Twilight Sparkle and Zeccora looked up at the sound of a crash coming from the other end of town. They looked at each other, and dashed for it without a word, the heavy book floating behind them. A quick gallop later, and they came to a floury cloud in the town square. Pinkie Pie sat on her haunches in front of the wreakage of Sugarcube Corner, apparently in shock.
"Pinkie! Are you ok?" cried Twilight. Pinkie Pie didn't respond. "Pinkie?" She waved a foreleg in front of her friend's face, but her expression didn't change.
"Cake…" Pinkie murmered.
"Didn't catch that. What happened?"
"No cake…"
"Would somepony call an ambulance? I think Pinkie's had a concussion!"
"How can you tell?" grumbled a bystander. "It's that kid what done it, I saw. The one from that new family." Twilight Sparkle pounced on him. "Where did she go? SPEAK!" The pony pointed, and Twilight ran, trusting in the EMT's to take good care of her friend.
Emerald Zap finally made it into the Everfree again, but didn't stop when she came to her house. One look told her that it was barely standing, and anyway the last thing she wanted was to be anywhere nearby when her family returned. That green light, it felt so wrong, so painful to keep inside. She needed to let it out, needed to keep it hidden, needed to scream. On impulse, she veered off the path and plunged through the underbrush. Maybe she'd get so lost nobody would find her, maybe she'd even lose herself. That would be nice.
When she'd been running for a while, she stopped, and the trees immediately began to close around her. Whatever. They'd learn.
She screamed at last, one long, high note, the light bursting out of her horn and obliterating the too-close trees. The light burned on and on, and she kept with the scream until she felt the pressure lessen, and finally wilt. She sat panting in the middle of her crater, trembling. The burnt and molten rock extended for yards all around, the claustrophobic trees nothing more than ash on the breeze. Even after all that, she could feel the seed of the power beginning to fill again. At this rate, she'd be ready to destroy another patch of earth this size in a couple hours.
No, earlier. Some of that pressure had been released at the school and in town, hadn't it? She had maybe an hour before it came back to full strength. What could she possibly do in one hour?
Zeccora had said something about the library being able to solve mysteries. Maybe she could make it back to town, get some reading material, and hightail it back to the woods again before she had to explode again? How fast could she run? And what book would she need when she got there? She got unsteadily to her feet, and was knocked down again by something dense and squarish, flying at high speed directly at her head. She shook the stars out of her brain and picked it up.
"Starswirl the Bearded: A Life and A Half?" she read out loud. How oddly convenient.
A crashing in the underbrush told of someone coming. For a moment, Zap was afraid; the very idea of something threatening her made her laugh a second later. She, afraid of any creature of the forest! She, who was even now surrounded by her own smoking crucible! The thought was so funny and the day had been so stressful that she kept laughing, harder and louder, until her knees gave out and she actually started rolling on the forest floor.
This was how Twilight Sparkle found the little filly, laughing hysterically in the middle of what looked like a volcanic pit, green coat turning black as she rolled in the ashes. Twilight stopped running so abruptly she slid for a couple feet before coming to a halt. She racked her memory rapidly. What would Starswirl do? She had it embroidered on a frame on her bedroom wall, asked the question of herself constantly, but now that she was seeing before her very eyes a situation that Starswirl himself had actually experienced, Twilight had no idea. All right, back to basics, then. Back to Magic Kindergarten.
Lesson One: Calm thyself. Twilight breathed deeply, and sought the inner rock. "Hey," she called to the filly. "Are you ok? Can you hear me?" The child stopped midgiggle and whipped around to stare at Twilight in horror. "S-stay away," she said, voice cracked from an emotional morning's overload. "Please don't come any closer, I don't want to hurt anypony else." The filly backed away, but the slope of the crater made it next to impossible to climb out unaided.
Lesson Two: Fear Nothing. "It's all right, you're not in trouble," Twilight said, hoping she sounded convincing. She could feel the heat of still-cooling rock coming up through her hooves, but still took a step into the crater, then another. When all four feet were over the lip, pulverized ash and stone made the slide down easy. The filly kept trying to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The book lay between them.
Lesson Three: Know When Not To Use Magic. "We can work out whatever your trouble is, but you have to listen to me. All you need is control. I can help, but you have to let me."
"Is that really true, or do you just want me to believe it is?" the filly asked. "Look, it's even on my flank." She twisted to reveal her cutie mark, a dark cloud split by green light. "You can't argue with destiny, I am meant to split the skies." Twilight blinked. Who talks like that? She wondered. She'd only heard Princess Luna say such dramatic things. Maybe this kid only looked young.
Lesson Four: Trust Thyself, Trust Thy Fellows. "You wouldn't be the first. Maybe I personally can't help you, but Princess Celestia will know what to do. Come with me to my library, we'll write to her together."
"Princess Celestia?" The filly's eyes widened even further. "Oh no, I couldn't. She—that is, my father—I mean…well, I just couldn't! She's so good and pure she raises the sun every day, and I'm just…" she slumped in the pit, all the fight gone from her. "I'm just a monster," she said. "Princesses don't have time for monsters."
Twilight wanted to object to that last point, but the last several monsters she'd encountered paraded in front of her eyes, every one of them defeated at the Princess' behest but without her help. She shook her head. The kid might be right in a certain light, but that's simply not how things really were. She lowered her horn and used its power to lift herself and the filly out of the crater, followed by the Starswirl biography. She thought of Discord, of Nightmare Moon, the Timberwolves.
"You are not a monster," Twilight said. "Trust me on this, I've seen monsters."