Chemistry Chapter 5: The Power of Love
by Fuzzyfurvert
This...this was too much.
How could a pony rack up a record this deep and keep it quiet? How would it be possible? Even the Princesses had their own unofficial watchdog groups. Ponies in place to warn them when they went too far or overstepped their reach. Twilight herself was technically a member of those inner-circle ‘no-ponies.’
She didn’t miss the irony of being in a situation where she would benefit from her own set of neigh sayers.
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 specific details of the actual event other than the sentence handed down by the presiding judge.
Mandatory serotonergic medication supplements and frequent psychoanalysis by a trained professional.
“Serotonergic? That’s mood stabilizing medication.” Twilight tapped her chin as her mind worked. “Mood altering drugs and psychotherapy. What in the name of Faust was Cadance up to?”
That might explain a few of the oddities Twilight could recall from her foalhood where Cadance was concerned. Those weird looks in her eyes. The times Cadance seemed oddly detached from her surroundings. The little things that could be anything, really, like being a teenager and dealing with the responsibilities of new princessdom. But might also including the results of drug use and therapy.
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 was caught in a wild rainshower. On my way back.”
Cadance shivered as she dumped frigid spring water over her head again. Her crown and other royal vestments sat on a stump nearby as she sat in a small, shallow stream outside the cabin she had rested in. Her long tail swept out in front of her like a spill of triple-colored paint by the lazy current. The cold water soothed the heat between her legs and cleared the sleepy fog from her mind. Her left hoof was already starting to ache from the unexpected workout and she knew it would be sore in the morning.
“I landed.” Cadance swallowed and rung her mane out with her magic. “Yeah, and then… I stepped in mud. That’s why I had to wash up before coming back.”
Cadance sighed tiredly. She hoped her ponies would believe that flimsy fib, but Shining was going to be on to her the moment he laid eyes on her. He knew the signs. He’d see her messy fur, smell the heat on her hooves no matter how much she washed. Shining would worry and he would hold her. He would hold her and make everything better. Just like he always did.
Telling Shining about the relapse bothered her. She had her pride still. The best way to get past the uncomfortable part would be to face it head on. Cadance looked at her reflection in the stream and made her decision.
She was going to go to his office first thing and tell him everything. She’d kept the hallucinations to herself. Not even Dr. Open Heart knew yet, but it was getting worse. Shining Armor had been her rock since the beginning. He would understand and he would have a plan.
Cadance stood and shook herself off. Her hairdresser was going to have a fit later, but there was no fixing herself any better than she had. She rolled her left wrist gently and tested her weight on it. There was a slight twinge of pain, but nothing that should keep her from walking once she returned home. Cadance levitated her vestments and saddlebags over, and spread her wings as she lined up a path for her take off.
“I hope Shiny 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 minutia of proceedings and follow ups, evidence collection and spectrum of details that were irrelevant to the heart of the matter. She just needed to know what happened, to read the testimonies of the ponies that were there. What had Cadance done that it had affected so many ponies - her own family included? What did her parents see or hear on that fateful day? Was Shining Armor at home when it happened? Was he witness to his wife’s crimes?
She hesitated as the pin holding the envelope closed folded back to reveal a stack of organized sheets of paper. “You can stop yourself, Twilight. This doesn’t have to go any further.”
Twilight’s hoof twitched as it hovered just off the paper, poised to draw them forth and breach that final barrier of trust. She fought. She tried, but her brain itched. She couldn’t stop now that she was so close. She had to know. The papers slipped out of their manilla cage and closed the bars on her fate.
Twilight’s eyes scanned the documents, page by page of mixed hoofwriting and typeface. 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 to pinpoint the testimonials.
The incident had happened twenty three years ago, predating 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 ascended to become an alicorn.
Twilight frowned as she read. The testimonies from her parents and brother were oddly...vague. It felt as if they holding something back, even under oath. She could understand it with Shining, he would have been no more than twelve at the time. 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 arcane energy 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, that was what it said. He had said they just left, returned to their homes with quote, funny looks on their faces, end-quote.
“Weird. Why would anypony do that?”
Twilight flipped back to her parents’ statements. Her mother’s and father’s recollection of events lined up. They had both been inside at the time. Her mother in the kitchen, cooking. Her father in the den, reading. They both 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?
Twilight scratched her head again. Magical discharge was something she’d mastered before she even started kindergarten. Cadance had even helped her with it on numerous occasions when foal-sitting. All the unicorn foals in the neighborhood had gone through a phase where it happened randomly until they gained control of their horns.
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 more of 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 present 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 another coffee 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.