by Fuzzyfurvert
~~~
This was too much.
Twilight looked over the teetering stack of sealed envelopes at the reference sheet she had pulled from Cadance’s file. That first case she had opened was actually the last in a long line of cases that all seemed to stem from the same incident. The Canterlot v Mi Amore Cadenza case was the final indictment, but it lacked details other than the sentence handed down by the presiding judge.
Mandatory seroetoninergic medication supplements and frequent psychoanalysis by a trained professional.
That explained a few of the oddities Twilight could recall from her foalhood where Cadance was concerned. It wasn’t enough, however, to sate her curiosity.
Twilight dumped the stack of court cases on the wide table she had claimed as her own in the Judicial Authority library. She spread them out before herself and arranged them according to the name of the involved ponies and the severity of the charges as made apparent by the official seal placed on it.
As her eyes flicked over the files, one name jumped out at her. Twilight could feel a hint of bile rise in her throat as she sat back and pulled the envelope marked ‘Sparkle’ toward herself.
“I got caught in a rainshower. On my way back.”
Cadance shivered as she dumped frigid spring water over her head. Her crown and other royal vestments sat on a stump nearby as she sat in the small stream, her long tail swept in front of her by the lazy current. The cold water soothed the remaining heat between her legs and cleared the sleep from her mind. Her left hoof was going to be sore in the morning from the unexpected workout.
“I landed. Yeah, and stepped in mud. That’s why I had to wash up before coming back.”
Cadance sighed. Her ponies would believe that flimsy fib, but Shining was going to be on to her the moment he laid eyes on her. The best way to get past the uncomfortable part would be to face it head on.
She was going to have to go to his office first thing.
Cadance stood and shook herself off. Her hairdresser was going to have a fit, but there was no fixing herself any better than she had, out in the field. She rolled her left wrist gently and tested her weight on it. There was a slight twinge of pain, but nothing that would keep her from walking once she returned home. Cadance levitated her vestments and saddlebags over, and spread her wings.
“I hope Shinny isn’t in the middle of anything important.”
Twilight ran her tongue over her dry lips. The case file in her hooves was pretty thick but she wasn’t interested in all its gory details. She just needed to know what happened. What had Cadance done that it had affected so many ponies - her own family included?
Twilight’s eyes scanned the document, page by page. Years of practice allowed her to skim the contents, read without really absorbing anything until she found a word, date or phrase she was looking for. It didn’t take very long.
The incident had happened before Twilight’s own birth by almost a year. Cadance would have been about ten or eleven at the time. If she was remembering correctly, that would have been about a year after Cadance had become an alicorn.
The testimonies from her parents and brother were oddly...vague. It seemed as if they holding something back, even under oath. She could understand it with Shining, he would have been no more than twelve. But her parents? Twilight scratched her head with her wing wrist and flipped the pages back to the beginning, matching up the events her family described.
According to testimony, it happened right after sundown on a Friday. Her parents and brother had been at home, her mother and father inside while Shining must have been playing in the yard. There was an explosion? No. Some sort of magical discharge that originated from the lane that wove through the residential area where her family home sat. None of them saw the actual discharge, just a flash of pale pink that washed over everything.
Shining’s statements said he had stopped playing and wandered toward the front gate to see what had caused the display. He - and apparently several of their neighbors - found Cadance sitting in the middle of the road with a dazed look on her face and a lingering glow radiating from her body. She didn’t respond to anypony for a short time and then every one of the neighbors returned to their homes, also with dazed expressions.
Twilight blinked. They all returned home and left Cadance in the street with her brother? She re-read Shining’s testimony again. Yep. He had said they just left, returned to their homes with quote, funny looks on their faces, end-quote.
Weird.
Twilight flipped back to her parents’ statements. He mentioned noticing the magical discharge but didn’t apparently think it warranted immediate attention. They waited about a half hour or so and then came out to look for her brother. They found him and Cadance playing together under the street lamps. Twilight frowned. She remembered her parents always being strict about curfew her entire foalhood. Things must have been different back then.
But that didn’t answer the question at the center of her investigation. What was Cadance’s crime? Magical discharge was fairly normal in unicorns. Learning to control it was something most developed before they even reached middle school. Perhaps, due to Cadance having been born a pegasus, when she became an alicorn that she had no idea what was going on and discharged accidentally?
There were several other families on her street that had foals that were the same age as Twilight. She’d gone to school with many of them. A brief second glance over the files on the table turned up more names that she recognized now. A few of those ponies had been her friends when she was younger. It was a funny thing back then since so many of them even shared the same birthday with her. Each year they would throw a giant combo-party for everypony. For a moment, Twilight wondered what those old friends might be up too.
Twilight bite her lip and flipped to the last page in the file. She wasn’t going to get any closer to the truth if she kept getting lost in her thoughts. The last page held the details she wanted. It mentioned the sentencing that was brought down in the mass case and spelled out the charge: Mental and Emotional Manipulation on Unwilling Ponies and Endangerment of Foals by Magical Means.
The endangerment charge was probably harmless and only there because Shining had been there when the discharge happened. But the magical manipulation charge? That was serious business. Manipulating a pony’s mind with magic was very illegal, even if the other party was willing. It was, thankfully a very rare talent. One which it was well known that Cadance possessed.
Twilight sat back and let the paperwork fall to the table top. She stretched her wings idly as she let everything sink in. She felt kind of thirsty. Maybe it would be a good time for a break and grab a soda and -!
“Oh my Faust!” Twilight rocked forward violently and knocked several of the folders from the table as she scrambled about looking for the testimonial page. Her breathing sped up as she tossed unimportant files and folders aside.
The date. She needed to know the date. It couldn’t, just couldn’t line up that perfectly!
She found it. Twilight’s eyes locked in place, reading the date over and over as her mind put all the dots together. The time of the incident, her parents’ unspecified actions during the thirty minutes before they found Shining and Cadance playing, her childhood neighbors, all families with foals that had the same or almost the same birthday.
It was the only thing that made sense. It could be the only reason Cadance had been charged and found guilty of mental manipulation and why she wasn’t doing a life sentence in prison. It was the only reason the Princess herself would step in and make sure none of this ever came to light.
It was too much.
Twilight could feel her vision narrowing, her eyes still locked on the date. It was too much. The paper shook as her magic field sputtered and guttered out. It was too much.
It was too much for Twilight Sparkle as her eyes rolled back and everything went dark. She was out before she hit the ground.