearing a helmet, but Twilight was thankful it did work. Now all she needed to do was recover from her injuries before Celestia recovered from hers.
“Than...Ou…” Twilight said through her mangled face.
“No problem,” Izzy said happily, “Say, do you wanna join me and my friends on a jewel heist?”