//------------------------------// // Realization // Story: My Little Death Note // by Caberea //------------------------------// All Twilight could do was stand there, shocked. “Star…” “I don’t want to hear any of your lectures; I just want to be alone.” Before Twilight could even react, Star had rushed past the door and locked herself in the bedroom. If it had been any other time Twilight would have likely been angry with Star, her bed was in there too, but she understood Star’s need for privacy at a time like this. “Hey! What are you doing?” Twilight forgot that she put Spike to sleep there, and it was with a rather large amount of enthusiasm that Star ejected him from the room. Spike’s landing would have been almost elegant had it not been so completely out of control that it caused him to land on his head. The bruised assistant looked to her with a questioning look. “What was that about?” Twilight mustn’t have looked as bad as she felt if Spike could look at her so casually. “Her mother just died.” “Oh…” A silence fell over them, there wasn’t really much to be said. What was there she could say? If she just ignored it and continued on she would seem heartless. But what else was there that she could do? Lives came and lives went, a pony’s life could be measured in seconds or decades, but everything had to end sometime, and when it did you couldn’t get stuck on that point, you had to move on. Twilight found herself thanking the books she had read for that lesson. Sure, today was a time for sadness, but the next day they would move on, that was how things would always be. As she had found out the hard way, one cannot change the past, or the future, depending on how she looked at it. She would have to leave Star to her mourning for now, yet she couldn’t think of any way to continue the day. Too much had happened in too little time, and all the events still whirled around in her mind, unable to settle down to a definable point. It was, in a way, those events that drove her to her first kill. She left Spike there, still stunned by the silence that had fallen upon them both. She felt it happen almost as if she were in a dream; as if she couldn’t control what she did, but simply performed the actions she had to do. Something in her mind told her that she couldn’t change the future, that she would have reached this point no matter what, that she had to do what she was about to do. That something was in all probability what kept her sane as she wrote her victim’s names in the Death Note. Cogflay, Bruiser, Bugeye; those three would never hurt anypony again. She felt a giddy elation at the feeling of how right what she had done was. And yet it was so wrong. The strange happiness was still in her, the joy of a murderer, yet she now saw what she had done for what it was. She had killed, and this time there was no doubt about it. There could be no denying The Old Man’s words, and she knew that she had their faces in her mind when she wrote those names. She had taken away the lives of three ponies; surely there were ponies that those colts were precious to, just like Star’s mother had been to Star. She had taken them away from their family, their friends, and the world…and yet she couldn’t have felt better about it. What was wrong with her, how could she kill somepony and just feel glad about it? More than glad even, and for some reason she noticed she was stifling a laugh. This wasn’t her, she wasn’t a murder, she wouldn’t have killed them, yet no matter how hard she tried to deny it she had been their killer; and here she was struggling not to laugh. Then it hit her as to why. They had deserved to die, all three of them. That was the only way she could have killed them, if they had truly deserved to die. There had been no stopping it, their actions were wrong, they were wrong. But what if there were more of them? What if there were more ponies like that, more ponies that were too wrong to live in this world, too evil to be allowed to breathe another breath. If there were ponies like that just lying about the streets of Ponyville, then how many more were there in the world? Those ponies didn’t deserve to live, they would not be willing to see the light, and so the light would smite them, and she would be the guiding force of light’s will. She would bring down upon the shoulders of the wicked the wrath of justice, leading the world into a new era of peace. A world of only those whom were pure, a world where peace and justice reigned over the wicked, and so wickedness would cease to be. It would be a perfect world, brought into existence through her selfless work to rid it of evil, despite what the cost to her. It would be her world. “So I see you’ve reconsidered how to handle the Death Note.” The Shinigami’s appearance surprised her, but somehow it seemed that she had always known he was here. As if she had called for him. “Perceptive as always, Old Man. Now tell me, where do I go from here?” Before the Shinigami could recover from being addressed so casually she continued on. “This world is a dark place, too much evil is here, and I’m the only one who can fix it. I stand by what I said earlier; the Death Note is a weapon, and it would be catastrophic if the wrong pony got their hooves on it, so it shall stay here with me. However, I now realize that I cannot simply stand by and watch the evil spread and corrupt this world, I have been given a weapon of the wicked, and against those wicked I shall turn it.” Twilight turned to face The Old Man, and if her eyes didn’t deceive her, she could see him almost shaking where he stood. “Equestria shall know judgment and justice; it shall know the will of light and the cleansing purity that I shall bring. If I am doomed to never ascend to the heavens, then I shall raise the world up to meet it. I shall usher in a new age, a new world, one chosen and shaped to be the pinnacle of perfection.” Twilight paused, breathing heavily, she had never felt like this before, the small voice in her head had risen to a bellow, praising her and filling her with this strange desire. Feeding her thoughts that would have once seemed treasonous and outrageous, but were now both perfect and reasoned. “And I will be the goddess of that new world.” The Old Man’s shaking increased exponentially, seeming as if he were about to collapse, until a booming laughter drew forth from his throat. The sound was somewhere between a shriek and howl, yet to Twilight it seemed almost like music, the approval of the voice inside her growing to match the laughter. “Ryuk was right, ponies can indeed be entertaining.”