The steady 'clop-clop-clop' of Princess Celestia's hooves could be heard in the throne room as she paced back and forth, her brow furrowed and her head angled down towards the ground, her legs almost at a trot. She was lost in thought, and it took a moment for her sister to snap her out of it by cutting in front of her.

"Sister, please! You've not said a word since Twilight-" she tried to say to Celestia, but the slightly taller and still somewhat older-looking Princess gazed at her sister, looked her right in the eyes.

Luna was taken aback at the actual worry she saw....the genuine expression of concern that Luna could only recall seeing in the eyes of expectant Fathers waiting for their foals to be born, or a doting Mother repeatedly asking 'where is she?!' when her foal has gone missing. It tore at her deeply, to see her sister, the Sun Goddess, in such distress.

Her tone became less frantic, but no less concerned as they continued to look each other in the eyes. "Tia, what....what happened in there?"

Celestia thought about what she should, what she could tell Luna, she could keep up this look of regal professionalism and regain her composure, but....this was Twilight! Or was it? This wasn't the Twilight she knew.

"She....she cursed at me. She screamed for me to get out, and Spike already looked unnerved when I went in there. She has never...." Celestia tried to say, closing her eyes and clenching her teeth in a pained expression.

Luna sighed and slowly motioned to their thrones, moving to take a seat upon her own while Celestia followed her sister's example, slumping ever-so-slightly as she did so. To most, it would be imperceptible, but Luna knew her sister well, even after a thousand years of absence....Tia was truly upset, apparently for good reason.

Celestia's eyes slid shut while a hoof pressed just under the base of her horn, the royal shaking her head slowly. "All I did was go in to see how her studies were coming along, and the moment I mentioned the exams that were coming up, she just froze, and....she looked so exhausted and worn down, and her eyes were bloodshot. I should've asked how she was doing first, why didn't I?"

Luna sighed and shook her head, thinking on what had happened merely fifteen or so minutes prior. She had heard the language, heard the shouting from down the hall...nopony would ever, should ever, get away with talking to one of the Princesses the way Twilight did! But here Celestia was, blaming herself. They were both sensible, and intelligent, she knew there was more to this than just some hurt feelings.

She firmly tapped the metal shoe of her hoof against the legrest of her throne, smiling over to her sibling. "Celestia....talk to me. You know you can always open up to me."

Celestia glanced over to her sister with a grateful, yes sad smile, once again taking in the sight of her sister once again seated upon her own black marble throne, meshing wonderfully with her sister's natural violet hues.

With the return of much of her sister's strength came Luna's body returning to the way it was meant to look, not the small, almost foal-like shape she was in when the Elements of Harmony had purified her. No, now she looked regal, with poise, confident and strong like her sister, her wings large and her head held high.

Of course, they both had ethereal manes with very distinct differences as well. Where Celestia's flowed straight and in a pastel rainbow color at all times, Luna's was dark, black as the void that she painted with her stars and lit up with her beautiful moon, her mane constantly flowing as if a mass of cloud being pushed around by an unseen wind, with shimmering images of star patterns appearing and disappearing in dim flickers constantly, making her mane seem to sparkle of its own accord.

Celestia's gaze wandered towards the floor as she lost herself in thoughts of her student. "I am afraid of what her studies are doing to her, Luna. She's not doing well with them....not in the slightest."

"Well that shouldn't be too much of an issue," Luna offered, smiling a little. "Just remove her from her studies for a time."

Celestia simply shook her head. "She refuses. Every time, she's refused. Every time I've offered to help, she keeps pushing me away, and her mood keeps becoming worse and worse. She's not taking care of her mane, I can tell she's not sleeping well enough, she's probably not eating right, and...." she said, her words slowly cutting off, as if she had more to say, but she felt there was no need to.

Luna shifted in her seat. Normally personal issues like this would be dealt with in the privacy of their chambers, but they were currently in recess for the Night Court. She didn't really have the time to march all the way back to her room with her sister just to talk about personal issues.

"What should I do, Luna? I can't comfort her, she just keeps getting more and more edgy and....stressed out. She doesn't handle pressure well when she gets overwhelmed by it."

Before anything else could be said, a wave of magic drew the attention of every single pony in the throne room. Things had gone deathly silent as a second wave made everyone's stomach churn.

Celestia paled instantly, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks in abject terror. She knew that magic. She knew it as if it were her own! Instantly, she forced herself from her seat and tried to teleport, but the steady and fluctuating waves of very, very ill-feeling magic continued to disrupt her concentration. She felt furious, but only until the wave passed through her.

Realizing that it would take too long and have too large a margin of error to try to teleport back to the school's wing of the castle, she took off in a full sprint that seemed to border on desperation. No one save for Luna had ever seen her take off running like that before.

Luna knew that, given the chance, she would likely take to wing through the larger hallways in order to reach her student faster. No doubt, her sister would require some sort of assistance, and Twilight Sparkle was her friend as well!

She quickly got up from her throne and motioned to her assistant. "Court is cancelled for tonight, get everypony safely out of the castle in case this isn't what we all think it is!"

She took off after her sister a moment later, a mild panic welling in her as well. Not because she recognized these waves of raw magic as Twilight's, but because she recognized the nature of the magic itself. She prayed it wasn't too late to stop Twilight before she hurt herself.

Spike tried his best to keep his distance from his 'boss'. Twilight's horrendous sleeping patterns usually made her grumpy, sure, especially now that they were back in Canterlot, doing what they've always done best: out-smarting and out-studying the rest of the one-percenters that made up the most intelligent and magically gifted unicorns in all of Equestria.

Now, though....now, she was different. She wasn't Twilight. Every second that passed she seemed to be dwelling on something other than the book, and it was showing in the scowl on her face. Then there were the things, the words muttered under her breath as she paced the room, book glowing with a more and more intense amount of magical energy the more upset she seemed to get.

Soon she just screamed in an indescribable frustration and threw the book in Spike's direction, making him drop several others he was carrying over to her that she'd outright ordered the 'annoying purple midget' to get for her. She'd been like this for several days, and he was hoping that at the sight of Celestia coming in to check on her, Twilight would at least calm down some, maybe be reassured about the upcoming exams. Instead, it had the opposite effect: he'd never expected to see a young unicorn like Twilight get angry enough at a single question to make Princess Celestia shrivel in her presence and back out of the room, with Twilight in her face all the way until she could slam the door and get the Princess out of her disheveled mane.

Twilight snarled at nothing, glaring down at the floor. "Everyone, irritating! Everything in this damn place, it ticks me off!" she grumbled, growing louder with every few words.

her horn glowed and an entire stack of books went flying across the room, almost hitting Spike in the head. "Get out!" she shouted, suddenly turning her head to look in the thoroughly terrified little purple dragon's direction. "GET OUT!!!" she screamed at him, the look in her eyes almost murderous in nature.

Spike barely managed to open the door and rush his way out into the hallway before several more books flew in his direction, thudding and skidding across the polished marble floor. He could see guards coming his way, and he instinctively rushed to them, tears in his eyes.

Her entire body was shaking, and even she could tell something was wrong. She was smart, she was intelligent enough to know that things had gone too far, but she was quickly losing her own coherence. "Wh-what's wrong with me....why am I here?! WHY AM I HERE?!?!"

She screamed as her fury and her magic intertwined and lashed out, a powerful blaze of lavender magic crashing over the room and ripping books from their shelves with enough force to send paper scattering through the air, torn out of their binding by a young, stressed, infuriated, and thoroughly broken young mare.

"This damn castle, all of these Goddess-forsaken classes!" she screamed, her anger only continuing to get worse, and her magic more and more intense, the hinges on her door creaking under the building maelstrom of air pressure in the room.

Celestia could feel it, and Luna could now too. That much power wasn't natural, that wasn't born from simply knowing how to control magic. That was power born from pouring your very essence into it, and they could feel the anger emanating from it, pulsating in steady waves of increasing ferocity.

She had slowed down when she'd spotted her sister flying towards her, both of them keeping low to the ground to avoid banging their heads in an effort to avoid fleeing students and rallying guards that had the same idea as they did.

They both landed alongside the small group that was keeping a decent distance from Twilight's room, a few of them gasping as her door was suddenly ripped off of its frame and tossed across the hallway, smashing against a stone pillar.

Wind whipped up in the hallway anywhere close to Twilight's room, the circulating air holding a harsh magical aura that could only be felt, not seen, and Spike had already found himself hiding behind several of the guards....who were equally as hesitant to go anywhere near that room. A horrible, furious scream wailed through the wind rushing out of the room, and something could be heard smashing against one of the walls inside.

"Guards! I want everyone near this room vacated at once! No one is to come inside or disturb us!" Celestia commanded, and they quickly obeyed.

They may have been afraid, but at least two of them ran past the doorway to get to the other side of the hallway. The guards went to work getting confused, and even scared unicorns out of their rooms and far, far away from what one could only define as a whirlwind of hate. Spike had remained, in disbelief that this was coming from Twilight, and because he was torn: leave her like this, or stay for when the Princess eventually managed to fix whatever was wrong....it's not like the Princess could fail, right?

Celestia cautiously approached the doorway, her sister standing close to her side. She shook her head once and sternly rested a hoof on Luna's wither, urging her away. "No, sister. I am at fault for this....I should be the one to confront her."

Luna stared up at Celestia for a moment, then nodded and stepped away, moving back away from the door, watching her sister move to step inside.

Celestia took a deep breath to steady herself before stepping into the room, calling out to her student. "Twilight!!" she tried to shout out over the roar of the maelstrom.

Twilight could hear a voice. A familiar voice, through all of her screaming, everything that she'd ever felt that she never let go, so many things, so many memories that she thought she'd forgotten had come bubbling to the surface like a furious volcano of emotion just waiting to erupt, and her current state was the result. She was angry, but she was equally scared, mainly of herself. She felt weak, helpless, barely aware of the damage and carnage she was causing around her, her eyes glowing white with magic-addled tears running down her cheeks and dissipating into the whirlwind of air before they could ever reach her chin.

Her magic was raging out of control, her bed tossed against one wall and almost completely upside-down, the room torn apart and in shambles with papers flying everywhere. Twilight had collapsed in a heap on the ground and began sobbing uncontrollably. She hated everything right now. Nothing else mattered except everything she hated. There was nothing good, only bad. These feelings, these thoughts continued to consume her and make her condition worse and worse, her chin hitting the ground while her forelegs came up and planted her hooves over her face.

She muttered something to herself in-between her crying, but when she heard that voice call out her name again, her anger suddenly had her upright and turning to face her, glowing eyes focusing on the alicorn standing in the doorway as if she were ready to commit any crime imaginable to make her suffer and pay for intruding upon her right now.

"Twilight, please, let me talk to you!" Celestia tried to call out to her over the roar of the wind and the flapping paper that threatened to start leaving paper cuts, but for the most part her fur and mane stayed in the way enough to stop that from ever being an issue.

"YOU!!" Twilight hissed out through her teeth, loud enough to be heard plenty clearly by the Princess.

Suddenly, Celestia felt that maelstrom coming under control, and she knew she, the Goddess of the Sun, was in a very bad position right now.

"You're the reason I'm here!" she shouted, accentuating the last word with a book that came around within the swirling wind, aiming for the current focus of her fury.

Celestia grunted and stumbled sideways, barely keeping her balance from the impact of the book in the side of her head. Then another hit her, and another, the wind constantly swirling and changing directions now, like a vicious invisible serpent, bludgeoning her with whatever it could ensnare in its violent grasp.

"I came here because YOU wanted me to do this!" she continued on, her magic reaching out and grabbing her coffee table next, raising it up and aiming for Celestia with it.

The Princess saw it coming and side-stepped swiftly, trying to get closer to her charge, but a broken-off leg from the table took her by surprise. She felt and heard a heavy, meaty 'thr-KRACK!' when the heaviest end of it impacted the side of her face, and she cried out in pain while blood shot out from a suddenly busted-open part of the inside of her lip, cut open by flesh being slammed and ground against the edge of one of her teeth.

Luna had looked inside just as she'd seen her sister struck down by a surprise blow to the head, the shattered leg of the table dissipating in the maelstrom and being discarded in favor of searching for other blunt instruments. She tried to rush to her sister's side, barely making it a few steps into the room as several books bashed at Celestia's face from the opposite side that the table leg had hit her.

This was like dealing with something both tangible and intangible, its reach and where it was going to attack from unidentifiable until it was almost too late. Luna almost didn't see the table heading for her sister, and her magic was too disrupted from the overwhelming influence of Twilight's maelstrom to bring forth a defense in time. She could only watch and listen as the table smashed over her sister's side with a loud and disturbing cracking sound of wood and bone.

Despite the pain and the injuries she'd sustained, easily having a broken rib from that last strike, she called out to Luna. "I told you not to interfere, Luna!" Celestia screamed over the howling winds.

She didn't know what to do. Her mind raced for a solution as she watched her traumatized friend struggle with her own emotions against the wall nearby, her back against a series of empty bookshelves. Should she try to knock Twilight out herself? No....that would likely only end with her own injuries, as well as Twilight's. Instead, she focused her magic and charged her horn, preparing herself.

"I will help you get close to her!"

Celestia ducked as another broken table leg whizzed past her head, narrowly missing bashing her snout in half most likely, and quickly nodded to Luna. She was too dazed to properly focus her magic at the moment, and she refused to retreat....Twilight might pursue her if she tried to escape the room, and this destruction would spread through the castle in that scenario. No, she had to try to stop this where it started.

She quickly nodded to her sister, and Luna began focusing on keeping a shield around them, the magic-formed winds crashing over the barrier and straining her more than she'd expected. It was as if the winds themselves were actively attacking her shield! She took firm steps in time with Celestia's as her sister's horn began to glow as well, pouring her magic into the shield to reinforce it and take some of the strain off of Luna.

Celestia could only stare at Twilight with a deep feeling of guilt and regret. Perhaps if she'd been more insistent, more....something, anything, she could've stopped this from happening in the first place.

Twilight Sparkle, one of the most intelligent and skilled unicorns in Celestia's entire school, her prodigy, was having a nervous breakdown and crumbling under the pressure.

Twilight was having an infuriatingly hard time hitting her now, that unseen shield from Luna blocking her from all sides. "STAY AWAY FROM ME!!" she screamed, a snake of random objects making a trail and trying to slam down on Celestia's back, but none of them made contact, only being repelled away. "I came back to make YOU PROUD OF ME!!"

The injured Alicorn limped over towards her student, slowly but surely, looking her in the eyes. She could see her lips moving sometimes between her screams, but she couldn't hear what she was saying, but it was something she was saying over and over and over in-between her bursts of fury.

Finally, she was too close for Twilight to possibly stop her now, and Twilight curled up almost fetally, glaring at her.

"Don't touch me! Get away from me! Just leave me alone....!" she desperately pleaded in an aggravated tone, the winds slowly beginning to die down as Twilight's reserves began to dwindle.

Her anger refused to fully subside, her eyes slowly beginning to return to normal as she stared into Celestia's eyes, those understanding, always compassionate....but at the moment pained and sorrowful eyes. She felt Celestia's forelegs slowly wrap around her neck, the larger Goddess's body gently nestling in next to and against Twilight's own....and the anger simply gave way to the tears.

"Why? Why did you bring me back here....?" she asked, as if pleading for an answer, any answer, that could make everything she was feeling right now go away. Her mind felt burnt out, and her body exhausted, her magic utterly drained.

Twilight's entire body was trembling, and Celestia's heart shattered as she both felt and heard her student fall apart in a crenscendo of wailing cries and sobs. All of the tattered book covers and papers, random destroyed parts of things that used to be cabinets, tables, and parts of Twilight's bed, all of it fell to the ground all around them as her magic gave out.

Celestia felt herself beginning to tremble as well, she didn't need to cry or shed tears to feel her student's pain. It was too much. She knew it was too much the moment she could finally hear what her student had been uttering to herself throughout the entire ordeal.

"Please....! Just let me go home....!"

With a shaky breath, both from the pain in her side and from she herself being on the verge of tears upon realizing the horrible mistake she'd completely missed this past year and a half, she turned her head to speak to Luna, just holding her student close to her, not daring to move away from Twilight even for a moment.

"Sister....please. Arrange for a transport to Ponyville, and send a messenger pegasus, the fastest one we have....tell him to contact the other Elements of Harmony, and have them go to the Ponyvi-....Twilight's Library." she requested with a wheezing cough, the sharp pain in her side flaring with every hack.

Luna lowered her head a distance away from the two of them, just watching the scene that had unfolded before her. She could only feel a fraction of the pain that those two were going through, but it was enough for her to respect her sister's wishes instead of demanding that the doctor take a look at Celestia first, after the things she'd been hit with.

As Luna left, Spike felt it safe enough to step inside, tentatively stepping towards the two that were nestled against each other against a far wall, him stepping over tattered remains of many of Twilight's favorite books, pages from a multitude of them. Somehow, the very sight of it was ghastly to him, to see Twilight so willingly rip apart one of her favorite things in the world.

"Princess....? Is she....okay?"

Celestia looked up from gently nuzzling Twilight's shaking form. It could barely be seen, but she was crying as well, a few tears trickling down otherwise pristine cheeks of white fur, tainted by bruises and small bits of blood in certain places. She had little actual need for a doctor, she healed faster than any mortal pony, but it could still take a few days.

"Spike....I will understand if you want to stay here, after what you've just witnessed....you don't have to go back with her if you're afraid of her." she muttered, her voice shaky and subdued, not just because of the injury to her ribs.

"Go back? To Ponyville?" he guessed, and Celestia just nodded, looking down at her trembling student, whose sobbing had given way to bleary, wide eyes.

Twilight was in shock at what she'd just done, and a flurry of emotions in her were still swirling about, like a washing machine tossing her emotional insides about and making sure everything mixed together in a horrifying mess. Her mind was muddled and she couldn't think. She couldn't recall yesterday. She could remember most everything, but she couldn't recall yesterday. Why? What was wrong with her?

"Pr-Princess....?" she said, her voice shaky and broken, her looking up at her with those wide-terrified eyes. "I-I'm sorry....!" she barely managed to squeak out to her.

In that moment, Spike had made up his mind. "Sorry Princess, but I'm her number one assistant....she'll have to do worse than this to make me stay away!" he said, hoping that would at least, somehow, lift the lavender unicorn's spirits....but she didn't even acknowledge him.

Celestia smiled at that and nodded once to him before shifting her attention back to Twilight, leaning down to nuzzle the young mare with the less aching side of her muzzle.

"No, Twilight....don't think about what just happened. Lay your head down and rest. You're going home, tonight....I won't keep you in this place a moment longer than is necessary."

Celestia took a deep breath, then struggled to hold back a cough, tasting blood as her chest quivered with some suppressed, quiet hacks. "I never should've asked you to come back here. Not like this."

Author's Notes:

Okay, so....yeah! This has needed doing for quite a while now. Now that I'm working on the sequel, I figure I should go back and get this taken care of! Some things need to be changed and corrected anyways, so hey.