If you don't want to see Starlight get made fun of, then please don't read this story.
“God damn it!”
Starlight Glimmer threw the tax notice down onto the desk with her magic. It didn't make any sort of noise on impact, so she floated the paper onto her hoof and then slammed it down. Her hoof’s impact with the wood made a loud thud. Much better.
She shouted, “I saved and saved money so that I could buy this house, and now my property taxes have gone up by 5,000 Pony Dollars! I might have to move out.”
“Calm down, Starlight,” said Twilight Sparkle. “We’ll get you the extra money.”
“I’m a guidance counselor at your school. Can you give me a raise?”
Twilight sighed. “Well, I would give you a raise, but I just gave a raise to all of the other guidance counselors except you, so there's not really any money left in our yearly budget.”
“That’s okay, it’s November. Is it a fiscal year-end budget or a calendar year-end budget?
Twilight lowered her head. “It’s a fiscal year...”
“Ending in?”
“...October.”
Starlight’s face darkened. “Fuck! Are you serious? Can’t we just raise tuition?”
“No, we already raised it thirty-five times this year. Some of our students are thinking that they might just drop out of friendship school and go to a medical or engineering college for that kind of money.”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Medical and engineering? When are they ever gonna use that?”
“I know, right? Anyway, let’s see if we can’t find you a second job that you’re qualified for.”
“Like what?”
Twilight puzzled. “Um… Magic tutor? Wait, we already have enough. Um… performing magician? Wait, you’d never compete against Trixie. Um… politician? Wait, no. Definitely no.”
Starlight thought for a moment. “Do you think that I could just, I dunno, go to a home for the handicapped and take some of the quadriplegics flying with me over Cloudsdale, then charge them for the most amazing experience of their sad lives?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“You once told me that there’s no stupid questions.”
Twilight Sparkle put her face in her hoof. “There weren’t any stupid questions, until you asked that one. Yours was the first ever.”
“Well sorry, I’ve only had a couple of minutes to think on things.”
“Me too, but at least my ideas were semi-plausible; yours was loopy and kinda dick-ish, to be honest. Are you off your medications?”
Starlight gleamed. “I’ve transcended the need for such mind-limiting chemical restraints. Meds are for the mindless.”
“Starlight, you're on those anti-evil meds so that you don't have severe sociopathy, anger issues, petulance, obsessiveness, and demagomania like you used to. Where would your life be without Villex from Zaibatsu Pharmaceuticals, side effects of which may include—”
“Shut up. That joke's more overused than 20% cooler,” Starlight groaned. “You were just going to rattle off a list of humorous side effects and include some of the effects that the drug is supposed to treat in the first place. We all know that Big Pharma is a joke. Side effects of Villex do include, for me, low energy and everyone accusing me of having no personality. I want to be me again. That's why I'm not taking my meds, and you can't make me!”
Twilight shook her head, making a note to alert the proper authorities later. “You’re obviously unfit for any decent job. So why don’t you join the military? I’m sure that you could do the work of all of them, because you’re a Mary S—uh, you’re a very. A very good at magic. Pardon me.”
“Military, huh? You mean a job where I have to live and work on a base that’s hundreds of miles from the house which I’m trying to pay the taxes on in the first fucking place!?”
“Point taken, and come to think of it, they wouldn't take you with your record anyway. So instead of increasing your income, let’s try to decrease some of your expenses. You might not like to hear this, but I think you shouldn’t buy so many kites.”
Twilight gestured around the living room of Starlight’s new house, which she had furnished with hundreds of hanging kites. There were kites of all designs, of all shapes. There were flannel kites, plaid kites, and solid color kites; box, diamond, and sled kites; magic kites, cursed kites, and muggle kites; happy kites, sad kites, and clinically-depressed kites.
The kites were every color imaginable. They were red and orange and gold and green and violet and silver and rose and grey and lilac and dark and teal and white and purple and tan and red again and russet and crimson and ochre and charcoal and copper and BLUE!
Starlight protested, “But I love my kites of many colors. They look stunning, they look smart, they are flying works of art!”
Twilight held her hoof up in caution. “Careful, Starlight, we don’t want to get in trouble for posting song lyrics disguised as dialogue. Anyway, each of these kites costs around 100 Pony Dollars, so you could easily sell some of them and earn the money that way.”
Starlight shook her head. “Each of these kites is special to me. I’d rather move out than sell them. For some reason, it’s very important for everyone to know that I like kites.”
“Well, you can keep your existing kites and still save enough money if you just promise not to buy any new kites from now on.”
Starlight threw her hooves up. “Are you kidding? If I see a new kite in the Ponyville Ultimate Marketplace, then of course I’ll buy it! I’m a serious collector.”
Twilight smiled. “You should switch to a more affordable hobby, like collecting Magic the Gathering cards by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. Support our siblings!”
“Did you just call Magic the Gathering affordable? Are you serious? It’s pay-to-win. Besides, MTG is a totally wrong representation of how magic works. What the hell does land have to do with magical energy?”
“You’ll see, Starlight. You’ll see…”
“Enough of this distraction. I was pissed off before you came over here, and I’ll be pissed off after. It’s time for me to take decisive, magical action.”
A few moments passed. Then thirty seconds. Then a minute.
“...You won’t try to stop me?”
Twilight shrugged. “You’ve been using your magic recklessly since the day that I met you, and you haven’t stopped even after several lessons and lectures about it. Frankly, I’ve just given up and accepted the fact that you’ll always be a weird, unstable wildcard. But I’ll just say this. You can’t fight city hall.”
“Every city hall employee hide behind your desk; she’s fighting us!” Mayor Mare ordered.
PEEW! PEEW! PEEW! Starlight’s magical energy beams left singes on wooden desks, knocking over lamps, stacks of paper, and whirly leather chairs. She shattered windows, framed pictures, and computer monitors which exist because this story takes place in the future.
“Please, have mercy!” Stephanie from Accounting shouted from below her desk as a stress ball whizzed past her.
Todd from Marketing grinned as he stood behind his desk instead of ducking.
“Boy, I sure am glad I got this standing desk!” he said for the 184th time that day.
A stallion wearing a white polo shirt and tan slacks jumped across the room like a bad-ass, firing a staple gun at Starlight. One of them even hit her in the eye, stinging her to no end, and she had to blink a few times to get it out.
“Stapler gun is out of ammo! Reloading!” he said, taking cover. Why he would loudly announce his most vulnerable action, no one knew.
A red-shirted stallion cried, “I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding! I’ve had a nosebleed for three days, and it chooses now of all times to start again! Now I have that really gross taste in my mouth like pennies. #WorstDayEver.”
More magic missiles whizzed by.
“I’d better make peace with the man upstairs,” said Nathan from Exports.
“He’s out of the office today,” an unnamed coworker responded. “Lucky bastard.”
After Starlight had finished destroying every breakable thing in City Hall, she approached the throne of Mayor Mare. Starlight was not walking there, but rather floating six inches off the ground and gliding over the floor because she thought it looked cool. She also wore a pair of sunglasses and a black trench coat like Neo from the Matrix.
As she reached the foot of the throne, she dropped back down to the ground. Not a loud enough thud. She levitated up six feet, then dropped herself. A much louder thud, but her front-right ankle throbbed and she thought she might have sprained it. Still worth it.
Mayor Mare gave an annoyed sigh. “How may I help you?”
“I’m pissed off about my property taxes!” Starlight shouted.
“And your name is…?”
“I’m not telling you. Don’t you see my disguise?”
“Yes, and it’s the most paper-thin disguise I’ve ever seen. Sunglasses by themselves don’t hide your face; this isn’t a comic book. I know who you are, Starlight Glimmer. Twilight Sparkle warned me about you. Now please get on with it and tell me your demands.”
Starlight demanded, “I want my property taxes reduced to what they used to be! I can’t fit 5,000 Pony Dollars into my budget; I might have to move out!”
Mayor Mare blinked. “Wait. You only want your taxes reduced? Most ponies who come here on a destructive rampage demand that I get rid of their property taxes altogether. Or they show up in black masks and beat ponies with sticks while calling their victims fascists, because Ponyville doesn’t recognize all 63 genders on city documents.”
“I mean, I don’t mind paying taxes for police and roads, but this is highway robbery! Pun intended.”
Mayor Mare shrugged. “Your demands are fairly reasonable; even we didn’t want to raise taxes by as much as we did. But I think the destructive, break-y way that you go about things isn’t the right way to participate in the political process.”
Starlight scowled. “I’m not going to stand in line to cast a ballot for a politician who reneges on their promises and does the opposite of what I voted for. I’m the apex predator, and I’ll do what I want!”
“Unfair enough. Now onto the property taxes. Do you know how they’re calculated and levied? Do you know why we had to raise them?”
Starlight shook her head. “No, because this story is supposed to be funny. Taxes aren’t funny. Are you really going to derail a crack-fic for a lesson about taxes?”
“Yes. There are two components to your increased taxes: an increase in your home’s value and an increase of the mill levy rate. Ponyville’s population has exploded recently, driven by the new Friendship School and also by the fact that Coltifornia is a shitty place to live. The extra demand has increased housing prices and the assessed property values. Especially yours, since you live near the school. This means you’re paying taxes based on a higher amount of taxable property value.
“The population boom increased the number of police officers we need to hire, the new roads we need to pave, the new public schools we need to build, and more. So we also increased the mill levy rates. You’re paying a higher rate on a higher value. It’s a compounding problem. Also, inflation has been rampant since we abandoned golden bits in favor of fiat paper Pony Dollars, which the government has been printing like mad. Now wasn’t that much more useful than another friendship lesson?”
“Your lesson doesn’t make me feel any better! Can’t we get any federal funding for that stuff you mentioned?”
Mayor Mare shook her head. “The Princesses would give Ponyville more funding, but they just gave extra funding to every city except Ponyville, so there's not really any money left in their yearly budget.”
“Is it a fiscal year-end budget or a calendar year-end budget?”
“Calendar, surprisingly.”
Starlight beamed. “Then there’s still time! I must get to Canterlot before the new year at once. I only have forty-five days to spare!”
Starlight teleported away.
“Alright, everypony,” said the mayor. “You know the drill. Let’s bring in the clean-up crew again.”
Danny, Brocious, Stephanie (different one), and Verdant Meadows from Janitorial all grabbed brooms. They swept the floor clear of debris in record time, like those dudes from Stomp.
“Wow, you’re getting good at this!” Barbra from Applied Theoretical Physics complimented them.
Bradley from IT brought in a cart of new computer towers and monitors and placed them on everypony’s desks. All except for Todd from Marketing, because Bradley was a midget and couldn’t reach the top of Todd's standing desk.
“Can’t you just give the computer to me, and then I can put it on the desk for you?”
“Nope. I have to put it there myself. Sorry.”
Bradley walked away, never to return. Todd sat down for the first time in months. He sobbed. What had happened to his life? Where did he go wrong? Why had his wife left him for a sheep from Sweet Apple Acres? Why had his son decided to get into anime cosplaying? How would he do his job without a computer?
He would never know.
Starlight stood impatiently on the north-bound train from Ponyville to Canterlot. Maybe she could’ve just teleported to Canterlot, maybe she couldn’t. No one knew, so she ended up on the train.
A bum decided he would take a piss right in the middle of the floor. A microscopic amount of it splashed onto Starlight. She noticed it, though.
“Watch where you’re peeing!” she shouted at him, and then she turned him into a frog.
“Ribbit.”
“Hah. Let’s see you pee on me again.”
“Yeah, right,” said a young stallion who had shaved the sides of his mane so that his hair was long on the top but very short on the sides.
He had about ten tattoos, each one of them representing a part of the personality that he didn’t have. He took a condescending drag of his ten-pound vape mod and blew vapor everywhere. His one puff made the entire train car foggy, and it smelled like chocolate mint strawberry banana. Yes, that flavor actually exists.
“You said ‘yeah right.’ Yeah right, what?” Starlight demanded of him.
“Frogs are able to urinate, too,” he said, blowing another cloud of vapor right in Starlight’s face.
“Really? I didn’t know that. Wait, yes I did, but you just assumed that I was stupid. You and your generation’s arrogant assumptions and edicts are secretly loathed by all, except for marketers. But since I don’t really care about the consequences of my actions anymore, take your loftiness and shove it.”
Starlight turned him into a giraffe. His long neck punched up through the roof of the train car, and he gazed in horror at the oncoming tunnel which only had a six inch clearance.
“AAAAH[Or whatever noise that giraffes make]HHHH!!!!!”
Starlight changed him back at the last minute, saving him from decapitation. He cowered in the corner, terrified and sobbing. That didn’t stop him from taking another drag on his vape, because he was consuming the equivalent of five packs of cigarettes worth of nicotine in a day and was super addicted. However, the shitty Chineighse battery decided to explode on his face, and he lost half of his teeth. They scattered across the floor like dice.
“#WorstDayEver” he tweet-moaned. “Oh hey, this hashtag is already trending!”
Starlight just stood there in silence as the train passed through the tunnel. Her horn pulsated and glowed in the darkness, shooting out tendrils of light like a plasma ball. She wasn’t casting a spell or anything, but she thought it looked cool and foreboding. Nopony would mess with a reality-warper like her, she thought.
She was wrong. The train emerged into the light, and Canterlot was in view. As it chugged along, a grey-coated mare in a gray business suit received a business call on her business phone.
Her stupid Imagine Fucking Dragons ringtone polluted the air. Starlight longed for the days when middle-aged women didn’t try to prove that they were ‘still cool’ by liking some shitty hip-hop-infected alternative rock band which was so wildly popular that it shouldn’t even be considered as alternative anymore. What, exactly, was it alternative to? Better music? Silence?
“Hello, this is the Executive Vice President, Bottom Line,” she said.
Starlight ‘pffed’ through her lips as she tried not to laugh. Her first name was Bottom. Starlight was between 18 and 35 years old, still she couldn’t help but giggle like a school filly. At least the name wasn’t as stupid as “Bradley.”
“Yes, I did see your name on caller ID. Yes, I still have to answer as if you were a stranger. It helps my self-esteem every time that I refer to myself as an executive vice president.”
Great, now I have to figure out what animal I want to change this pony into, Starlight thought. Way to ruin my day, lady.
“We need to synergize a creative solution on how we can corner the mid-west market and earn an acceptable ROI in today’s fast-paced world… no, let’s table that idea for now… Millenials. Definitely want to leverage them. One is cowering in the corner right now, I think they like weird haircuts, tattoos, and vaping... Oh, yes, despite our complete lack of innovation in the algorithmic field, we’ll still mention ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘machine learning’ in our commercial. Those are the only four words left in the entire Equish language that anyone will pay attention to… Of course our jingle will sound lazy and uninspired! Just some dudes going ‘bum ba dum’ should do it. Or we could sing the name of our company four times in a discordant manner… Yes, it’ll be absolutely horrendous. I look forward to circling back on this...”
Starlight teleported three feet over to the mare, staring down at her face. She didn’t even seem to notice.
Starlight snarled at the mare, “You sure are gabby, loud, and irritating. Maybe it would be okay if you said anything interesting or original, but you’re just a linguistic meat grinder who cobbles together nonsense to sell disposable products for a disposable world. My cutie-markless town had more creativity and life in it than you. Just keep repeating everything nonstop!”
Starlight turned the businessmare into an African grey parrot.
“SQUAWK! Dynamic but rewarding workplace. SQUAWK! Utilize Big Data. SQUAWK! Say the word ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use.’ SQUAWK! Evaluate the effect of tariffs on exports. SQUAWK! Capacity and functionality. SQUAWK! I hope everyone working in a non-office environment gets these jokes, too. SQUAWK! If you do work in an office, I hope this makes you feel dead inside. SQUAWK!”
The pony on the other end of the phone was none the wiser.
“Um, miss…” said a younger earth pony mare, approaching Starlight. “Why are you attacking and intimidating the passengers?”
Starlight turned to her. “Because I’m from the Glimmer Militia, and I’m on a top-secret paramilitary mission!”
“None of that sentence made any sense,” said the mare. “You’re being the opposite of secretive. Who the hell are the Glimmer Militia? Who are its members?”
“Just me. I work alone.”
The mare blinked. “If you’re in a militia that’s only you, then doesn’t that just make you a plain old terrorist?”
Starlight screamed, “I am not a terrorist! If anypony else calls me a terrorist, then I’ll turn them into something that they won’t like!”
She shot a transmogrifying ray at the mare, and transformed her from an earth pony into a pegasus.
“Oh hey, I’ve always wanted to fly. I really like this. Thanks!”
She fluttered out of the giraffe-hole in the roof. Everypony on the entire train laughed at Starlight. This was terrible, she thought. She couldn’t turn them all into animals. Not even she had that much power, surprisingly enough.
So she did the next best thing.
“I am invincible!” Starlight shouted like that Russian hacker dude from Goldeneye.
She floated out of the roof and zapped the locomotive. The engine exploded with a gigantic boom. The train came to a halt while dozens of ponies screamed. Now they'd be stranded.
“They should’ve learned to teleport. Dumbasses,” said Starlight.
Air raid sirens blared as Starlight merrily skipped along the cobblestone path in Canterlot. Ponies were hiding in dark alleys, under benches, inside of wine glasses, anywhere that they could. Apparently, word of Starlight’s imminent trail of destruction had reached the city before she did. As she walked through the city, her shadow was the only one that walked beside her.
“Great. Now who am I going to fight?” Starlight wondered aloud.
She was on a rampage, after all. She’d just have to stick to property destruction instead of assault and battery. Maybe a nice car chase would do. But who would chase her?
“You,” she said, glancing overhead at a white pegasus guard. He was somewhat intimidated. “Get in your cop car, right now.”
“But I’m just a Royal Guard; we don’t have—”
“Do it!” Starlight shouted. As the pegasus guardspony struggled to come up with a police car, Starlight went ‘sploring.
She ran over to the parking lot of a fancy-schmancy restaurant. Oh, baby. There were so many cool sports cars in there, that Starlight could’ve just stolen one, used her magic to get away without a trace, sold the car, and paid off her taxes. Just like Starlight could’ve tracked down Sunburst instead of enslaving a town. Obviously, Starlight made the stupider decision.
With her magic, she hot-wired a 2019 Mustang GT Convertible, got in, and revved up the engine. All of the crows and pigeons chirped and flew away at the noise, except the few that were deaf. Starlight had never driven a sports car, or any car for that matter. Especially not one with a manual transmission. So she pulled out the owner’s manual from the glove box, read a couple of pages, and figured that she knew all she needed to.
Starlight reversed the vehicle but applied too much gas, so she ended up backing into a cafe across the street. The patrons screamed and jumped out of the way. The barista standing at the counter blinked.
“Wow, I didn’t think that our coffee was that bad,” he said. "It's ten dollars a cup because the beans are sustainably sourced from Pony Colombia by a well-paid cooperative, and they all get massages during their breaks. Our straws are paper and they only disintegrate after three sips. Our cream and sugar, we just buy at a regular store because nopony gives a shit about that, just the beans."
Starlight turned the barista into a Colombian river snake. Then she put the car in first and pulled forward. There were no other cars on the road, since most ponies were in hiding. She took a right onto Celestia Street.
Suddenly, a white and black police car with its sirens blaring pulled up behind her. In the driver’s seat was the pegasus guard, and in the passenger seat was an actual Canterlot Policemare who shook her head in dismay.
“You came through for me, you beautiful bastard! Let’s have a car chase!” Starlight shouted.
The pegasus nodded at her. He had donned a pair of aviator sunglasses and was currently arguing with his partner.
“What the hell are you doing, commandeering my car and feeding into Glimmer’s delusions? You’re a loose cannon, White Hope!” she shouted.
“Dammit, the force needs me right now! We can crack this case, we just need some more time!” he said back.
Starlight revved up her engine. The cop car did, as well. She punched it into first and sped down the road. Steering wasn’t that big of an issue; even Google can make a car steer. Shifting? That was the problem. Starlight kept in first gear for so long that the tachometer needle was off the dial. She disengaged the clutch tepidly, not knowing what she was doing. As she pushed the Mustang into second, the RPMs fell and she sped up again.
The smokey was right on her tail, tapping her stolen car’s bumper again and again. Starlight swerved into a bus shelter and annihilated it, swerving back onto the road to try to shake the cop car. No dice, except the fuzzy ones on her rearview mirror. She fired a magic beam at the mirror, which reflected it back at the cop car and broke its windshield. No car chase would be complete without explosions, so Starlight fired magic beams at every parked car that she saw while passing. Normally, most of them would’ve only suffered minor body damage and broken glass, but since she shot them during a car chase, they exploded instead.
Starlight swerved left onto Celestia Boulevard, dodging an illegally parked pickup truck with redneck bumper stickers on it like “I’ll believe in evolution when I see an earth pony change into a pegasus” and “You can pry my horn from my cold, dead forehead.” It had a giant gun rack on the back complete with three scary black assault weapons, five shotguns, and infinity bullets. As she passed, Starlight snatched a machine gun and half of the infinite bullets.
With her hooves, she steered the car, and with her magic, she floated the gun backwards and fired at the cops at the same time. She also simultaneously lit a cigar she found in the glove box, and snapped a picture of the chase with a camera. Being a unicorn makes it much easier to multi-task. Or do anything, really.
The cop car was getting overwhelmed, its tires popped from the bullets and the engine was smoking. It came to a screeching halt, but three other coppers pulled onto Celestia Boulevard right behind Starlight. So she swerved onto Champs-Célestés. The Royal Palace entrance was right at the end of this street. Gorgeous hedged trees lined either side, but Starlight cast a flamethrower spell to set all of them ablaze as she drove. Her machine gun was doing a good job keeping the cops behind her at bay.
But as Starlight zoomed ahead, two cop cars pulled out from either side of Celestia Circle to create a roadblock.
“Wow, this city names so many streets after Celestia, it’s almost as bad as Atlanta and streets named after Martin Luther King,” she noted.
Starlight was speeding right towards the roadblock, and was going too fast to stop in time. The police fired their guns at her, and her windshield shattered. She ducked down, and realized in terror that she would crash!
Suddenly, she got an idea. Her telekinesis wasn’t strong enough to float vehicles around—one of her few canon limitations—but she could still give the Mustang a bump into the air. Her horn strained and strained as the cops jumped out of the way. The car’s front wheels levitated, then slowly the back ones… slowly…
The Mustang sailed over the police cars, flew through the air, and crashed through the stained glass windows of Princess Celestia’s royal court. It landed about fifty feet from the throne. Starlight jumped out before the car exploded. Princess Celestia surrounded herself with a yellow force-field and was unharmed.
“Starlight Glimmer!” Princess Celestia shouted in her Royal Canterlot Voice. “What have you done?”
“I’ve just wrecked your little city like it was nothing. You have now seen a taste of my power,” said Starlight, her eyes glowing white. “The Glimmer Militia has a long list of demands for you, which includes—”
“I hate to interrupt, but there’s no smoking in the throne room,” said Celestia, pointing to Starlight’s cigar.
Starlight blushed. “Oh, sorry about that.”
She put the cigar out, then continued, “I demand that you give Ponyville more money! I also demand that you rename some of Canterlot’s streets because they’re confusing, and that you provide your royal guard with police cars of their own!”
Princess Celestia laughed. “And with what money do you want me to do that?”
Starlight blinked. “Pony Dollars, obviously. You can just print as many as you want. It’s not like with bits where we had to mint them from actual precious metals that have intrinsic value. Pony Dollars are just paper whose only value is our belief in them.”
The Princess said, “The more we print, the more it devalues the currency and raises inflation. Do you want the relative value of your savings to slowly decrease, requiring you to save more and more?”
“Um, no.”
The Princess nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“So if you can’t print, then just borrow the money!”
“We already borrow quite a bit, and we’re trying to decrease our deficits, not increase them. Do you want to rob from your grandchildren? Do you want to saddle the unborn with our generation’s reckless abandon and the resulting debt and interest on it?”
“No…” said Starlight. “But there must be some other way for you to get the money that you need to give to Ponyville!”
“There is a way. We could raise taxes.”
Starlight blinked. “The whole goddamned reason that I came here was to pay less taxes!”
Celestia shrugged. “Then it appears as though we’re at an impasse.”
There were tears in Starlight’s eyes. “But my property taxes went up by so much that I won’t be able to keep my house. All I want to be is a homeowner, and I want to be myself and have my old personality, and I want my kites, and I want... and I want...”
Princess Celestia put her hoof on Starlight’s head. “There, there, Starlight. Twilight and I only wanted you to take medicine so that you’d be more cooperative with society. So that you won’t do evil things that hurt others. Do you want to be your old self? Or do you want to become a better pony?”
She sobbed, “I’d really just like to be my old self, but learn to control my evil. So that I can seek out justice and truth and fairness without doing destructive things. Like going on a rampage just to find out there’s no point to it.”
Princess Celestia smiled. “I think I may have a solution for you, that allows you to pay zero property taxes, not take any medication whatsoever, and have the freedom to do whatever you want without hurting anypony else.”
“A psych ward? Prison? The moon?” asked Starlight apprehensively.
Celestia shook her head. “Nowhere near that oppressive, but… your wish is my command…”
A brilliant flash of white light erupted all around Starlight.
Starlight Glimmer’s chest ached as she walked the twenty feet from her bedroom to the kitchen. Her breathing was so heavy and labored that she might as well have been giving birth.
She weakly levitated a box of cereal from the cabinet. The blue glow around the box was blinking in and out like like a car’s blinker. The cereal box jittered in the air, as if Starlight had magical Parkinson's. Finally it reached the table.
Now for the bowl. Once again, Starlight’s feeble magic power herky-jerked the bowl over, but it fell to the ground and shattered into seventeen pieces.
“God… dammit!” Starlight wheezed.
WHOOSH! With a flash of white light, Discord appeared in the chair opposite Starlight.
“Trouble with your breakfast, eh?” he asked, smirking.
The heavy breathing ellipses omitted, Starlight whined, “I don’t understand. It’s been a week since my rampage. I mean, I knew that I’d be magically tapped out the day after, like a hangover, but what the fuck? My magic still isn’t working!”
“You could just use your hooves to grab your cereal bowl, you know.”
“That’s degrading!” Starlight meekly shouted.
“What do you expect?” asked Discord. He pointed out the window of Starlight’s house, which was now orbiting Equestria thanks to his magic. The cities below looked like anthills, the mountains like lumps of sand at the beach.
“We’re five times as high in altitude as Cloudsdale. The air is so thin that your physical strength is sapped, and you breathe heavily. As for magic, of course it would be difficult for you to draw mana from the land at such a height.”
Starlight blinked. “Wait, mana seriously is tied to the land? Magic the Gathering was right?”
Discord nodded gleefully. “Unicorn magic is, at least. My own powers aren’t affected, because I draw magic from entropy itself. Which, if you’ve ever studied real science instead of friendship, you’d know entropy is everywhere around us and increasing. My powers grow stronger as the universe ages, and pretty soon I’ll be the only one left. It’ll be splendid in a few trillion trillion trillion years! I’ll use my powers to have fun for a bit, then I’ll get bored, so I’ll bring the universe back together in a giant crunch of matter. Then with the last of my strength I’ll ignite the Big Bang, dying in the process to be reborn at a later date. We’ve already had this conversation a million times, you know.”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “That’s comforting.”
“And after all of these conversations, you’re as stubborn as ever. Do you know why I agreed to live with you up here, and keep an eye on you, when I can be literally anyplace in the universe that I want to? Do you know why Celestia asked the God of Chaos, of all people, to watch over you? Because you and I share so much in common. We both use chaos and magic to get what we want, treating others as playthings, but we inevitably end up defeated. While you desire justice and fairness, I just desire to have a laugh, but I certainly respect your zealousness.”
Starlight thought for a second. “I guess we’re similar in a lot of ways, yes. I don’t really want to think about the things I’ve done. I’m going to go fly a kite.”
Starlight grabbed one of her kites, stood under the retractable skylight, and attempted to levitate herself up to it. She got about an inch above the ground, then fell down. So she tried it again, to the same result. Then again, and again, and pretty soon her body was vibrating up and down on the floor like a jackhammer. She broke through the floor and screamed as she plummeted down to the ground.
Discord waited until the last possible minute, then he snapped his fingers, and he and Starlight both appeared atop the roof.
He laughed. “All you had to do was ask.”
Starlight gaped. “I can’t even use magic to fly anymore?”
Discord shrugged. “A lot of folks thought that you shouldn’t have been able to do that in the first place. Kinda makes pegasi less unique.”
Starlight gave an annoyed sigh, and she set her kite off into the air. It jittered around, swinging in every which direction. No fun at all. She screamed in rage.
“What do you expect from your kite when the air is so thin up here?” asked Discord. “There’s a price you pay for not being in Ponyville, or any place with a property tax.”
“This isn’t what I wanted at all! I can’t use magic, I can’t fly kites, I can’t work my job as a guidance counselor, I pay just as much to have food and water carted up here as I would for property taxes, and the only ‘friend’ I get to see is you!”
Discord chuckled. “I’m quite honored. And hey, at least you aren’t on your meds anymore. Now you can be as bitter and pissed off as you want! As soon as you learn some humility that’s more genuine than a three minute reformation song or a slap on the wrist, they’re more than willing to let you live in Equestria again. You usually take about five years up here to truly understand that your actions have consequences, to learn that you can’t blame your problems on everyone else, to fix your broken emotions and mental problems and become a real girl. Hopefully you can get it done in less than five years this time.”
“WHAT? Five years? There’s no way! I can’t believe that they’d leave me up here, when I was perfectly justified in everything that I did to save my house. I’ll show them someday. Giving all the other guidance counselors a raise, giving all the other cities more money, it’s not FAIR! I’ll find a way to travel back in time and change all of that…”
Discord laughed, summoning a tub of popcorn to his side. “Looks like it’ll be five years once again. Glad I brought popcorn!”