Oh, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

As I give Sparkle the ol’ Hannibal Lecter treatment, strapping her to a handcart complete with straitjacket, face mask locked around her muzzle, and leather restraints, I can’t help but feel a certain thrill…each tightening of every strap earns the smallest flinch from her, something that would go unnoticed by a man that hadn’t trained himself to notice tiny motions like them for years on end.

“Aww, poor widdle Sparkle, am I hurting you?” I ask, cinching the waist strap tight. I brace my knee against her back and give it a good jerk, locking it in place and tying her down. “Good. You could use a little pain, and you wanna know why?”

“To fulfill your petty revenge scheme?” She asks, speaking for the first time since my guards literally dragged her up here.

I chuckle, shaking my head as I lower myself to make eye contact. “Of course not, dear Sparkle. It’s to build character. See, that’s why I beat you so easy. Because you’re a soft, stupid little pony princess who had her title handed to her by earning enough Brownie points from another princess. I actually had to earn and fight for everything I have, and you see who beat who?”

She fumes behind her muzzle, but holds her tongue through some amazing effort. I chuckle again and wheel her out of the dressing room. “If anything, you should be thanking me,” I say, the squeaking of the old cart’s wheels my only conversation partner. “I’m doing you a favor. You’ll be a much stronger pony in just a month’s time. Assuming, of course, your mind hasn’t shattered by then.”

She shivers against her restraints, earning a pat on the head. I turn and wheel her out of the dressing room. Oh director? We’re ready for our close-up!

I push her along a hallway now lined with banners of my own design: emerald green, with a black fist punching out from the bottom. Simple, efficient, the pinnacle of elegance in my opinion. Sure beats that sun-filled eyesore my army has been tearing down all through the day and piling up to be burnt. Finally, we approach the balcony, the roar of a crowd just beyond a plush, velvet curtain, the only sounds beside the wheeze of my respirator and the squeaking of the wheels on her prison. I lean down next to her ear, “You ready for this?”

“Ready for what?” She whispers back, unable to keep a quiver of fear from her voice.

I just grin behind my true face and up my stride to somewhere between a power walk and a light jog, pushing her into the daylight. A hundred feet beneath us, the entire city of Canterlot crowds into the square. On normal occasions, this would be how Celestia would address her widdle ponies, making some speech or another basically sucking Sparkle’s hoof with praise. Pathetic. This time, however, it’s me standing where she stood, and judging by the look of horror on Twilight’s face when the curtain parts, she realizes it too.

“How dare you,” she whispers. I don’t even reply, instead raising my hands to the shocked cries and whispers below. The ponies all shut up real quick then, the din that had filled the square just seconds before now replaced with an immediate silence.

“Citizens of Canterlot!” I announce, my voice projected by a series of spells in my respirator. “I give you, your princess!”

The silence continues, punctuated with a few cheers that die almost as quickly as they begin. Twilight looks out, confused, her eyebrows raised in concern.

“Oh, come come now, don’t be shy!” I announce, motioning to the pony strapped down behind me. “Sure, she’s seen better days, but she’s still your princess! Surely you would like to show her your support in this, her time of need!”

That earns some sporadic clapping and a few rising woops, but nothing much more than you’d expect after a good hit at a lukewarm baseball game. Twilight’s face twists into rage, her eyes closing. “What did you do?” She whispers.

“What’s this?” I ask the crowd, ignoring her even as I turn to face her handcart. “I thought ponies had nothing but love and adoration for their royalty, has something changed that?”

No claps, no laughter, all of that dies off completely. Even with my back to them, the spells in my respirator continue projecting out to the crowd, so I get to face little Miss Sparkle the entire time. “Perhaps it’s because you have realized that a hateful, spiteful little wench doesn’t deserve your praise?” I ask, my voice lowering. They still hear me, though, and evidently, so does Sparkle.

“What. Did you do,” she hisses, blinking back angry tears.

This time, my voice lowers to the point where only she can hear me: “Shown them what you really are.” At that, I clap my hands, and a group of changelings hiding in the balconies around us dart into the light. The crowd flinches back as the changelings conjure a series of screens into existence. All my idea, of course, realized entirely by changeling scientists and mages, but still pretty damn brilliant. Take one of the ponies’ ancient little cameras, leave it recording in real time and hide it somewhere, like say, in the hooves of a changeling disguised as an elaborate golden statue, and feed the film as it’s recorded to a changeling hiding just behind them, acting as the projector. Then, shoot the resulting film off to a few dozen squares all over the city and make attendance for the screenings mandatory, and what do you get?

A bunch of ponies confessing to what they think is an audience of a few, and instead reveal themselves to be selfish, horrifying, abusive little cunts to an entire city.

Even as I glare at her through the lenses on my mask, Twilight can hear everything from the screen: my “highlights reel” playing to the crowd. Roseluck’s confession, the scars, the big, dumb way the Element Bearers all looked at me. But most of all, that look of disgust on Roseluck’s face. “How could you?” She whispers over and over again, her nose wrinkling, gazing down at the Elements with a look now mirrored by many of the ponies in the crowd.

“Yes, this is your beloved princess,” I bellow. “This creature, this representative of hatred and bigotry, this is what your princess really is!”

A few shuffles rise up from the crowd, a couple discordant boos starting on the edges.

“Is this what you are? Is this pathetic creature what you want leading you into what is meant to be a golden age of harmony and prosperity!?”

The murmurs grow louder, the angry faces becoming more apparent.

“Is this who you want to act as your moral representative to the rest of the world!?” I scream, hammering an accusing finger in her direction. “This disgusting filth who would turn away a defenseless creature for the crime of being different!? Who is now personally responsible for the destruction of your nation!? Who holds in her hooves the keys to your total moral degradation…”

“Stop…” she whimpers behind me, her head bowed, ears folded. “Please.”

I turn to her again, locking eyes with her through my mask. I know she can see mine, she looks right at them. “Did you stop Rainbow Dash when my screams filled the forests?” I ask, my voice at a low, dangerous edge. “Or the crowds throwing rocks and garbage at me every time I tried to enter town, even as I wasted away and my clothes became rags? As a princess, it was well within your power to stop it all, but did it occur to you to even fucking try?”

She whimpers as I lower my arm. “No. Of course not.” I turn back to the crowd just as the murmurs explode into angry shouting. I now stand over a mob of rampaging ponies, finally wise to the ultimate betrayal. These ponies trusted their leaders with everything, with acting as the moral compass for their entire nation.

And they failed. Miserably.

I grin as the first rotten head of lettuce flies up out of the crowd, picked out of a dumpster I just happened to have moved right before this meetup, and right to the same area the crowd was going to gather! Quite the coinky-dink indeed.

“I think your ponies want to express their appreciation to their princess,” I whisper back to Twilight, then I wheel her right to the balcony’s edge, where she can drink in the sheer scale of my justice. A sea of ponies, thousands strong, screaming hatred her way, calling for her blood. Mares, stallions, foals, all screaming insults. Once again, they make use of the dumpsters, dipping into them and coming back with rotten veggies and half-eaten scraps, hurling it with all the strength they can muster in their little pony bodies.

Most of the trash never makes it, of course. A hundred feet straight up is a hundred feet against gravity no matter how you slice it. A linebacker couldn’t make that shot, nevermind some colorful talking horsies. Of course, I still wave my changelings forward, which proves to be pertinent as a few pegasi and unicorns manage to run the gauntlet and get in a good hit with a rotten head of lettuce or a chunk of spoiled meat. Whatever, one or two hits are alright, the flying garbage isn’t the point. The point is those screaming faces, the fact that garbage is flying in the first place. The tears streaming down Twilight’s face, tracking through a bit of spoiled marinara sauce on her cheek and staining the top of her straightjacket red, are the point. I grin again.

“Oh, cheer up Sparkle,” I announce, sidling up beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder, right in a stain left by some browning carrots. “You should smile! After all, your friends are watching.”

She looks at me in confusion, but then I point out the camera crew setup in a hotel room just across the square, in the VIP suite too. The changelings there wave around the lens aimed in her direction, the deep, black eye watching us both with remorseless accuracy. She gazes at it in horror, then bows her head again, setting back to crying softly as I back away, letting her reap the spoils of her monstrous actions. After a few minutes, I wheel her away, back behind the safety of the curtain with the crowd still screaming for blood behind us. “Now you know what it’s like,” I whisper, picking a bit of wilted lettuce out of her mane. “Now you have some idea of what it’s like to be hated like that.”

She doesn’t speak for a while as I descend to the dungeons, but then she bows her head and sniffles quietly. “There,” she whispers. “All the hatred you could have imagined, now levelled my way. Is that enough for you? Will that finally satisfy you?”

I take enormous satisfaction in leaning down by her ear and whispering: “No.”

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In the darkness of the dungeons beneath Canterlot, five mares watched in growing horror as their friend was subjected to the terrors of a ravenous, furious crowd. They watched, the glow of a single screen the only light in their tiny, dreary home, peering at it through the bars of their individual cells. On the screen, a head of wilted lettuce bounced off the curtain just as it rustled shut behind the human while he wheeled the little purple unicorn out of sight.

“Darn,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “A few seconds earlier, and that would’ve nailed him right on the back of the head.”

“Oh my…” Fluttershy sniffled, barely stifling tears. “W-what happened? All those ponies just…they just…”

“Now dontcha worry, Flutters,” Applejack added, punctuating her sentence with another kick to the stringy clumps of goop wrapped around her legs. “We’ll get outta this, one way or another. Always have, always will.”

Pinkie didn't put in her two bits. She had been quiet the entire time the six had been imprisoned in this dungeon. The others didn't know she'd been crying most of that time, and of course in the darkness nopony could see her perfectly straight mane.

One mare, however, also didn’t speak up. One mare didn’t even take her eyes from the screen. One mare looked at the jeering crowds and the hatred onscreen and, of course, the repeating reel showing Roseluck’s look of disgust, and her stomach twisted into knots.

“If we’ve lost the ponies of Canterlot…” Rarity trailed off, her eyes shimmering with a strange, saddened gleam. A hoof lifted to her mouth as her head slowly shook. “My dear sweet Celestia, what have we done? Oh…what have we done?”

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I wheel Twilight in nice and slow, barely even regarding the other ponies in the dungeon as they cry out for their friend, wheeling my way down the aisle to one little cage in the back. I pop it open, then with a flick of my finger, unclip the straps holding Twilight to the cart and jerk it forward. She slams into the ground with a startled cry, her hooves still too tangled in the loose bindings of the straightjacket to keep from faceplanting into the damp stonework.

I snicker as I lock her cage, leaving the cart next to it. “Until next time, Sparkle,” I chortle, striding for the door.

Applejack, her cell right next to Twilight’s, is the first to sidle up alongside the princess and whisper through the bars, thinking I might not notice. Little fool. “Twi,” she hisses. “Twi, you alright?”

Twilight responds with a choked-off gasp that just brings a smile to my face.

“Twi, don’t let them ponies outside mess with yer head,” Applejack continues with some of her wonderful farm-spun wisdom. “They’re just scared, is all, an’ willing t’blame anypony fer…”

“Or maybe they’re finally seeing you all for what you really are,” I announce, stopping in my tracks. “Maybe the ponies of Equestria are finally waking up to the fact that their heroes are frauds, and represent nothing of what they’re supposed to. Maybe they’re finally seeing you the way I see you.”

Applejack doesn’t even miss a beat, glaring at me. “Yeah? And what’s that?”

“Oh, shall I go down the line?” I ask, still not turning as I spread my arms out. “Very well.”

I’m nearest to the door, next to Rarity’s cell. She’s seen better days. Looks like she’s spent quite a bit of time crying. And – God above, is that…yes! Her mane is even unkempt! Horrors beyond all horrors!

“First, we have the elitist bitch,” I hiss. “The girl that’s suffered at the hooves of some noble shithead, the one that claims to stand for a sort of upper-class that doesn’t judge others based on where they stand in life, yet the moment something new and different came to her doorstep, it was nothing more than a beast in her eyes.

“Hypocrite,” I snarl, leaving her as tears well up in her big, pony gaze. I move on to the next cage down the line, where a little yellow pegasus lays trembling on the floor of her cell.

“Next up, we have a little pony that claims to stand for the defenseless. She supposedly represents the very aspect of kindness, capable of caring for those that nopony else will.” I press my face to the bars, glaring in at her. Her eyes lift out from under her wings for a second, then immediately dart back under. The anger flares, and I let it out through my tongue. “Until, that is, something a little bit different from what she’s used to shows up, begging for some form of aid. At that point, she becomes a useless ball of feathers, good for little more than crushing the last dying hopes of a breaking spirit.

“Coward,” I whisper before continuing on. I skip right over Pinkie’s cell. She opens her mouth to say something as I move right on past to Applejack’s cell, then closes it as she looks at my back with watery, tear-filled eyes. She meets my gaze as I stride up to her, though her look is haunted and terrified. Can’t help but respect that.

“After that, we have a little pony that’s worked her entire life, who has developed her reputation for kindness and hospitality with the other ponies of this world,” my glare intensified as that old rage ignited in the pit of my stomach. “So long as that pony looks right, though. Otherwise, they might get nothing at all. Nothing, that is, except for a buck to the stomach, an assault that is completely unwarranted and unjustified. Contrary to the reputation she’s built for herself, she sees a creature just stopping by in hopes of finding one friendly hoof in this world, and what is her first reaction? To turn that hoof against him.

“Liar,” I whisper, grinning as I do. A bit convoluted, yes, but the shock on her face as I leave her is so worth it.

Rainbow Dash glares up at me hatefully, trying to spread her wings out, but meeting only resistance from her bindings. I glare right back. “Of course, next we have the mare most responsible for adding to my misery during my time here,” I say, idly running my fingers along the bars of her cell. “Words can’t begin to do justice to what I feel towards you, Miss Dash. I can’t even begin to describe the hatred you stir in me. But I can try: you are the worst of the worst, a thoughtless, stupid bully with no sense of right and wrong except for who can and can’t defend themselves. My time here would have been miserable enough if it wasn’t for the stupid, agonizing torture you put me through for the sheer entertainment of watching me squirm, knowing I had no way of defending myself. You are the sort of sociopath we execute where I come from. And believe me, the thought’s crossed my mind. But I’m not you, Rainbow Dash, I’m not as awful and black-hearted as you are. And for that, you can thank your lucky stars.

“Monster,” I finish, turning away, leaving her stunned as my words fall on her like a tidal wave.

Stunned silence fills the dungeon, but not before I turn on my last target, the final step. Twilight Sparkle glares at me through the bars of her cell, tears still fresh on her cheeks. I just smirk.

“And you, Miss Sparkle. I’ve already said everything I need to say about you, but there’s something I’d like to finish up with: this isn’t just justice for me,” I rush up to the bars, reach through, and grab her by one of her goop-covered wings, hauling her up to face me eye-to-eye. “This is for the ones that adore you. This is for the ones back where I come from that worship you.”

Her eyes widen. “Yes, they are there, and they think you are so much more than what you are,” I hiss. “This is justice for them, for letting them down so much, for failing them so totally.”

I grin, drinking in the way she quivers at that word. “Failure,” I repeat under my breath. I spread my hands out to the room around me, turning in place. “So there you have it, the representatives of Harmony in Equestria. Fuck, I’d hate to meet your criminals if you pile of failures and bigots are the best they’ve got. But let it be said that what your princess has just experienced is nothing less than what you all put me through in those three miserable years.”

I scowl and drop my arms before striding out. “What I just showed you is a mirror. There’s only one person to blame if you don’t like whatcha see.”

Without another word, I stride out, clomping up the stairs and slamming the dungeon’s door behind me. I breathe in, and breathe out. My fists clench until my arms shake. Then my knees give out and I hit the floor on all fours.

“Sir!?” The changelings guarding the door are at my side in an instant, one of them using the butt of his spear to try and lever me back to my feet, propping it against my shoulder. “Sir, are you…”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I spit, waving them off as I press myself back to my shaky, trembling feet. What I just went through was a total emotional marathon. As if my speech in the courtroom wasn’t enough, guess I still had something left inside me even after that. It feels…empty. All that hate and all those words I’d been waiting so long to say were out now, and without them it was like a gap had been left in my heart. But it wasn’t just that.

“Get a grip, Jason, get a grip,” I whisper. God, I hate this. I hate them. But…did I?

I sigh. No sense lying to myself. Yes, I did hate them, but some small part of me still loved them. That part which had watched that show in wide-eyed wonder all those years ago, that stupid, idiotic jackass who thought stepping through that portal was the best thing he could do for himself. Five years. Five years of torture and pain, and that stupid, idiotic part still wouldn’t leave me. And it was in pain right now, even while the rest of me was practically rolling in self-satisfaction.

So where does that leave me? I want to make them pay, maybe slice off Rainbow Dash’s wings, or slash the tendons in Applejack’s legs. Make those little cunts think twice before attacking somebody for no good reason.

Except…goddammit…that fucking little part of me...if I hurt them that bad, I’ll wind up hurting myself just as bad. No, I need something different, something manageable. Then a thought crosses my mind. I grin. I’ve had a year to think of the perfect vengeance for my return to Equestria, and I’ve used it well.

“Sir?” The changeling guard at my side ventures. I look up in surprise, only now remembering the guards at my sides having just watched me collapse, except the fear is back now. I can see it in the way they take an involuntary step back when I turn back to the door. “What do we do now?”

I gaze through the heavy oaken door, my grin growing. “Tell the transports to ready up,” I reply, my voice quivering with anticipation. “ Tomorrow, we’re going on a field trip.”

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the delay, was dealing with some emotional crap for one, but also I couldn't quite get the courtroom scene right. I knew it was missing something, turned out most of Jason's rant was all it needed, which I had written up for a deleted scene.