There was no way out of what was required of me. I knew my place after that second time. It was a pegasus that time, and she struggled even more than Ivy did. I think her name was...Cloud-something? Cloud Caller? That sounds right, but when I try to think back, some memories are more vague than others. I never forgot my first kill though. I never forgot the look on her face in that final moment.

When my brother heard about the 'home invasion', I think he firmly set himself on his path right there and then. Already gifted in defensive magicks and being so pre-disposed to good health and a strong, sturdy build, becoming a member of the Royal Guard was pretty much the best option for him. That or some kind of Mafia enforcer or whatever, but my brother's got too much of a righteous heart for that life.

Myself, however...I was trapped in a place I didn't want to be, and the longer I was stuck there, the more I plotted and planned. Every cold-blooded murder I conducted on a captive pony gave me more insight on how to tweak and adjust the spell, and I purposely limited the information I gave to him in some vague hope that I actually gave him just enough that he didn't catch another pony.

That was my life until I was twelve. The Magister decided that he no longer needed my help. I didn't have any complaints, of course, why would I? Maybe I got a taste for it, sure, I was raised on it. I was conditioned for it. But did I ever want to do it, to ponies that I had no quarrel with? No.

But as time went on...maybe I did. I remember a lot of them. They did their own share of disgusting, despicable things. I remember a stallion who extorted a fledgling family business to the point of bankruptcy. When they could no longer pay protection, the Mafia took ownership of the place and got rid of them.

Then there were victims like that maid. They hadn't even taken her out of her uniform! Try as I might to justify her death, she hadn't done a single thing wrong outside of swiping an expensive piece of jewelry from some noble's collection. That definitely wasn't what she was sitting in the chair for though. I can only assume they thought she knew something they wanted. They never told me.

I can't even remember her name. Just another death to scar my soul and my psyche.

I always played the timid, thoroughly cowed young filly. I only did what I was told, never asked questions, but when I went home I planned. Numerous writings, hidden away through concealing spells and dark hiding places in my room and down in the basement. I spent all of my free time reading, studying magic, experimenting with it and further perfecting my mind magic on animals and bad ponies alike. No one ever saw me, no one ever suspected me.

It's difficult to point a hoof at someone if you don't even realize someone's fucked with your head.

I never talked to my parents about what they made me do. They simply accepted that there was nothing they could do about it, and that I didn't want to talk to them about it. Even if I had a taste for it now, that didn't mean I wanted them to know that I knew dark magic. Dangerous dark magic, in hindsight. Nor did I want them to know that I was still practicing it after the Magister decided that my services weren't required.

I think the only reason I didn't suffer an 'unfortunate accident' was because of my big brother, and the fact that my Father worked at the castle. My brother was getting a lot of attention for being such a devoted guard, and ever since we'd all gotten attacked like that, there was something missing between my parents. Mom was hardly around as much as she used to be, same with Dad, both of them throwing themselves into their work.

Fortunately, in their absence, I still had Shiny there to keep me company, as well as a nice fancy laboratory all my own down in the basement, where I could conduct all of my magical and alchemical experiments in peace. With their debt repaid to the Mafia (a rare thing mind you), my parents could afford a lot more, and since my grades almost instantly improved in school, my parents were happy to fund any personal studies I wished to pursue.

Now mind you, this mind magic insanity wasn't the only thing that was required of me. I had several other tasks, like going to 'visit family in insert city name here' while actually carrying a package of who-knows-what in my saddlebags. Personally I think it's a miracle no one ever caught me that one time the package opened up in my saddlebags and I got a whiff of the cocaine when I went to pull it out. Tell you what, I was hyper for the rest of the day! Thought my heart was going to explode.

The buyer kinda kicked my ass for trying out his product, albeit on accident. Then he laughed at how high-strung I looked, all disheveled, mane sticking out all over the place, horn sparking with random zaps of magic and whatnot. I slept like a log when I got home.

This was the main reason my grades suffered so much: having to leave the city as often as I did. That must've been quite the sight, a young filly carrying drugs and who knows what else on the train, while also desperately studying and working on a week's backlog of homework and schoolwork in hopes of catching up and getting at least a passing grade.

My teachers were certainly concerned when I suddenly went from model student to the 'bad filly' that almost never got her work done (on time at least) and never associated with anyone. I didn't want my friends asking questions. Especially ponies like Moondancer. She was a smart filly that deserved every chance she could get to become a Magus like she wanted. At least she had a better idea for her future than I did.

Of course, once I had all that time to myself to become a model student and straighten my life out - hah! - I could finally get to work on my real projects in earnest.

Now, all of this might sound really mature for a twelve-year-old. That's because it is, but then, I'm a smart filly. At the time I never thought much on it, but it really was, even for a filly as intelligent as me. I'm fairly sure it had to do with the dark magic I'd been using, and the dark magic I continued to use despite not needing to anymore. I had to perfect it. I had to make it better than just being some kind of doom-hammer I brought down on the vulnerable minds of my lesser victims.

I constructed a very special, very hidden room for such purposes. Masquerading as a summoning chamber, I used it to store and experiment on random members of the Mafia I managed to get my hooves on, either through seduction or, as I got more experienced, less shameful means.

Yes, seduction. If you had half the sexually explicit memories I'd taken in, you'd be pretty well-versed in nabbing a pussy-hungry young stallion or three too! Or, you know, cock-starved mares, whatever. Just fiddle with their heads a bit, appear a bit older than I actually was, and the rest was body language and biology.

Of course I indulged here and there. Memories can't substitute for personal experience very well, so of course after hitting puberty and making it through my first estrus, I got plenty curious and horny. You know what they say: young, dumb, and full of cum.

It could've had something to do with me being born a hermaphrodite; not exactly a common thing, but certainly not rare either. Uncommon, let's go with that. In most societies, hermaphrodites are extremely rare, due to genetic quirks and whatnot. Pony society though? We're saturated in magic, and if there's anything you can say about magic, it's one Tartarus of a thing.

Not to say that hermaphrodites make up a drastically larger population in Equestria, of course not. Just slightly so, and usually hermaphroditic traits only happen in ponies that have particularly large reservoirs of magic in them, but that's the tendency and not a strict rule. Bright side? Both sets of genitalia are fully functional!

Downside? We're horny sons of bitches. Like, really horny. I actually take suppressants to keep my libido in check. Not saying I'd be some kind of sex-crazed maniac without them, but uh...hm. Imagine getting a boner twenty times a day because no matter how much you try, sex always worms into your thoughts. It's really distracting and particularly embarrassing in public!

That was why my parents always made me wear clothes, they didn't want anypony knowing. I didn't understand why until I was older and I began to get involved with the nobility and their stupid power games. I don't exactly fit into their strict criteria of being either a mare or a stallion, and the knowledge of how sexual we can be offends their hoity-toity and reserved sensibilities. You know, among a slew of other things, but it basically boils down to 'eew, freaks of nature, we can't be seen associating with that THING!'

So as far as anyone outside of my family knows, I am Lady Twilight Sparkle, heiress of House Sparkle and blah blah, numerous other titles. Stupid noble bullshit, you get the idea.

Still kinda fucked up I lost my virginity, all three ways, by the time I was thirteen. I'm aware of that. I was very eager to experiment.

Anyways, things changed drastically when I was thirteen. New magic incidents began to crop up on the streets, houses going up in flames, bursts of lightning...the unicorns working for the Mafia were becoming much more active. This had me concerned, and it clearly had the Royal Guard and the police concerned as well, but compared to the kind of presence the Mafia had, there was little the police could do. The Royal Guard were content to leave it alone as long as it stayed away from the castle, and I think the Mafia knew that.

I didn't like what was happening in the least. Magic I didn't have access to? Magic I couldn't prepare for? That was unacceptable, but there was little I could do about it. I had an idea, but all I could do was fill out an application and wait. In the meantime, things got very busy for me.

Contacts, associates and ponies who knew I was pretty smart came to me for advice and ideas sometimes when they were having problems, and I built myself quite the unofficial crew, especially for my age. I kept my distance, of course. My plans could not start in Canterlot, but my options were rapidly becoming limited the more apparent this abuse of increasingly more dangerous magic became.

Canterlot was rapidly becoming a very dangerous city.

I picked up a smoking habit this same year. Expensive taste, flavored cigars, usually a smoky cherry scent and flavor to them. I didn't smoke them very often, but I always kept them around if I just wanted to relax and kick back for an evening, let my mind and body rest for once. Better than the acrid, nostril-searing stench of cigarettes.

My plans were at a standstill until I could figure out the solution to my problem, but all I had was the application I sent in to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Fortunately, my brother brought home something beneficial to my long-term plans: Princess Cadance.

She was as sweet and saccharine as any mare could possibly be, and beyond beautiful, prim and proper and just as pure-hearted as my brother seemed to be. That dark and twisted part of me felt like choking on all that sugary goodness she seemed to glow with, but a larger part of me felt happy for my big brother. At least someone in the family was happy.

Did I mention she was an alicorn? Right, should've mentioned that. She was an alicorn! There we go.

I didn't dare try to use my magic on her. For one, I had no reason to, and beyond that, she was an alicorn. Who knew what she was capable of? She had some strange kind of love magic that I swear borderlined on being brainwashing or mind control, it was legitimately creepy. She better not have ever used it on me.

But, she did provide me with an opportunity. I just needed to get in good with her. That was surprisingly easy, all things considered. She was easy to get along with, and despite how regal she appeared to be, she was a child at heart. A few fun games, pretending to be the adolescent teenager I was, despite my immense maturity and loner behavior...it was easy. She even started to call me Ladybug because of a silly old tune that I found so absurd it was hilarious.

I even did the dance with her. At thirteen. Sweet Celestia, what was I thinking?

In any case, my brother mentioned my application to her, and once I had her interest, she asked to see my lab. I had made sure to go downstairs and secure my more questionable assets before this even came up with every visit, and given how often she found me busy with my studies, she began to feel that perhaps my application deserved a little priority. That had to have been the case, it only took a month before I got a letter notifying me of the acceptance of my application, and the time of my competency test three days later.

My plans began anew. Looking back, my initial plans weren't all that important outside of establishing a false personality for myself. I was the broken young mare that would distance herself from the Mafia as much as she could, because they scared her so much. I had to be terrified of them, I'd never dare to do anything to turn against them! I'm too crippled with my bad hindleg to ever be a threat.

They shouldn't have fucked with me.

Of course, away from the streets I was merely Twilight Sparkle, the confident smart young mare, friendly enough but a bit too into my books and studies to have time for friends and the like, though I did seem to have a bit of a bleeding heart for the downtrodden in the less fortunate areas of Canterlot.

The day of my competency test was a joke. Keep in mind that this school doesn't judge based on your age, if your application is accepted it's likely because you've proven to have the drive and ambition through your previous grades, tests and actions needed to make it through this school's rigorous requirements. Every test was well within my skills, each test I passed was done with a confident calm, to prove that not only was I good, I knew I was good. That is, until they brought forth the final test.

A dragon's egg. That was truly a surprise. Knowledge of dragons was limited at best, and what was known was thoroughly restricted. Tensions with the dragons were bad enough without ponies going hunting for dragon eggs in dragon territory because of how valuable they are, or dragon scales or who knows what else.

I was shocked when they told me to hatch it. Not try to hatch it, just you know, do it. We may not know a lot about dragons, but we definitely do know that a large amount of magic was necessary in order to make a dragon's egg hatch. So, lacking any idea as to spells I could use to speed along the process or manipulate the egg in a way that would make the process go faster, I began to feed my magic directly into it.

I sat there for several minutes, letting my magic freely flow into the egg, but after a solid ten minutes of trying to twist my magic around and alter the way it flowed into the egg, there was no sign of any sort of significant change. I was beginning to feel just a bit winded. The judges questioned what I was doing, and I explained it to them simply enough. They nodded, but also looked down their snouts at me while scribbling a few things down on their clipboards. Condescending pricks...

Soon I was panting while increasing the flow, and signs of concern from the judges were becoming ever more apparent to me the longer I kept at it, but I refused to quit. Nothing and no one defeats Twilight Sparkle! Soon my horn was billowing with the intensity of a triple-corona, and my magic began to flood the egg and then some, jolts of raw power sparking into the air while the judges themselves stood up from their seats. They seemed intimidated by the raw mana making the room itself tingle.

Then my magic ran out, and I collapsed in exhaustion. I cringed as my body ached, and I forced myself to my hooves and tried as hard as I could to spark my horn again. The judges warned me to stop, saying I will hurt myself if I go any further. I didn't listen.

There was something deep down, something I could feel, but I couldn't quite reach. I'd never noticed it before because I'd never pushed myself this far. I reached, clawed for it with my mind, and just as I was about to give up and surrender to the outcome of this test...it poured into me, and out of me.

What happened next was fuzzy to me. I remember getting overwhelmed, and my horn burning white-hot with pure, untamed magic. After that it was nothing but white, and the pony I was ceased to exist in my mind. There was only magic, only power overwhelming.

It all ended when a voice reached my fading consciousness, pulling me back to the surface and getting my rampant magic under control. I felt that massive reservoir settle deep inside of me, and once I had the time later, it would become apparent that there was far more magic in me than I'd ever previously expected. I did a cursory check to make sure my clothes had survived whatever had just happened, then looked forward when I heard that voice speak once more.

"Are you alright, young mare?"

My eyes widened in recognition of the tall pony standing before me, and I immediately bowed before the Princess of the Sun. I felt small in that moment, and ashamed of losing control of my magic in such a childish way. Magical mishaps were the sort of thing you left behind in your filly years!

"Please, rise! Take a moment to collect yourself," she said to me, and I did as I was told. I may not like taking orders from anyone, but you don't fuck with the Princess. "You have been through quite an ordeal."

I glanced around the room while steadying myself, the intense ache in my right hindleg throwing off my balance a little while I turned to examine the judges, who all seemed confused and dazed. Good thing my parents couldn't come. I did notice Cadance in the doorway leading in and out of the room, looking at me with some concern.

Then I saw the egg. The hatched egg that laid in pieces all around the cart it had been wheeled in on, with a baby dragon sitting there sucking on his tail. Even I couldn't hold back an 'aww' at the sight of it, and apparently Celestia couldn't resist picking him up in her magic. He seemed utterly fearless as he giggled and cooed and actually made grabby-claws for me, which I thought strange until later.

"I-I...I succeeded?" I asked, the words barely above a whisper as they left my mouth.

"Indeed you did. Something no pony has ever done before. You should be proud! However," she said to me, placing a gold-covered hoof on my wither. I stiffened at the contact. "I fear you lack proper control, a strange issue for your age. Tell me...what caused this flux of power that rushed out of you?"

I told her as much as I could about it. I felt like there was no way to not tell her! There was just something compelling about her smile and her presence, the dulcet tones of her voice...I could listen to her speak all day long, if I were ever given the option. By the time I was finished, she was looking down at me with a sympathetic smile.

"That, my dear, sounds like a mental block, and a particularly strong one at that, if it held your magic back. Such things are usually caused by trauma...something to do with that bad hindleg of yours, I'm guessing."

I didn't even question how she knew. I was wearing pants, none of the scars on my leg were visible, so it definitely wasn't that!

She stood tall and smiled down at me, gently placing the baby dragon on her back with her magic, her gaze turning to the judges with a silent question. The four of them gave her a simple nod, and she returned it without hesitation. I looked between them with just my eyes, that tension in my body encouraging me not to move my head.

"Anypony who has such courage and determination to face a mental block of such magnitude and overcome it is worthy of my school. However, I see a potential in you," she said to me, and my breath hitched. What was that supposed to mean? "From this day forth, you shall become my student, if you so wish it. Do you accept?"

My stomach did several flips, the silence in the room reaching a fever pitch of utter stillness that would've made the drop of a pin more audible than the short breaths I'd been letting out. Was she serious? Was this really happening?!

I felt something in myself that I hadn't felt in years, a genuine welling giddiness that made me start hopping in place, and soon, the young filly Twilight Sparkle that had been forgotten so long ago made a surprise appearance...much to my eternal embarrassment.

"YEEEESSSS!! Yes yes yes yes yes-" I shouted over and over with an overwhelming joy, hopping in a circle around the Princess in a blatant display of what most nobles would consider utter disrespect.

I didn't care. I was in! Even more than that, I was the Princess's student!

Even she was laughing at my behavior, I recall. So was the little baby dragon crawling and hopping after me, babbling in his nonsensical baby-speak. Celestia hadn't even noticed he'd hopped off of her back!

When I stopped, finally taking notice of my own ridiculous behavior, my face lit up bright red and for a brief moment I wished I could just melt into the floor and disappear. Then I felt tiny claws pricking at my skin as something climbed up on my butt, then crawled up onto my back. I snapped my head around and saw the baby dragon crawling onto me and, not sure what he had planned, I shrieked a little and slopped onto my rump, making him stumble and slide down my back. He was giggling all the way.

"It seems he's rather attached to you. Most likely mana-induced imprinting," Celestia said, grinning and gently stroking a hoof over the small dull spines on his head. "You are, in essence, his Mother. You did not lay his egg, but you did hatch him with your magic. That's what matters most to dragons."

Oh. Okay. So I was a Mother at thirteen. I made a mental note to have a field day with that news, when I broke it to my parents and brother. I'd just have to get Cadance in on the joke...well, sort-of-joke. It was technically true.

I could practically feel the hairs in my mane springing up from the welling panic inside of me.

Celestia beat my panic attack to the punch. "Don't worry yourself too much! Help will be made available, and I'm sure your parents are willing to assist you."

That calmed me down somewhat. The Princess of the entire freakin' country promising to help you raise your spontaneous dragon-baby by way of her numerous near-infinite resources at her disposal is enough to calm any single parent down. I took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, even as those little claws pricked their way up my back and took hold around the base of my neck.

"For now though, I believe you should go home and rest! I would be shocked if you weren't at least somewhat exhausted from what you've been through."

I nodded my agreement as Cadance came in to congratulate me. Admittedly, I was feeling very light-headed and out of it, and despite the pleasantries from the Princess herself, a bed sounded like the most wonderful thing right now. With a simple bow and a proper goodbye, Cadance walked me out of the castle to my carriage, riding home with me and my new baby dragon.

A baby. Oh boy. This required a lot of thought on my part, not to mention my upcoming future as the Princess's protege. Cadance was utterly delighted, squee'ing at the baby dragon cuddled up to my side and making little googly faces at him. I couldn't help but smile...he really was adorable. No different from a pony foal in a lot of ways.

"Sooooo..." she said, in that conspiratorial tone that I recognized as the tone of child-like mischief from her. "How're you gonna break the news to your family?"

I knew her well enough to know that she had something devious in mind, and it seemed like we were on the same wavelength this time around.

"I'm planning to do it in a way that could potentially result in my brother, my Father, or both fainting like timid little fillies, of course!"