Chapter 90
The kitchen was dark, but not deserted. Sumac peered through the gloom, trying to see who was there in the dark, and saw a tall winged figure. That narrowed things down. He blinked, thirsty and feeling a bit disoriented from having a nightmare. As it turned out, stuffy Princess Cadance was a bit more necessary than he thought.
He approached Twilight with slow hesitation, his eyes locked up on her, and he could see that she was watching him. There was a feeling of being self conscious lurking in his mind, but he couldn’t say why he felt that way. There was no point in asking if Twilight couldn’t sleep, as the answer was obvious. The how and the why, however, those were the things worth pursuing and Sumac was certain that he could talk it out of her. It wasn’t to satisfy his own curiousity, oh no, Twilight looked troubled and he wanted to help her. This was a selfless, altruistic act on his part.
“You don’t look happy,” Sumac remarked as he climbed up into a high backed chair and then got situated at the table. Using his magic, he got himself a glass of water, which he chilled, and then set down in front of himself.
“You don’t look sleepy,” Twilight replied, stating the obvious in return.
“Princess Twilight Snarkle.” Sumac lifted up his glass of water and took a drink as Twilight let out a few snorts of reluctant laughter. Setting his glass down, he studied Twilight the same way he studied any pony, and he did nothing to hide it, as Twilight also seemed to be sizing him up. For whatever reason, one word came to mind when he looked at Twilight, and that word was distraught. Daring Do had been ravaged by grief when she had found the ruins ransacked, looted, and she was distraught. The book painted a pretty good picture of what distraught was. Daring Do, Crown Agent Crash, and Crown Agent Cocoa had then hunted down those responsible, and many, many mooks had been injured that day. He took another drink and Twilight did the same.
“You seemed pretty happy earlier,” Sumac whispered, his words still somehow filling the dim kitchen and dining area. “You even teased my mom and you laughed. Were you being just as dishonest as your parents?”
“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” Twilight asked and as she made a few, rapid angry blinks at Sumac. The hardness in her face eased just a tiny bit and she added, “I did what I did for the benefit of my parents. I behaved like a princess… more or less. I accepted the situation with grace and aplomb, and I kept all of my own feelings stuffed inside. At that moment, I couldn’t exactly accuse my father of cheating on my mother, because that wasn’t what happened, but the thought stayed in my mind. Mind you, I could have exploded right then and there, and everypony would have accepted it, but I know that everypony present would resent me for it later. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle, and a certain level of decorum is demanded from me. Stars, I was happy when Luna finally went away and I could breathe again.”
“I know how you feel.” Sumac, emboldened, looked Twilight in the eye as he spoke.
“How in the world could you possibly know how I feel?” Twilight demanded.
Eyes narrowing, Sumac bit back an angry retort, knowing that his barbs carried magic. Twilight was upset, and not herself. Sucking in a deep breath, Sumac held his anger in check. “Because, I know what it is like to have everypony expect something from you. I’ve barely even had time to come to terms with my own talent, my own cutie mark, I’ve hardly even had the time to learn about it and what it does, and everypony expects something from me. Ponies keep trying to hijack whatever my destiny is.”
Twilight’s ears drooped.
“Even you.” Sumac rested both of his front hooves against the edge of the table. “I meet my grandmother for the first time and even with everything else going on, all of the hurt and bad stuff, she’s plotting about how I could be a career politician. You want me as a research battery. Princess Celestia wants me as a war machine. I don’t know what Princess Luna wants, but I know she wants something, and I’m positive I’ll find out about it soon enough. Discord wants me to cause chaos. Even Applejack and Big Mac want something from me… I have to uphold the Apple reputation and live down my father’s shame… and everything SUCKS!”
The force of Sumac’s words caused Twilight to jerk her head back.
“So yeah, I sorta understand what it is like to hold everything in and not have a temper tantrum, even when you really want to,” Sumac finished. Lifting his glass, he took a drink. Sumac’s eyes took on a furious, half-awake glaze and his ears pinned back against his skull. “I think you have it a lot easier though. Me, I’ve gotta be worried about being punished if I upset the wrong ponies. I have nightmares about falling and being spanked. I just had one. I have to hold all of this in, hold all of this back, and I’m not even allowed to complain about my situation without one of the adults around me lecturing me and telling me I need to behave. I can’t even run my mouth to blow off steam! You, you’re allowed to do whatever you want, even if you did lose your temper, you don’t have to worry about being spanked or stood in a corner.”
“It’s not going to be easy.” Twilight, her eyes darting around the room, tried to shift the conversation away from anger. “I have to somehow make peace with all of this without hurting Trixie’s feelings. I have to make her feel loved, welcomed, and accepted, because that is what Is expected of me. Plus”—Twilight’s shifty eyes now focused upon Sumac—“Trixie really is a dear, dear friend, and I would never want to hurt her intentionally. It’s not like I can just shove her away from me while I try to figure all of this out. Now, I feel obligated to keep her closer to me than ever. I can’t even imagine what this is doing to her.”
“She’s gonna act like everything is fine,” Sumac replied, “and then cry about it when she thinks nopony is looking. But… it’s harder now, because we’re not on the road, and she can’t get away from me and everypony else for equinal space. I’d find her sometimes, crying when she thought she was alone. It always confused me because I didn’t know what to do or how to fix it. I hated seeing it.”
“Nopony wants to see their mother cry.” Twilight hunched over and her gaze dropped down to the table.
“And that’s why you grabbed my mother and made all nice, to keep your mother from crying and feeling bad.”
“Yup.” Twilight let heave a mighty sigh. “Twilight, the dutiful daughter that lives up to her mother’s expectations. Twilight, the dutiful sister, who had to just accept her brother’s wedding after being told about it at the last minute. Twilight, who always has some emergency just dumped on her and is expected to behave a certain way without complaint, and to always act with grace and dignity. Twilight, who sometimes senses when things are wrong, and even with my record for sensing trouble, gets lectured for blowing things out of proportion, finding tempests in teapots, and making mountains out of molehills.”
Sumac, who didn’t understand everything being said, did understand that Twilight was bitter about it.
“I can’t help but feel that there is a lot more to be said about this whole situation,” Twilight muttered as her eyes narrowed, “But I don’t think the whole truth is going to come out. So I’m stuck just accepting everything how it is, no matter if I like it or not. Tomorrow, in the morning, I’ll smile at breakfast and pretend that everything is wonderful. I’ll be the Twilight everypony expects me to be. It’ll only be hard at first, but if I keep doing it long enough, it becomes routine. That’s the trick, Sumac. That is how you survive a lifetime of others having high expectations of you.”
“And what about your expectations of me?” Sumac slumped down in his chair. “If I follow your advice, you’ll know that I’m just leading you on and telling you what you want to hear.”
“You know what, Sumac, what do you want?” Twilight asked point blank. “What direction do you want your life to go?”
Put on the spot, Sumac had no snarky reply, no youthful sarcasm, he had no angry retorts. With everything stripped away, all he had was honesty. “I think I’d like to learn more about becoming a mortician. I’d like to learn about the funerary sciences.”
Closing her eyes, Twilight let out a long overblown sigh. “See, Sumac,” she said as she opened her eyes, “when you say something like that, I am under instruction to divert you away from such trivial choices. I have a long complicated list of instructions all about you, and when you come up with an interest like funerary sciences, I am supposed to give you an inspiring talk about the greater good… about the obligation that you have to exploit your own talent to its greatest possible potential. I’m supposed to give you a long inspiring speech about how precious you are, how valuable you are, and how certain interests are just throwing your remarkable talent away. I am supposed to stroke your ego. I am tasked with making certain that you reach the pinnacle of what you are capable of, and then convince you that it was what you wanted all along.”
In silence, Sumac stewed, but he appreciated Twilight’s honesty.
“And all I can think about every time I look at that horrid list of how to adjust your priorities is how I wanted to grow up and be a librarian in Canterlot.” Twilight sat there, blinking, and looking deflated. “But no student of Princess Celestia ever grows up to be a librarian in Canterlot. Nope. But I came close. I was the librarian of Ponyville for a time, and I was happy.”
Realising that he was privy to Twilight’s regrets, Sumac suddenly felt very small and insecure. Princesses had princess sized regrets, and he couldn’t imagine living under the crushing burden of such a thing.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed and now, her voice took on a low growl as she spoke. “You know what, Sumac, if you want to learn more about being a mortician and getting a feel for the funerary sciences, I am going to make that happen. Damn the consequences.”
Taken aback, worried, even fearful about Twilight’s sudden change of demeanour, Sumac squirmed in his seat. “Why? Why would you do that? Won’t that cause you and the other princesses to fight?”
“Yep.” Twilight sat there with her lower lip now protruding. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is, you’re smart enough to know that you are being shafted, and I’m having some troubles with my conscience over the issue.”
In the back of his mind, his thoughts tumbled about and Sumac knew that some kind of reciprocation was necessary. Twilight was sticking her own neck out for him. She was trying to be his friend, at the risk of her own standing with her other friends and associates. He had trouble taking it all in, understanding the sheer scope of it, but he knew that Twilight was about to be in trouble. Big trouble.
“Twilight…”
“Yes, Sumac?”
“If you ever need my abilities as a sorcerer, I’ll be glad to help. It’s only fair that we help each other. This means a lot to me. I don’t even know if this is what I’ll end up doing with my life, but I want the chance to learn. I like having the option open. Who knows, maybe I’ll find it’s super boring and I’ll want to become a hero someday.”
Outside, wolves howled.
“When the others wake up, and they will soon, we’ll have to continue to pretend that everything is normal, Sumac. I’ll have to pretend that everything is fine and that I feel good about everything, and you’ll have to pretend that you’re okay with the fact everypony wants to take advantage of you. I wish I could make things better for the both of us, but the best I can do is slip you a few books. For now, it’s best to continue acting as though you don’t have any focused interests or goals in life. If we can give others the appearance that you’re still open to fulfilling their desires, things will go easier on both of us.”
“I understand, Twilight.”
“And that bothers me,” Twilight admitted with a whispered confession. “I think that’s why I feel so guilty. You do understand, and you’re just stuck living with it. Just like I am.”
“Twilight?”
“Yes?”
“I have a question. A tough one that I’ve been wanting to ask for a while.”
“Go ahead.” Twilight was starting to think that a tough question was just what she needed right now.
“Starlight Glimmer can take cutie marks away, leaving ponies plain and unremarkable. You cast a spell and caused all of your friends cutie marks to switch with each other.” Sumac drew in a deep breath and gave some serious thought to his next words before he said them. He felt his frogs go sweaty.
“We know that cutie marks can be manipulated.” Sumac sat there, blinking, troubled by what was on his mind, his next horrendous hypothesis. “The evidence of cutie mark manipulation is pretty easy to see at this point. We know it exists. So, Twilight, what happens if a pony comes along that can shape destiny by using magic to give a pony a cutie mark and thus take control of that pony and their future?”
Twilight’s mouth fell open.
“If cutie marks can be switched or taken away, that means that destiny is mutable, right?” Sumac tapped his hooves on the edge of the table and stared at his glass of water. “What if somepony figures this out and begins to manipulate the future? Would we even know what was going on? After I asked a bunch of ponies about destiny, I started thinking about all of this and it’s left me troubled. I think about it when I’m laying in bed and can’t sleep.”
“Sumac, I don’t even know what to say…”
Welcome to Horrendous Hypothesis v2.0.
Also, Spike knew all along. 
For the people paying attention to the minute details, congratulations!
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7741091 He could be friends with Tarnished's Grrr
7741146
Dandelia isn't even aware that she is being offensive. To be honest, she's hardly even aware that lesser creatures can be offended.
7741152 Can't wait to hear Boomer learn a full(er...you know what I mean) vocabulary and really give it to Dandy!
...and all you might notice is a constant sense of wrongness, but with the world telling you it's fine, that your mark is your mark, what else could you do but accept it?
Spooky.
7741161 Twilight & Sumac have stepped through the looking glass.
7741161
7741166
Eeyup, that is where my brain went to visit with a renewed sense of horror.
7741173 Scary thought before, how's this for a scenario, Princess Luna, "But sister Darling, I simply cannot raise THAT moon, it ruins the sparkle of the stars and clashes with the curtains in my room."
7741181
Still quite a ways to go. But we are past the halfway point by a good bit.
Some of the implications of Cutie Marks are surprisingly dark. They can generate a kind of mania. Remember the impact of Apple Bloom's Cutie Pox. Or even Petunia Paleo's drive to dig up fossils after she got her mark in the opening to The Fault In Our Cutie Marks. Worrying about someone manipulating destiny and Cutie Marks is a reasonable outgrowth of that.
Remember also that both the good guys and the bad guys could be doing it. If you thought that someone was gong to get a mark that was going to hurt society, or just make them an outcast, would you change it? For example, if someone knew what Tarnished Teapot's mark was going to do, but not how his life was going o turn out, might they not change his mark to save him the trauma that lead to his getting banished from Ponyville, but ultimately deprive the world of one of its heroes.
You know I think Sumac taking things too much out of proportion when it comes to his prospects in life.
7741146
I've been paying maybe too much attention to this... but it's kept like the show, so far, and in the show it is really ambiguous. They have a heart to heart in Enter the Dragon where she expresses how important Spike is to her, but stops short of referring to him as explicit family.
Spike refers to Twilight's parents as Mom and Dad, but they talk more about their real kids than about him, and the time they talked about him it was ambiguous whether they were talking about him like a son or like a particularly intelligent pet.
Pinkie brings up how Spike considers her and the girls like family and he's willing to defend them with his life... and says he's like a very distant relative, which I doubt is how Spike sees it if part of the reason he is willing to put his life on the line for her is that he considers her family.
The entire thing is rather ambiguous. In some ways there are definitely family like interactions... but in many ways it falls short.
But, like this chapter, all of that could be me drilling too deeply, watching the way this is all interacted with too closely. Getting worried about stuff that is significantly better than my fears.
There might even be more positive things I am forgetting to factor in for one reason or another.
And the destiny thing... that's going to at least be involved with the Equalists when their next push gets important isn't it?
And didn't the Centaurs create ponykind? Could they be the architects of what Sumac calls destiny? Or is there another force at play here, the one that is responsible for Tarnished and maybe Sumac himself?
I think the platonic ideal for an adventurer in this setting, for me, is closer to what Sumac appears to.be gravitating toward this chapter (even though he's a kid and has a lot of growing up to do). A passionate person who goes for what they want to do, but is a happy adventurer as well.
Isn't that the basic archetype of the main six anyway? To be people who have rather ordinary lives doing what they are passionate about, but are capable heroes all the same?
7741215
This was discussed in some other story that I only read half of. Not one of Kudzu's. It was (briefly) described as a pony "falling" into their mark to the point they abandoned other parts of life, potentially taking years of targeted therapy to overcome.
7741232 HUZZAH the cupcakes are exponentially gazillioned
Well, now I know why I was bothered by the last chapter so much - once again Kudzu has completely blindsided me with later revelations that change the context of previous events. So, it could be argued that things did move too fast for some of those characters. Next time, I'm just going to shut up and wait and watch.
Now I'm wondering about Pebble. If everypony else wants something from Sumac, what about her? Does she just want a friend/special-somepony or something else? I can't think of anything that would indicate she wants more than just a good friend, but I'm willing to play the "what if" game here.
....and I got nothing.
There is a surprising amount of discussion of manipulation in the Weedverse stories.
- Twilight manipulating Trixie into mentoring Sumac with the paid mentor program.
- Cadence (the ‘busybody’) and her therapists manipulating Gosling and Celestia so they fall in love.
- Celestia (and maybe Twilight Velvet) manipulating Twilight Sparkle into becoming a hero and a Princess instead of a librarian.
- Twilight Sparkle using her school to manipulate Fantastic Foals so that they use their talents to benefit society, and being under instructions (from exactly whom, I wonder) to manipulate Sumac away from 'trivial choices'.
- And now Sumac worrying if someone else is using Cutie Marks to manipulate destiny.
I look forward to multiple in-depth discussions about the ethics of manipulation.
Mien goht, Sumac is a fronking genius!
Sorry about the language, but this is a very horrendous hypothesis.
7741346
The clue was Spike and his reaction. I am really, really glad that some people noticed it.
Didn't Applebloom use a potion to gain a cutie mark but she got several and ponies thought it was cutie pox? How about we imagine what could be done with that after a little more research.
*5 years later*
A pony feels the call of duty and joins the guard. He was a Smith apprentice with the cities mark to prove his correct choice in life. but no, just making armor for the troops isn't enough for him, he wants to wear one.
The training is going OK. He is strong but his dexterity and speed are lacking. That doesn't matter though because today is the day.
The nerds crown jecle in combat science.
The duty mark potion.
One drink, a special training course and you emerge with your secondary mark. Your fighting talent.
He drinks it and takes the course. A breeze.
A towershield is his mark.
His skill with Shields and heavy armor is many times greater than before, he moves as water wearing it.
All thanks to his duty mark.
SOMEONE GET EQUESTRIAN R&D ON THIS!
7741363
Horses manipulate herd behaviour through social conditioning. It is a major part of their psychology. They have one of the most complicated social structures you could imagine, with some arguing that it is right up there with dolphins and greater apes. Horses manipulate each other a great deal for the survival of the herd as a whole.
Bonobos use sex to hold the group together, chimpanzees use violence and social bonding, and horses use social conditioning and manipulation to keep the herd moving as one.
7741366
I have to say, I may have mis-interpreted the following
I was thinking that Spike was simply overwhelmed and went to Twilight looking for comfort. I never got the impression that he was there to try and help calm an inwardly panicking Twilight.
7741181 agreed 1002%
This shit is hugemongous
7741420
I drew my inspiration from Lesson Zero. Spike was the only who knew that Twilight was losing her marbles one by one.
Holy hell....
This chapter Is the push that's gonna have me go back and reread most of the Weedverse.
This... I don't even know what to comment here because if there were clues i am currently clueless.
Revilations aside it's nice to see a more equine side to Twilight that isn't all smiles and going along with a greater destiny.
What is the world coming to, when you can't even trust your butt anymore?
So I've been reading this story for the last 4 days, and I've just catched up to the latest chapter. And holy hell what a chapter to end on.
So now I'm going to look through your other stuff and start another of your stories because that was the most amazing fic I've read in a long time.
Hypothesis, now with 2x the Horrendous.
See, this is why I can't believe that destiny has much influence in MLP. Personally I believe that only increadibly major events like NMM's return can be considered destined, and that prophecies only happen for events almost certain to happen. It would (presumably) have taken a tremendous amount of resources to affect NMM's return in any way. I believe that ponies themselves are wrong when they describe cutie marks as part of their destiny. I feel like it is more a window to their soul and a manifestation of some of their desires. That's why when Twilight switched the marks around, they were compelled to actions they couldn't complete. It wasn't their new destiny, it was just a desire they didn't have forced on them. I feel that if it was truly destiny manifested, they would been able to fully do their new "talents".
Just my opinion on the subject.
7741215
There's the real question, though. If both the good guys and the bad guys are manipulating destiny to shape the future... how do you tell the good from the bad? Can you? At what point does subverting the destiny of others move from good to bad? Does it ever?
We saw what happened when Starlight manipulated time so that the Bearers never became friends. A seemingly inconsequential change that effectively ended the world. Perhaps the question is not whether or not it can be "good" to manipulate destiny, but whether the rewards can ever outweigh the risks.
Missing quotation mark.
So... bascially... Sumac just summed it up like this:
7741266
"Falling into your cutie mark," is an idea Estee has mentioned in more than one of her stories. Maybe you got it from one of them.
7741266
Sounds like A Mark of Appeal.
Damn Sumac, savage much. Guess I can't blame him. He's too young to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. That and he's too smart for his own good.
Argh, no. Damnit Twilight, I hate this kind of selfish thinking. It doesn't matter what he wants to do if he has some natural talent that can save everyone else.
If someone was born with some kind of magical nuke that fixes all the problems, and when it's needed they go: "Nah I decided not to do anything with that so I didn't develop it or anything. Instead I'm a sanitation employee! Being a janitor is great!" while cities burn down and heroes are being knocked aside every other hour and the nation hangs on the brink, good job! You chose one person's comfort over the lives and livelihoods of everyone else that person could have saved had no one stopped them from picking up the mop and bucket and doing something meaningful with what they were given.
It puts everyone else at that person's mercy. Yes, maybe they'll find being a janitor sucks and go become the hero they were meant to be. But what if they DON'T. Great, everyone dies. You can't allow personal interests to interfere this greatly with the protection of Equestria, and to some extent the whole world. No one is that important that their personal wants matter more than the world. No one. Ever. Twilight stop being dumb, and don't paint the rest of the leadership as bad for wanting to guide him to being useful.
Going to comment before going to the next chapter.
I can't help but think that Sumac learning about a morticians trade could end up saving everyone. Especially considering Grogar's abilities. I'm sure it's connected and when it becomes obvious, there is going to be a lot of hoof-facing going on.
I don't think Twilight is going to be sleeping for a while.
God damnit. While these moments in the story are glorious, and show so much about the characters (i feel for Twi right now) why must it always be at my expense?
First it was magic running out, and now that it's possible to shape destiny at one's whim with just good intel and a decent lifespan? You sure this is ponies and not CIA?
.... Gambit pileups all around. The main part that bothers me about all this is that I can't be sure Twilight DIDN'T just manipulate Sumac into offering her his talents as a sidejob.
Also, yeah, mark manipulation is a fascinating concept. Dark applications speculated above, I'll go the other way for a change.
Just imagine Equestrian society after finding a way to swap or change cutie marks at a whim.
Decide to go into a field of study. Apply for a relevant mark. Get mark, depending on supply and demand.
Imagine being able to decide what it is you're talented in.
How did Spike know?
FUCK!
4 years later, and that fucking paragraph.
That... that makes my heart ache. And knowing the future of this verse... how it’s all written in ink... fuck man.