The Castle of Friendship
1:14 P.M.
“Come out! We know you’re in there! If you’re not out here in one minute, we’re blasting down the door!”
Spike blew fire on the hastily-written letter, sending it off to Princess Celestia. Hopefully, she’d get to Ponyville before the stormtroopers broke in. The next minute passed in tense silence.
“Alright, you had your chance! Brothers! Blast this door –”
Twilight cast the spell she had been preparing, covering the castle in a purple bubble.
“You think a shield will stop us? Make your peace with whatever gods you may worship, you monster! We’ll get to you, even if it takes us a whole month!”
Had she heard that right? They thought she was the monster? What could have possibly made them believe that?
As energy bolts began slamming into the shield, she decided that it didn’t really matter. They wanted to kill her, and from what she had seen of humans so far, she doubted she’d get anywhere by trying to talk to the violent creatures.
The dome quickly began to crack and splinter under the immense power of hundreds of military-grade blaster rifles. It took less than five minutes for the determined assault to cause the shield to shatter and evaporate, knocking Twilight to the ground in exhaustion. Before the stormtroopers could turn their weapons on the door, however, a new shield appeared around the castle. This one wasn’t purple, but instead light blue. Twilight looked up to see Starlight Glimmer, her horn glowing brightly and her face contorting from the strain. “Wha–?” Twilight rasped out. “Starlight? What are you doing? They’re just here for me; you should be hiding!”
Starlight’s grimace turned into a thin smile. “Come on, Twilight. I may be new to this whole ‘friendship’ thing, but I understand it well it enough to know that a friend doesn’t abandon somepony who needs her help.”
Twilight smiled back. “Thanks. You are a good friend.” Nothing else needed to be said.
Starlight’s shield didn’t hold any longer than Twilight’s, and the collapse of the shield and unicorn was shortly followed by a crash as blasterfire ripped the door off its hinges. A few moments later, nine stormtroopers burst into the room. Starlight and Spike each had three blasters leveled at their faces, and two of the troopers hoisted Twilight onto her hind legs, tightly gripping her forelegs. The last human pointed his blaster at her with one hand and raised the other to the side of his helmet. “Commander! We’ve got the murdering slime at my position. She didn’t put up any further resistance. That Force shield must’ve really taken it out of her. We also have two other prisoners, her unicorn student and infant dragon assistant.”
What?! “Murdering”?! What the hay is he talking about?!
In short order, the room was packed from wall to wall with stormtroopers. One of them stepped forwards, the trooper aiming at Twilight stepping to the side to let his commander stand directly in front of her. A few seconds of silence passed before the human spoke. “Twilight Sparkle. I’m CC-8156. I’ll be your judge, my brothers will be your jury, and CL-7382 has requested the honor of being your executioner, should you be found guilty. You stand before me today accused of several tens of counts of murder. Unfortunately, we lack an exact number for how many innocents you’ve slaughtered, but it’s more than enough to damn you. How do you plead?”
CC-8156? CL-7382? I know humans have weird names, but those don’t even sound like names at all! “Not guilty, of course! Not that it’ll mean anything in this sham of a trial. I’ve never killed anypony, and you know it.”
“Really? Because we have testimony for your role in the Massacre of Neighvember Eleventh, in the First Year of Harmony. Do you, then, dispute the claim that you had many clones of Pinkamena Diane Pie herded up, and that you then personally took their lives?”
“Excuse me?! That’s what this is about? They didn’t have lives to take! They were just copies!”
A dark murmur rippled through the crowd of humans. “Are you saying,” CC-8156 asked slowly, “that ‘they weren’t real ponies’?”
Twilight didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Umm… Yes?”
She guessed by the armored hand that struck her across the face and the shouts of rage and hate that erupted from the stormtroopers that she had said exactly the wrong thing. “You self-righteous filth!” he shouted at her. “You don’t even like killing incredibly dangerous animals, but clones don’t receive so much as a second thought?! You heartless monster.”
“I don’t see why you care. Even assuming they were real ponies, it’s not like you humans seem to be very bothered by mass killing.”
“Ordinarily, that would be true. But this happens to be an issue that’s quite near and dear to our hearts. Brothers! Show her your face!”
Twilight had about half a second to wonder about that strange phrasing before the stormtroopers reached up as one and pulled off their helmets. Her jaw practically hit the floor. All humans still looked basically the same to her, and there were certainly some variations among the ones currently standing in front of her – many hair colors and styles, slight differences in skin tones, and a staggering assortment of scars and misshapen noses – but it was obvious that they were all copies of the same human. Their basic head shapes were identical, and they all had the same brown eyes – eyes that now held looks of absolute loathing.
“We’re all clones, too, you schutta. Are you going to fight back now? Slaughter us without mercy or the slightest hint of regret? We aren’t ‘real people,’ after all, so why should our deaths weigh on your conscience? There may be hundreds of us, but why should even that number bother you if we don’t deserve to exist in the first place?”
“But I… But they… No! They weren’t real ponies! They couldn’t have been! They… They didn’t have personalities! They weren’t like you at all!”
“Oh, really? And how long did these clones live before you killed them?”
“I didn’t kill anypo–”
“Just answer the damned question!”
If Twilight hadn’t been held in place, she would have scurried away from him. She had first thought she had encountered the greatest possible extent of human hate when she listened to General Aerin’s ranting. She thought the same thing again when she looked into Inquisitor Valerious’s eyes. Now, she started to think that humans had no limit to their hatred at all. “A few hours,” she whimpered.
The expressions on the clones’ faces morphed into utter shock and horror. For a long moment, CC-8156 just stared at her, gaping. Then his jaw set and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll just assume, for your sake, that they emerged fully grown, and you weren’t murdering children. Did they have any implanted memories or knowledge?”
“What? No, I don’t think –”
“Then of course they didn’t have personalities! They didn’t have any experiences to shape their personalities from! You might as well have been slaughtering newborns, you sick kark! People are more than just their genetics, scumbag. They’re shaped by their lives – lives you didn’t give them the chance to have. I think we’ve heard enough. Apparently, the clones were making a nuisance of themselves, and if that was how you normally dealt with nuisances, we wouldn’t care so much. But it wasn’t. You responded especially brutally just because they were clones and you considered them unworthy of life. And we’re not going to just accept that. So what say you, my brothers? Are you ready to hand down your verdict?”
“GUILTY!” came the cry from the crowd.
He nodded once, apparently satisfied. “The jury has spoken. Before I hand down your sentence, do you have any last words for this court?”
“I… I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?” Twilight begged, tears streaming down her cheeks.
He was unmoved. “No. ‘Sorry’ won’t bring back the dead.”
“Killing her won’t, either!” Spike protested from the side.
CC-8156 glanced in his direction. “No, it won’t,” he admitted, “but it will bring a sense of closure, a knowledge that a horrible being has faced justice for her crimes.” He turned back to Twilight. “CL-7382 had some… creative… ideas of what we should do to you, but I’ve decided that you don’t deserve to be treated like anything special. You’ll receive the usual punishment for mass murder. Twilight Sparkle, I hereby sentence you to death by firing squad. You shall be bound and taken from this place into the town square, where your crimes shall be read aloud for all the people to hear. You shall then be stood against a wall, whereupon a specially-chosen squad shall fire into you until you are dead. Thus is the judgement of this court.”
Two tall figures walked up behind the stormtroopers. While Twilight couldn’t see them clearly through the tears in her eyes, she recognized the regal – and quietly furious – voice perfectly. “You will do no such thing. Let. Her. Go.”