Placations
As Twilight had come to expect, Applejack was the first to respond. She gave the winged unicorn a look, up and down, her eyes shifting from horror to cautious suspicion. Twilight was mildly confused by that; after all, she’d said she wasn’t Dawn. What reason could Applejack have to be wary of her?
“So...” The farmmare said. Twilight perked her ears and waited for the rest of the sentence, but Applejack appeared content to roll the remaining words around in her mouth. Her jaw opened and closed, and her tongue occasionally ran along her teeth, but no vocalizations were forthcoming. Twilight allowed her fifteen seconds of oral/aural inanity before deciding that that was enough of a chance to freely continue.
“’So…’ what?” The winged unicorn prompted. Applejack blinked.
“So… yer still Twilight?”
“Yes.”
“Twilight Sparkle?”
“Mm’hm.”
“Not Risin’ Dawn? Or any kinda half-Dawn-thingy?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Applejack stared at Twilight for a few more seconds before slapping her hoof to her face.
“Well fuck me sideways with a rusty plowshare…” Twilight, and several of the others, blinked at the curse.
“AJ?” Rainbow asked, her eyes locked on some point on Twilight’s back. The earth pony turned her head to the pegasus, her hoof pressing and rubbing harshly against her brow.
“She’s… tellin’ the truth, fer lack’a a better term. That’s still Twilight. Er, at least, she still thinks’a herself as Twi.”
The unease in the others’ faces shifted. It didn’t abate, nor did it intensify; it just slid between two apparently equally anxiety-inducing foci.
“Is this surprising to you, Applejack?” Twilight asked, rather confused as to the earth pony’s irritation. Her friend gave a shrugging nod.
“Well, if Dawn’d taken y’over it’d explain a few things. Like yer regrowin’ yer wings. An’ yer wantin’ t’kill Celestia.” The farmmare gave a rough sigh. “Ah’d imagine y’couldn’t truthfully call yerself ‘Twilight Sparkle’ if y’d’been taken over by Dawn, though. Which means we all jus’ heard you, Twilight Sparkle, say that y’want t’kill Celestia. An’ that’s rather concernin’, considerin’ that y’said that y’didn’t want t’kill her not ten minutes ago, an’ we blasted y’with th’Elements tryin’ t’get rid’a the thing in yer head that y’said did want t’kill her.” She waved her raised hoof at Twilight as the winged unicorn’s brow furrowed. “Plus, y’know, the wings. Those threw me a bit.”
“I never said that I want to kill Celestia.” Twilight replied, one ear tilted in confusion. One of Applejack’s eyebrows rose, and Twilight gave her another reassuring grin. “I’d love to keep her alive to travel through the proper legal channels and receive an appropriate punishment for her horrific crimes, but I find it incredibly unlikely that she’d be willing to abdicate and submit to a fair trial, or that we’d even be able to arrange a fair trial for her given who she is. Trying to capture her would require an actual fight, which has too much of a risk of failure and would likely cause collateral damage, and that cunt Rising Dawn should be example enough of how horrible trying to gather popular support against her would likely go. So she won’t step down, we can’t make her step down ourselves, and rallying the populace against her has been demonstrated as a really bad idea. I’m not sure what else we can do but take the burden upon ourselves to pop her head like a rotten orange.” Twilight blinked as Fluttershy whimpered. “Probably Luna, too, given that I doubt she’d take Celestia’s death very well. Oh, and Dawn made herself wings because she claimed that she’d made herself an alicorn again; I did so because my back was itchy.”
The horror in everypony’s eyes had been halfway replaced by confusion. Twilight considered this an improvement.
“…alright, sugarcube, let’s jus’ back up a few… thousand… steps or so.” Applejack’s hoof had apparently frozen to her face, given that she had sat down and was now gesturing with her other forehoof. “Why, exactly, d’we need t’get the Princess t’step down or abdicate or die, exactly?”
“Well, it’s not like we can just let her stay in power-“
“Why not? She’s been doin’ fine the last couple millennia or so.”
Twilight stared at the other mare for a few moments before she realized what was wrong. “Oh! OH! You don’t know yet! Oh, no wonder you’re all so freaked out!” Twilight laughed as she swatted herself upside the head. “Faust, I probably sound like I’ve gone completely insane, huh?”
Pinkie, Rainbow, and Applejack nodded rather enthusiastically, while Rarity and Fluttershy were more delayed and subdued. Twilight shook her head.
“Okay, you remember how I told you that Celestia had told me some things, but that I couldn’t tell you about them yet?” She waited for everypony to nod again. “Well I was being stupid. Celestia murdered nearly a thousand ponies and lied about moving the sun.”
More improvement with their expressions; they’d lost every bit of horror and had shifted to complete bafflement.
“Ah… what?”
“Celestia killed or imprisoned anypony that attempted to defy her rule to any degree for two hundred years after she banished Nightmare Moon,” Twilight explained patiently, “and the sun moves by itself.”
The five ponies around her moved past complete bafflement; they looked like they’d just been told that the building blocks of the universe were held together by screaming, hairless primates. Twilight could see their understanding of the world around them shatter behind their eyes, and felt a strong pang of sympathy.
Of course, she’d been alone – worse than alone - when she’d undergone that. They had each other to hold on to, and her to lead them out of it.
Twilight gave them as much time as they needed to recover; she wasn’t sure of the precise time it took, but the light coming through the window didn’t dim, nor did the sky deepen in its red evening hue, so it couldn’t have been too long. When Rarity finally shuddered and started blinking again, Twilight felt it safe to address the group once more.
“So does anypony have any questions, or should we just move to brainstorming-“ she paused as a yellow hoof raised. “Yes, Fluttershy?” The pegasus cringed as Twilight put her eyes on her, but managed to steady herself and speak audibly on the first try.
“I, um, I still don’t see why we have to kill Celestia…”
Twilight blinked. Fluttershy was shaking like a leaf, and her eyes were still half-staring at a very distant point; she had, very clearly, understood and been disturbed by what Twilight had revealed.
And yet she’d still asked ‘why’.
“Wh… what do you mean why?! I’ve already explained why we can’t take her down alive!”
“Well… why do we need to ‘take her down’ at all?” Fluttershy asked, gaining some small degree of strength to her voice. Twilight could feel her eye twitch as she cobbled together a (in her view unnecessary) justification.
“B-because she needs to be punished for her crimes! We can’t let a lying murderess command the most powerful nation in the world!”
“Twilight…” Applejack started, before glancing at Fluttershy. The pegasus nodded with a small smile, and the earth pony continued with somewhat more confidence. “Ah can’t say that Ah know what y’were taught, but… it’s kinda common knowledge that Celestia’s killed ponies.”
“Excuse me?” Twilight gaped, glancing towards the others to find them nodding. “Y-you all- what- She said that she’d covered them up, she-“
“Woah, woah, there…” Applejack put her hooves up. “Nopony knew about th’whole ‘two-hundred years, one-thousand ponies’ thing. That, that’s new t’us too, sugarcube.” She kept her hooves up until Twilight’s breaths had calmed, and gave the winged unicorn a slight, sympathetic smile. “It ain’t like we definitely knew that she had killed anypony, either, but… thinkin’ about it, it’d’ve been dang hard fer her an’ Luna t’rule as long as they have without havin’ t’crack a few skulls, y’know?”
“No! I didn’t know! I trusted what the histories said, what she told me!” Twilight growled, furious at her own past naivety. “A-and even with that, you can’t be saying that you’re okay with this! Are you?!” Her heart perked up as the other five immediately shook their heads, Fluttershy and Pinkie gaining rather disgusted looks.
“No, Twilight, we are not ‘okay’ with that.” Fluttershy confirmed. Then her face softened, and she rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. “But, i-if it started right after Nightmare Moon, then I can’t imagine that she was in a very good state of mind, and once word got out about the… the first deaths, then I think that the only ponies who would be willing to speak or act out would be the ones who were willing to die. N-not that that makes killing them okay, but…”
“But it means she wasn’t jus’ killin’ folks willy-nilly. An’ she stopped, probably ‘cause she realized how evil she was bein’.” Applejack was grimacing when Twilight put her eyes over her. “Ah mean, like Fluttershy said, this ain’t something we’re okay with. But it’s literally ancient history, an’ she’s clearly changed in th’eight-hundred years between then an’ now. Ah’d bet the farm that she’s hidden what happened ‘cause’a how horrible she feels about it.”
Twilight gritted her teeth as Applejack repeated one of Celestia’s excuses. “Do you think we should just accept it, then? Let her go unpunished?”
“Jus’ ‘cause we know about some a’her dirty laundry don’t change who she is. She ain’t a different pony from who she was yesterday, an’ yesterday she was a kind, lovin’, carin’ Princess.” The earth pony shrugged. Twilight took a few breaths.
“She wouldn’t be a Princess if she hadn’t lied about the sun! Care to excuse that?” The winged unicorn gained a slight smile as Applejack’s mouth thinned.
“I don’t think we need to.” Twilight’s eyes shot back to Fluttershy, her smile vanishing. “E-even if the sun does move on its own, that doesn’t mean the Princess can’t control it. She made it come back above the horizon for a minute or so just a little while ago, so really, the only thing she might’ve lied about was her needing to raise and lower it.” Fluttershy flicked an ear at the look on Twilight’s face. “Um, did she ever tell you that she did?”
“…she let me believe it.” The winged unicorn ground out. Fluttershy and Applejack glanced at each other, but Twilight spoke before either could address her. “She let all of us believe it! Led everypony on, let us all think that our lives, the lives of everyone in the world, hinged on her remaining alive and strong enough to raise and lower the sun every morning!”
“I’m sure she had a good reason-“
“The only reason she could have had is keeping herself in power, over us and the rest of the world! The unicorns would never have accepted her rule if she and Luna hadn’t stolen the sun and moon from them, and I doubt that the earth ponies or pegasi would have either! Every treaty made with other nations up until about a hundred years ago has been based around appeasing her in order to keep her from deciding to just not move the sun, and even if she’s been replacing those, it’s only to make the ‘please-don’t-kill-us’ clause implicit rather than ex-“
“The unicorns.”
Twilight blinked as Applejack spoke. The latter mare’s voice was quiet, almost breathy, but she stared at Twilight with the light of dawning comprehension behind her eyes.
“What?”
“T-th’damned unicorns! How th’buck did Celestia take the sun from them if it moves by itself? The whole reason th’other two tribes even tolerated them was ‘cause they supposedly kept the sun an’ moon movin’, but if they do that on their own then the unicorns weren’t doin’ anythin’!”
“…Celestia did mention that the unicorns had never been needed for the sun’s movement...” Twilight admitted. Applejack’s gaze sharpened.
“So there y’go! They didn’t submit t’her ‘cause she took the sun, they submitted ‘cause she was actually able to control it! They knew the jig was up, they knew that they wouldn’t be able t’just keep leechin’ off the ponies who were actually doin’ things!” Applejack started laughing under her breath, her head slowly shaking back and forth, before she put her gaze on Twilight. “There’s yer excuse fer Celestia lyin’ about the sun, Twi.”
The winged unicorn’s brow furrowed. “Applejack, what in Faust’s name are you talking about? How does the unicorns lying about moving the sun excuse Celestia doing the same? Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
It was Fluttershy who responded. “Twilight, think about it. If Celestia hadn’t kept up the lie… if the other tribes had found out that the unicorns had been taking food for themselves without doing anything to earn it like the pegasi or earth ponies were…”
“Then the Princesses’d probably be th’only ponies with horns left alive.” Applejack allowed a few moments for her words to sink in. “An’ even if the pegasi an’ the earth ponies didn’t wipe out the unicorns, if Celestia stopped ‘em or somethin’ else happened… there sure wouldn’t be harmony between th’tribes. It’d be back t’what it was pre-unification, ‘cept the pegasi an’ earth ponies’d be gangin’ up on the unicorns the entire time, an’ they wouldn’t have t’worry about the sun not comin’ up one day.” She tilted her ear as Twilight’s face darkened. “That make sense, sugarcube?”
Twilight didn’t respond. If she did, she’d have to tell the truth: It did make sense. Celestia would have wanted to keep everything calm between the tribes, if only to lessen the risk to her rule that that instability would cause. She would have maintained the lie to keep the unicorns safe, and by the time the tribes had become too integrated for such a revelation to stir too much controversy, the first treaties with the other nations would have been written up, and it would have become safer for everypony to simply keep it going.
But she couldn’t accept it, because it was an excuse for Celestia’s lies.
But she could accept it, because lying had probably been the best option that Celestia was aware of.
But she couldn’t.
But she had to.
Twilight’s head hurt.
She felt her magic sputter as a sudden bolt of agony ripped her brain in half; the barriers around the door and windows fell as she raised her hooves and knitted her brow to try to keep her head from splitting open. She could hear the pain, an ethereal screaming that drowned out any sound anypony might have been making, and when she closed her eyes she saw red rather than black.
Twilight couldn’t tell how long it took for the pain to stop, but it ceased as suddenly as it had begun, taking with it the screaming in her ears and the blood behind her eyelids. Her eyes shot open, finding orange hooves less than a pace away from her, and she raked her gaze upwards to meet a pair of fretting green eyes.
“Twilight? You-“
“No.” Twilight’s voice was raw. Applejack blinked, her brow furrowing, but Twilight continued before she could respond. “I get it. It makes sense. But no, no no no, I can’t accept it. Can’t.”
Applejack glanced to her side. Twilight tried to follow, but found her hoof blocking her view, and Applejack had returned her gaze to the winged unicorn by the time the latter had put said hoof back on the floor.
“Okay, sugarcube, that’s fine. Ah ain’t gonna try an’ make ya.” The orange mare’s voice was carefully calm. Twilight felt her hackles rise at the affected tone. “Would ya mind if Ah asked why, though? Y’said it makes sense, so Ah ain’t quite sure why y’‘can’t accept’ it.”
“Because I can’t. It’s an excuse. I can’t accept excuses. If I do I’ll be Dawn.”
Applejack stiffened, her eyes widening slightly in alarm before she got them back under control. “Okay, then… can Ah ask why y’think that, sugarcube?”
“Dawn told me.” Applejack stiffened further, the muscles and tendons under her skin visibly tense. Twilight shook her head. “Doesn’t matter right now. Excuses don’t matter. Reasons don’t matter.” She locked eyes with the farmmare. “You know what has to happen.”
Something seemed to solidify behind Applejack’s eyes. “Yeah, Twilight. Ah do.”
Then she spun around and bucked Twilight in the chest.
The winged unicorn barely had time to register what had happened before something slammed into her from the side. She hit the floor hard, the impact forcing out what little air she’d managed to keep in her lungs after Applejack’s sudden strike. A set of hooves wrapped around her barrel, the pony they were attached to crushing herself (and Twilight’s wings) to Twilight’s back. Applejack started shouting above the ringing in Twilight’s ears as the winged unicorn struggled for breath, telling someone to ‘get them out’, before she too threw herself on Twilight; the farmmare’s ever-present rope began rapidly wrapping around Twilight’s forehooves as she used her body weight to help hold the winded mare to the floor.
Unfortunately for her, the former Princess was more than strong enough to throw her off.
Twilight’s horn glowed as she poured magic through it. She caught both of the mares constraining her in rough grips, favouring raw panicked power over her usual controlled methods; Applejack’s weight launched upwards, the rope around Twilight’s hooves briefly lifting with her before falling loosely back down, while the other mare was pried off and thrown bodily away. Twilight could feel vibrations from the impact as Applejack fell back to the floor, but was too focused on trying to breathe again to devote much concern to the farmmare. After a half-minute of struggle, her barrel finally allowed itself to expand again, and Twilight felt her panic die as she was finally able to draw in air once more. She took a few minutes to simply lay there and exult in the ability to breathe, giving her mind a chance to go over what the buck had just happened.
She slowly stood, feeling some light aches from the several hits she’d just taken, before she glanced around for her two assaulters. Applejack laid sprawled out just over a metre away, unconscious and drawing shallow breaths as a gash on her forehead leaked blood into her mane. Rainbow Dash was slumped near the door, a small dent in the wall above her; she seemed to have been knocked out as well, a slow expansion and contraction of her barrel being her only visible movement. Twilight drew in a few more lungfuls of air, the organs still getting used to the rhythm again, when a rough voice stopped both her breath and her heart.
“Well.” Broken Shield said, glaring down at her from the loft. “I can’t really say that this is a surprise…”
And here's 52.
I honestly didn't expect this particular scene to run as long as it did - I figured that it was going to take up 1500-2000 words at most, and the latter half of the chapter would be a scene between Broken and Twilight. With the length here, I can afford to put the Broken vs Twilight part onto the start of the next chapter, where it'll probably flow better. So yay.
Apologies for the series of cliffhangers, but we're in the climax and, well, I have to keep the tensions up between chapters somehow. At least I didn't leave you hanging too long on this one! 
Onwards to 53 of 55!
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Huh. Well, that certainly got out of hand quickly. I hope she wins.
6290005
Looking at your chapter list, I see pain(I), pain(III), pain(IV), and pain(V), but no pain(II). Did it get overlooked when you were uploading, deleted, or did you just mess up the naming convention?
6302409
It's a deliberate skip.
Pain(II) is actually going to be (a portion of) the next chapter.
6302419
It just looked weird, is all. If it wasn't intentional, I figured I'd bring it to your attention, and if it was I figured I'd poke some fun at you. It's a win-win.
Now I'm really scared for everyone's safety
Here comes the confrontation.
I loved Twilight's sort of mental debate and refusing to accept the truth of the matter. Reminds me of a scene in an old fanfic I once read.
Well, shit.
I'm not gonna say the whole elements thing backfired a little bit, but...
Let's just say that went wrong like Bruce Banner's research on Gamma radiation went wrong: Horribly, and very very fast.
Twilight seems to suffer a bout of idealism vs. pragmatism.
Seems like Celestia might have teached her to be a bit to "good".
Seems like we've reached an impasse with Twilight, I'm just going to take a shot in the dark here and say that Broken will not kill Twilight in the next chapter, instead we will probably have a conversation about how Twilight's new thought processes are similar to how Dawn started, since I can't remember if Dawn ever tried to do the same with Celestia before jumping on the whole 'take over equestrian and kill Celestia' thing.
6304264
First off, bloody brilliant work. Absolutely loved it, especially the little jabs between the two.
Second, that's not really the final twist (though I would be pedantic to actually COMPLAIN about that). And I agree that that scene can seem rather trite - I was wary of putting it in for that very reason, but found that things later on worked better with it.
Third, who said that she was actually there?
Oh of course this is where I catch up. I went to click the 'next' button, it wasn't there. I stared for a good minute. I will now go sit in a corner and weep until the next update.
m.memegen.com/0qx0ys.jpg
6305951
I've largely explained what the Elements did in these two posts: 6257032 6257641
Her confidence is because (as explained in the above-linked posts), the Elements removed Twilight's ability to be indecisive - she's literally mentally incapable of second-guessing her views/ideas/actions, because self-doubt is the product of a conflict between one's confidence and one's knowledge/planning. If she decides to do something, she'll do it until she decides to stop.
Twilight felt a bit more betrayed over these revelations than over the Crystal Empire thing because these were Celestia's own secrets, and from Twilight's perspective, the fact that Celestia is only revealing them to her after she's decided to reveal them to everyone implies that Celestia doesn't hold any special trust in Twilight despite the whole 'faithful student, Element of Harmony, former Princess' thing. Also, Twilight's decision to study magic (and thus her application to the School for Gifted Unicorns, and thus her hatching of Spike and her becoming Celestia's personal student and everything that came thereafter) was sparked by watching Celestia raise the sun during a Summer Sun Celebration. The knowledge that Celestia had 'lied' about raising/lowering the sun made a significant portion of Twilight's mind believe that her entire life was based on a lie, which kinda fucked with her emotional stability.
6306116 Aren't you talking about something closer to order though? Harmony is a balance of chaos and order, and in this case I feel you'd have to pull quite the excuse from your arse to justify the elements of harmony seeing this twilight's state of mind as something actually reasonable, not to mention it'd throw world powers into quite a bit of chaos as a result of someone as influental as her killing celestia, pretty much the most important political power in the world.
The result would be chaos, wars, fear, ect. It simply would not be remotely harmonious, it'd either shift to complete chaos or, worst case scenario, complete order, which would mean zero change, life cannot exist without chaos, change, everything would be at a standstill, and with complete chaos there would be no constants, gravity could change direction, cease to exist, or perhaps turn into heat instead.
Basically elements of harmony have fucked up, big time, they impose harmony on whatever they are aimed at, but nothing else, thus resulting in the possibility of this happening where Twilight is 'harmonious' but can potentially destroy or disharmonize everything else because of it.
6306362
Harmony is, by definition, agreement or accord between different things, often related to music (with a musical harmony being many different instruments working together to create a single sound). Discord is in-canon described as both chaos incarnate and the antithesis to the Elements, meaning that, at least in relation to this, 'harmony' and 'order' are rather interchangeable.
I've explained about why the Elements did what they did in previous comments, but the jist of it is this: The Elements of Harmony are mindless tools. Their function is to impose harmony via the destruction or removal of disharmony and conflict. They are incapable of determining between 'good' and 'evil' (or 'reasonable' and 'unreasonable'); the only perception that they could be said to have is the ability to determine the difference between harmony and disharmony. Even then, they are incapable of predicting and/or caring what will happen after they've harmonized something or someone, because, again, they're mindless tools.
When they were used on Twilight, they were targeted at something inside of her: the 'other' voice in her head. Thus, their scope for detecting disharmony was limited to Twilight herself. The Elements performed their function by removing the disharmony within Twilight (as I said in an earlier comment, "The Elements forced every single one of Twilight's internal voices into agreement with one another, effectively subsuming them into a single voice that represents them all equally... because THAT is the most harmonious mental state possible.") What Twilight happens to do/say/think post-harmonization is entirely irrelevant, because, again, the Elements of Harmony are mindless tools. Just as a hammer isn't capable of caring whether it's being used to build a house or a gallows, the Elements are incapable of caring about what Twilight might now do.
So yes, as you said (and as I've said before), the Elements have most certainly fucked up big time.
6306362
Balance is the balance of Chaos and Order.
Imma quote my own previous post here:
I do like how you put this next bit though.
This. All of the this.
6308899 that was the point. I apologize that I did not convey this well enough. It was supposed to be shocked at the idea of "justified racism"