The journey to Fluttershy's house was a wild blur of paranoia and anxiousness, the traveler trying to focus on the task at hand as much as her jumbled mind would allow. Twilight could hear her heart pounding violently in her chest, so loud and fast that she was afraid that other ponies would hear the noise that signified her anxiousness and betrayal.

Fluttershy will have guards in her house too, Twilight thought, mind racing as fast as her hooves, teleporting at intervals when she was sure that the burst of magic wouldn't be seen or heard by anypony who happened to still be awake. I don't want to have to get rid of them like I did with Thunderlane and Blossomforth, but I'll have no choice. I can't have anypony find out! I've come too far to give up now! Too far!

It was almost difficult for Twilight to focus on where she was going, being so filled with anxiety that it caused her mind to approach near delirium, but at last she reached Fluttershy's house. In her anxious state, she had to force herself to remain as quiet as possible, though her increasing nerves filled her with dread that something she did would give her away. Luckily for her, nopony was awake to confront her, and upon reaching the house of her next victim, it seemed that all of Fluttershy's animals were sound asleep, or at the very least out of her view.

That's a relief, Twilight thought. If they noticed me, they'd alert Fluttershy and I'd be discovered for sure!

Making sure to keep her movements silent, the manic unicorn slowly crept toward the house, listening for any voices of the ponies who might be inside. At least two ponies would be awake to keep watch, and she had to hope that Fluttershy wasn't among them.

Please be asleep, Fluttershy, please please be asleep...

It wasn't at all long before the silence was broken by voices as she came close to the boarded-up window to listen.

"Remember what Zecora said, Lyra!" Carrot Top could be heard whispering. "We can't trust anypony!"

So, they're the guards... Twilight thought. Realizing that there was no response from Fluttershy, a sense of relief came over her. I don't hear Fluttershy with them... she must be sleeping, yes!

Lyra's response clearly showed her uncertainty. "I know, Carrot, but you've been my PFF since we were foals, and you're my best friend along with my growing relationship with Bon Bon." A sigh could be heard along with her pacing hoofsteps. "Friends through thick and thin, remember?" A brief shifting of her hooves and Twilight could tell that the sea-green unicorn had her hoof up. "All for one and one for all?"

Twilight's eyes widened, a sudden stirring in her heart that momentarily distracted her from her mission. My friends and I were like that once... A quick flash of hot and cold came over her, and she had to grind her teeth to keep herself from making a sound. It was quick, and not as painful as before, but the unicorn was still startled by it. Still concerned as to what was causing all this, she forced herself to shake it off, waiting for the right time to strike and quietly rid herself of the obstacles to her goal.

Carrot Top's voice grew more firm, and Twilight could almost picture her eyes looking at Lyra with a mixture of sternness and regret. "I know Lyra... but you know what they say..." One front hoof stomped firmly on the floor, as she clearly hadn't returned the hoof bump that her Pony Friend Forever had offered. "The ponies that you're closest to are the ones most likely to stab you in the back."

A dull thump made it clear to the hidden unicorn that Lyra had put her hoof down on the ground again, understanding that the friendly gesture would not be returned.

Twilight was positioned just underneath the window, out of the view of any cracks that the two guards might be able to peer through in the window. It won't be long now.... just gotta wait for the right time... But the scientist quickly found herself growing impatient. There needed to be an opportunity for her to properly get rid of them, and the guards would need to be taken by surprise so as not to wake up Fluttershy.

"But... everypony we know is so nice," Lyra said quietly.

Carrot Top's voice was also quiet. "That's just what they want us to think. It always seems to be the nice ones."

I have to do it now! Twilight insisted to herself. And in that moment, the unicorn put her plan into action, and teleported into the house, into a darkened area where Lyra and Carrot couldn't yet see her. Taking the opportunity while their back's were turned, her horn began to steadily glow the eerie black that it had done when she performed the death energy spell on her two guards mere minutes before.

Being right by the window, however, they did hear the noise of Twilight's teleportation.

"What was that?!" Lyra said with a slight jump, her horn glowing a little with golden magic as she looked warily toward the window, preparing to use her power if need be.

Carrot's eyes narrowed as she stared intently at the shut window, as if waiting anxiously for something to come through any minuscule crack that might be present. "We need to be careful, Lyra. There's somepony out there, and it's likely the one we're looking for."

It was then that Twilight took the opportunity, the tendrils of the spell shooting out toward Lyra and Carrot, first covering their mouths so that any attempts to scream were instantly muffled before wrapping around their legs to restrict their movement.

"I think you mean there was somepony out there."

As she spoke in a whisper, Twilight stepped out into view, and her appearance was terrifying to the pair in the darkness. Her coat, mane, and tail were drastically disheveled, a far cry from the reasonably well-groomed appearance she had forced herself to keep up during the day. There was a sinister smile lighting up her face as the tendrils of magical energy swiftly and thoroughly ensnared the two other ponies. It was as if she had become more of a wild creature than the friendly pony she was known to be.

"Twilight!" the pair cried out - or at least, that's what they tried to say, but their cries only came out as muffled exclamations, barely audible.

Lyra, determined, charged up her magic and attempted to blast herself free of the mysterious energy that help her and her friend tight, the golden light of her magic impacting Twilight's own and taking the deranged pony briefly by surprise. However, another beam of the dark magic enveloped her horn, extinguishing its light. The sea-green unicorn's eyes widened in shock as she felt her charge of magic fade. Her magic hadn't been removed - she wasn't quite sure if such an ability existed, and she certainly didn't want to find out if Twilight possessed it - but the energy had combated and easily won against her own.

Just as the conniving pony had done with Thunderlane and Blossomforth, Twilight lifted the two trapped ponies into the air, but not as high up as she had done with her own guards. Primarily because Fluttershy's house was considerably smaller than her library.

"Bon Bon was right to suspect me," the psychopathic unicorn hissed, circling out of their reach and appearing to delight in their trapped state. "But think how great this is - two friends getting to spend their last moments together." She tilted her head up at the flailing pair, looking at the mixture of horror, anger, and betrayal written on their faces. "Then again, I've been doing the same thing for a while now, staying with my friends in their last moments!"

The eyes of the pair widened, realizing the full implications of what Twilight had just been admitting. It had been her who had been ponynapping her friends, that was clear, but it was the last sentence that really chilled the two, confirming the truth that they had been fearing. From what Twilight had implied, she hadn't just ponynapped her friends - she had murdered them. And by the sick grin on her face, it had been painful and she had enjoyed every second of it.

For an instant, the lavender unicorn met Lyra's eyes as she spoke in a barely audible whisper, almost as if it were meant to be a secret between the two of them.

"You could have been useful to me..."

Lyra's horror was mixed with surprise, while it was clear that Carrot Top was attempting to manage a muffled question: "What are you talking about? Why could Lyra have been useful?" While her voice couldn't express the question, the look in her eyes certainly could.

Twilight, however, didn't clarify, and continued as if the others hadn't been trying to question her through any means. "Time's running out... I have my final friend to attend to." She smirked. "And I can't let ponies like you get in the way of my plan! If I'm right, by tomorrow, a new, harmonious dawn shall reign!"

The dark tendrils of magic constricted around Lyra and Carrot Top, tightly squeezing the life out of them like a boa constrictor tightening around its prey. Their captor kept her focus, staring the pair down as she steadily suffocating the two ponies. With their strength rapidly weakening, they were unable to scream or kick. Unable to warn Fluttershy, or anypony else, for that matter.

"It's a shame you two won't be able to join the others in seeing it though!"

As interesting as a theatric, more brutal death could be to experiment with the capabilities of her new spell, one like what she had done to the guards at her library before could easily awaken Fluttershy. So the assassin just had to go for the quietest approach for the time being - quick suffocation. There would be more opportunities to test out her spell's effects.

Twilight watched, staring them down as the life in the two ponies' eyes began to get fainter and fainter, until finally, the light faded away altogether. Their eyes became glassy and their bodies fell limp. The moment that Twilight was certain they were dead, she gently set their limp forms on the cottage floor.

She twisted her head around to gaze at the still-sleeping pegasus, readying herself to properly put her under through injection until the time came for her to wake up. But a thought occurred to her

Fluttershy's pets! Twilight thought frantically, her eyes wide as she mentally scolded herself for not giving their presence a further thought. At least some of them will be able to sense something's amiss - they might be outside and waiting for me to come out and expose myself right now! The unicorn looked from Fluttershy to the boarded up door and windows, coming up with an idea.. This could work out excellently for a psychological part of Fluttershy's Element-extraction.

Steadily levitating the tranquilizing needle out of her bag, she hurriedly injected its contents into Fluttershy before the pegasus could wake up. Making sure not to waste any time, as every second counted, Twilight levitated the unconscious pegasus into the air while her horn began to glow brighter with its dark aura, preparing it for use the moment she stepped outside. She would have to be extremely quick to avoid getting caught or letting any potential messengers get free.

As soon as the ponynapper stepped over the threshold, she was met with a sight that startled her into taking a few steps back. Indeed, several of the animals were up and about, including a very stern-looking Angel Bunny. Perhaps they had been woken by the scent of Twilight's presence, or the sound of her teleporting. Or even the energy that pets seemed to have a knack for sensing when their owner was in danger.

Either way, in a whirlwind of paranoia, the panicked pony reacted as if her magic had a mind of its own, as near-black waves of magical energy wrapped around the animals, constricting them so that they were incapable of movement and silencing their calls, constricting them so they were unconscious, but not yet dead. She knew that if left to their own devices, any one of those animals could be alerted after she left and go to warn somepony else of her sinister deeds.

I can't let anypony find out about my work! Not yet!

She manipulated the energy so that soon all of the animals within the area were captured and put into a state of unconsciousness, to which she settled with using her normal magical energy to hold them, no longer needing the dark tendrils of her spell for the purposes of suffocation. With the last of her friends and her pets in tow, she began to hurry back to the library. Despite now having to focus on keeping all of her captives steady within her magical grasp, the whirlwind of anxiety that had been expended getting there was for the most part replaced by something else: a determination to get back to her work.

Twilight Sparkle had an Element to extract.

---

Upon entering the library, the relief that Twilight felt was suddenly met with a feeling of panic. The corpses of Thunderlane and Blossomforth were still there, blood collecting in a pool around their bodies.

Oh crap! Twilight thought. I forgot about them! Forcing herself to keep the others steady in her magical hold, she used more of her magical power to levitate the bodies of her guards and clean up the remnants of the murder scene - nothing a little water and containers couldn't fix with magical aid. Time was of the essence.

The moment she had gathered up any evidence to the outside world, Twilight pressed the panel by her bookshelf to let it swivel around, and she made sure that every being and object she held was safely with her on the other side - if one could call it 'safe' to be around a deranged unicorn such as her.

Ensuring that she had everyone contained as the bookshelf returned to its normal position behind her, the scientist traversed down the stairs and hallways until she had returned to her lab with her subject and pets. The moment she stepped through the threshold, however, she was almost instantly alerted that she wasn't alone down there.

"Oh great," a familiar voice snapped. "Not only did she go and get another one, she got animals too?!" Though she couldn't be seen from the barrier between their "purgatory" and the world of the living, Rainbow Dash was pacing in front of her viewpoint and looking rather irritated - more than usual. She snapped the edge of one of her own wings in an exasperated action, ignoring the pain. All she cared about was the fact that the unicorn who had trapped them there was a psychopath.

"Of course she did," Rarity pointed out in her slack-jawed, emotionless manner. "She's getting the Elements of her friends, and the pegasus," here Rarity gestured a hoof to the unconscious yellow pegasus, "is the last of them."

With hooves appearing almost ethereal in the void thanks to their charred, blackened appearance, Applejack came into view, her posture lowered in constant uncertainty but her gaze curious. "What about the animals?" she inquired, coming up to the window-like area that allowed them to see into Twilight's lab.

"They can be uses as a sort of bribe to get that pegasus to do what she wants," Rarity responded.

Twilight's heart skipped a beat when the voices had first spoke, but it didn't take long for her to recognize the speakers and get back to focusing on her task. Though she seemed slightly unnerved by the constant presence of the voices, she was actually forcing a smile that held a hint of normalcy to it. "Rarity, I'm impressed!" she exclaimed, hurriedly allowing cages to materialize as she placed Fluttershy's unconscious animals within magically-enclosed cells. If the bars didn't keep them in, her magic would. "If you weren't dead, you could actually be a pretty useful accomplice - a lack of emotion has allowed you to think very logically." As she turned toward where she had heard the voices coming from, the deceased ponies could see that her mouth was turned up in a smile, almost looking like her old self when she was happy. "I like that!"

"If you had no emotions, maybe you'd stop feeling joy from all this and you'd quit being a psychopathic nutjob," Rainbow Dash snarled, inflicting as much spite into the last two words as she could.

The scientist carried on setting up as if the other hadn't spoken.

"Why exactly does she need to get those Element things, anyway?" Applejack questioned softly, brow arched as she too came a little closer to their viewing point. Though the earth pony only spoke in questions now, asking for others to tell what was truth and what were lies, she had asked the question that was on everypony's mind.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be just standing here watching like a slug, I'd shout at her about it and make her think she's going more insane than she already is. And if I could get through, I'd be tearing her apart," Rainbow snapped with a spite-filled glare at the orange earth pony. "In fact..."

With that, the bloody and broken pegasus turned back to the opening and charged, attempted to burst through the barrier that Twilight had unconsciously created to hold them. But despite Rainbow Dash's efforts, it was like trying to get through a wall that was made of steel.

"Featherin' darnit to Tartarus!" the fractured pony snapped, holding back a cry as she roughly tore off a chunk of skin from her own front hoof, not seeming to care about the pain or the blood as she swallowed.

Pinkie Pie cringed at the sight, as she had done so many times before. She knew that she was never going to truly get used to Rainbow Dash's self-cannibalistic habits.

"The barrier's still impenetrable," Rarity said flatly.

"I can see that, Captain Obvious," Rainbow said in retort. "But if I'm right, we'll be able to break through soon after that pegasus joins us here."

"That's a logical assumption based on what's happened so far."

Ignoring the voices, Twilight swiftly began to get all her equipment set up - the tried and true Scalper, injections, vials, containers, a myriad of torture devices from the storage rooms... oh this was going to the busiest night of them all. Busy, but productive.

Pinkie Pie was trembling as she saw Fluttershy being strapped to the cold metal restraints that all of them had been strapped to previously. It had been bad enough to see the rest of her friends be strapped down and tortured, and having those same sort of processes inflicted on Pinkie herself. But Fluttershy?! She was so kind, so innocent... Quickly tapping on Rainbow Dash to get her attention, the pink pony found herself shaking as she gestured, her mind running through all the terrible things that could happen to her poor friend, though she didn't want to dwell on such matters. "I'm... I'm scared." Her bright blue eyes were beginning to shimmer with tears, and her color darkened as her mane fell straight. Whatever hope she had had for Twilight was now gone. "I don't like being scared like this..."

"I can get that you're scared, Voiceless," the cyan pegasus said with a roll of her eyes. "Now shut up, I mean, stay still!"

The deceased ponies watched as Twilight Sparkle began to gather together the brain scanning equipment, levitating the neuron router in particular.

"You and I are going to be doing a lot of memory manipulation tonight!" the unicorn said with an eager grin.

Once everything was set up, Twilight got a small, electrical prod, the same one that she had used to wake up Applejack when it was her turn for the Element extraction process. Switching it on so the end was alight with an electrical charge, she pressed it lightly into Fluttershy's side to jolt her awake.

"AH!" Fluttershy let out a surprised squeak at the sudden awakening, breathing heavily from being woken up with such an uncomfortable sensation. For a moment, her eyes blinked blearily into focus. "Oh, hi Twilight..."

Suddenly, the yellow pegasus's eyes widened as all traces of sleep fell away. Twilight was here.. and the mare hadn't been at her house... where was she?! Fluttershy tried to move in her increasing alarm, seeing all the myriad of devices that her unicorn friend had set up around her, but it was no use. She was incapable of moving her limbs, torso, and head, and while she could flap her wings a little, they were pinned down to the table, being of no use in attempting to escape..

She cried out, heartbeat increasing in pace. "Twilight?!"

"Hello, Fluttershy!" Twilight said with a dangerously wide grin at her frightened friend. "Nice to see you awake!"

"Wh-Where am I?!" Fluttershy choked out, blinking her eyes rapidly as if to will this terrible place away from her mind. "What am I doing-"

Her heart stopped for a split second as it all came together. Being in this strange freaky lab place... Twilight's sudden appearance.... the pegasus's eyes took on a stricken gaze as she looked at Twilight in shock. "It... It is you, isn't it?!" The hurt and betrayal in Fluttershy's eyes was almost tangible. "You really are the one who's been ponynapping our friends!"

The unicorn chuckled. "The ones who suspected me were on to something."

As she tried to struggle, a thought occurred to the pegasus. If Twilight was indeed the one who had been ponynapping the others...

"Wh-Where are they? What have you done with our friends?!"

Twilight grinned. "Oh don't worry, they're here to see you!" With a disturbing smile, she dislodged the table from its spot on the floor and swung it around to face the cleaned corpses of her other friends. "Say hello to Fluttershy, guys!"

Fluttershy screamed in terror at the sight. She wasn't sure what condition she had expected to find her friends in - she had prayed that whenever they were found, they'd be captured, but alive. Then they could be freed, everything would be fine...

But she had never expected something so nightmarish as this. Never had expected a terrible line of corpses which seemed to be devoid of muscle and organs save for their unblinking, glassy eyes. Nothing more than skin stretched out and sewn back together over their bones, the ponies' cutie marks torn off, leaving only the bones of their flanks visible beneath. It seemed as if the tops of their heads had been removed and sewn back together, most of their manes removed from their heads.

She could see that even Spike and Sweetie Belle hadn't escaped such terrible fates, as they were also in the lineup of displayed cadavers. The stitches on Spike's scales made it clear that his skin had been methodically skinned off, and as for Sweetie Belle, her head appeared to have been cut in half and her left eye was burned raw, rendered completely useless and appearing like a raw indent in her face.

"And look," Twilight said happily, not noticing Fluttershy's horrorstruck expression, "I have another surprise!"

With that, the darkened color of her magic levitated around a few select books on her shelf, and she moved them in front of Fluttershy, causing her to shriek again in horror. They were the books made from her friends' muscles and organs, their cutie marks adorning the covers - now she knew what had happened with the gaping holes on their flanks.

The books were moved out of the traumatized pony's sight as the psychopathic mare spoke again. "I felt that my friends deserved to be preserved in a special way - who knows, I might use their DNA for something later."

A violent chill went down Fluttershy's back as she started to shake, traumatized from the horrendous scene before her. In her mind she was trying to will herself to wake up from this nightmare, but in her heart she knew that this was no nightmare. This awful fate of her friends was real. Twilight hadn't just ponynapped them, she had tortured them, mutilated them, murdered them...

"HOW COULD YOU?!" Fluttershy screamed when she finally found her voice. "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO THEM?! THEY WERE OUR FRIENDS!"

Twilight only came in front of her view with a notepad beside her, scribbling down notes on Fluttershy's reactions toward seeing her friends' mutilated corpses. She stared, an unusual expression in her eyes. It wasn't the look of a serial killer who murdered just for fun... there was desperation there. A wild, out-of-control desperation. "I HAD to, don't you see?! It was to extract the Elements - just like I'll be doing to you tonight."

"But... but..." Fluttershy stammered. This sick, twisted process, torture and murder, all for the Elements? But what could have caused Twilight to do this? "So you killed all our friends, just to get the Elements?!"

Twilight's voice was icily calm as she replied. "I had to."

"WHY?!"

Twilight looked over at her friend with a sigh, and turned the table on which she was held yet again. There, on Twilight's worktable, were a series of labeled containment chambers, each one hosting a shimmering white orb inside it.

Fluttershy gasped. "Those are-"

"That's right!" Twilight confirmed. "The essence of the Elements of Harmony!"

Fluttershy stared at her in complete bewilderment as Twilight went over to the containment chambers, patting them proudly with an almost hungry glint in her eyes. "Look at how bright they are! They're pure, just as they should be!"

"P-Pure?" the trapped pegasus stammered, trying to get a grasp on what Twilight was saying. Trying to figure out what sick plans her former friend had, to figure out what she was up to...

"Pure genetic material!" Twilight exclaimed in a gleeful tone. "So now they can be properly analyzed, free from any remnants of being tainted!"

"What do you-"

"That's for me to know, and everypony else to soon find out," Twilight said sharply with a quick raising of her hoof, indicating her discussion of her plan was over.

Fluttershy's eyes widened. "E-Everypony else?"

"Yup!" Twilight said brightly. "They'll all find out by morning!"

From within their purgatory prison, the spirits of the four dead ponies glanced at each other at those words.

"Mor-"

The pegasus was cut short by an object encased in a magical aura zooming right at her, stopping just inches away to barely graze her nose. The minor cut wasn't painful, but a small trickle of blood flowed down from her nose as the object was levitated back slightly. Now that her heart was resuming somewhat of a normal pattern of beats, Fluttershy could focus and see that the oncoming object had been a sharpened knife.

The message was clear: question Twilight's motives now, and she'd make sure the offender paid for it.

"Yes, morning. And if I'm right," the lavender mare went on, not letting her former friend finish, "you'll find out for yourself too - you'll be joining the others here soon. In fact, they're probably watching us right now." Twilight had already formed the theory that, like the others, Fluttershy would end up in that purgatory place that the others with the Elements had been condemned to... though as for why they were there in the first place, she wasn't entirely sure.

"That's one darn thing you're right about," Rainbow Dash muttered, out of the demented scientist's hearing range.

Fluttershy trembled. What in the world was Twilight planning with the Elements the following morning? And why? And what did the deranged pony mean by the others watching them? Were the spirits of her dead friends here, right now?

She was filled with so many questions, but it seems that if she asked any she'd likely get a knife to her face.

And if this was all to extract the Elements, what about...

"No matter what terrible things you're planning, Spike and Sweetie Belle had nothing to do with the Elements!" Fluttershy was trying and failing to hold back her tears. It was disgusting enough that Twilight had inflicted such pain and mutilation on her own best friends, but Fluttershy was also devastated at the thought of lives so young as Spike and Sweetie Belle, being needlessly tortured when they appeared to have nothing to do with Twilight's plan.

Whatever that plan was...

"True," Twilight nodded in agreement, "but it had to be done. They threatened to discover my secret and reveal it, so I had to get rid of them! It was the only way to protect my work until the time is right!"

"I trusted you, Twilight!" Fluttershy's mint-green eyes showed a mix of despair and anger, barely able to comprehend the atrocious acts that the unicorn had committed. "I TRUSTED YOU!"

"Well, you know what they say," Twilight said, voice nonchalant as she started some of her equipment up, "the ones closest to you are the ones most likely to hurt you!" She chuckled at using Carrot Top's former words to Lyra.

Fluttershy, still scarred by the terrible things that Twilight had done to her friends, said nothing, too traumatized to speak. She was angry and scared for her life, horrified at the thought of what Twilight would do to her. If her friend hadn't hesitated to do those sickening things to her other friends, who knew what she would do to Fluttershy herself?

Humming to herself, Twilight then pushed a button over on her control panel, glancing over at the pony she had captured. A smile spread across her face. "I want to show you a little something, Fluttershy. Look this way."

With the sinister grin that was plastered onto Twilight's face, and her previous actions, the timid pegasus wasn't at all eager to see what her "friend" had to show her. Despite the anxiety that inflicted her mind, Fluttershy did as she was asked, but she could only turn her gaze so far.

"I can't... I can't see anything there."

"Of course, silly me," Twilight said with an expression which showed that this had been planned for drama, "I need to turn your little table around a bit!"

As the twisted unicorn steadily spun the table around to its side, Fluttershy gasped. There, on the opposite side of the room, was something had never expected to see. The animals she cared for, caged on the other side of the room through the use of bars and reinforced magic. They all looked terrified, for themselves and their caretaker.

"MY PETS! NO!" Fluttershy screamed in horror at the sight in front of her. Her eyes pricked with tears, her mint-green eyes looking fiercely at the grinning unicorn. "Why?! Why them?!" She was shaking, both with fear and determination to fight back. "Elements or not, they aren't related to this sick stuff! They don't have the Elements of Harmony, they weren't in your way-"

"They might have gone to alert somepony else. And in any case, they're going to be part of the experience and aid in the full process of Element extraction." Twilight said, still taking notes with a grim smile on her face. "And this is just the kind of reaction I'd expect from you - my current analysis on your mental state where your pets are concerned have been proven correct! You're always so compassionate towards them-"

"Please! Don't do anything to them! DON'T HURT THEM!" begged Fluttershy, making no move to stop the tears falling from her eyes. Twilight had tortured her friends, and was planning to do the same to Fluttershy herself... now she brought her pets into this torture chamber of a place, too?

Unaffected by her friend's desperate pleas, Twilight continued with her work, calm as ever. "Oh, don't worry, Fluttershy, who said I would hurt them?" Pushing a button, Twilight turned the scalper on, briefly closing her eyes, reveling in the almost soothing hum of the deadly machine. But she didn't use it immediately - better to let it warm up at this point to save time. The scientist was going to have a little fun first, and it would be best to get everything started as much as possible so that her plans could be fully accomplished by sunrise.

Levitating the sharp scalpel with her magic, the unicorn walked closer to Fluttershy, smirking, and finished. "In fact, the one to hurt them just might be you..." She shrugged. "It's a pity though - I've seen how Angel acts kind of abusive toward you at times, so I think I'd be doing you a kindness by getting rid of him."

Fluttershy was trembling, tears beginning to fall from her eyes in disbelief. Twilight had been her friend, so intelligent and giving... what in the world had come over Twilight to make her act like this? To be a monster, a murderer?

She figured there was only one way she would get an answer: by asking.

Fluttershy's voice was choked by sobs as she tearfully gasped out the question. "Why?!"

Twilight blinked, staring at the trembling animal caretaker as if she didn't have the faintest idea of what she was talking about. "Why what?"

"Why are you doing this?!" Fluttershy sobbed, though her voice was beginning to be mixed with anger at Twilight's despicable actions. "Torturing and murdering our friends, threatening my pets... How can you enjoy all this... this suffering?!"

The unicorn only smiled serenely, like she was trying to explain a concept to a small child. "Oh Fluttershy, everypony enjoys suffering." Her smile grew wider. "You just don't know it yet."

Fluttershy tried to be as firm as she could. Be brave, Fluttershy, she told herself desperately before speaking aloud. "Wh-What do you mean? Not everypony enjoys it! Only a few twisted ones!"

The immediate response from her captor was a laugh. "Haven't you ever laughed at least a little when somepony has fallen over, or messed up in some way? Gotten a little amusement at somepony else's expense?"

The trapped pony paused before regretfully murmuring her agreement, her gaze downcast.

"Then there you go. Even a minor slip-up is some form of suffering. It's a little thing that everypony gets at least a little enjoyment out of."

Fluttershy hated to think of it, but she had to admit that Twilight was right. Everypony did seem to enjoy suffering on at least the most minor of levels.

The pegasus was writhing with fright, twisting and trying everything to get out. Of course, it was no use. She was still trapped. And she wasn't about to get free no matter what she did.

If physical struggle didn't work, maybe pleading with her friend would... it was the only thing Fluttershy could think of to do at this point. If she was insistent enough, she might be able to get through the unicorn's twisted mind.

"Why can't you see it?!" She shouted, begging as Twilight came closer to her with that deadly grin. "Why can't you see what you've done?! They were our friends, Twilight!"

Unseen by the living ponies, Rainbow Dash swore under her breath at the notion of "friends". Tears began to come to Pinkie's eyes at the memories that she alone of the purgatory-bound ponies retained.

The purple unicorn chuckled, her eyes showing no mercy within their gaze, but rather excitement. She had already started to break Fluttershy in one way, mentally, just by Twilight revealing the various procedures she had done.

And Twilight thought it was glorious.

"Maybe that's the way it was before, but those days are gone! I'll break that Kindness out of you soon, and I'm just getting started!"

Gleefully, a variety of syringes were levitated over and hung around the pony, as if they were an army waiting for orders to attack. The unicorn smirked at the shuddering pegasus.

"See these, Fluttershy?" Twilight used her magic to levitate the various small containers in a circle around the table to which Fluttershy was strapped. "What I have here is a variety of drugs and injections that will keep you awake and alive. You will eventually beg for death, beg for the pain to end - and if I do my job right, you''ll eventually be filled with a desperate desire to brutally kill me."

Fluttershy's eyes widened even further than they already were, her breath coming out in choked, frightened gasps. "I'd... I'd never-" Though she was frightened out of her wits, there was a certain brightness in the yellow pegasus's eyes. She wasn't going to just give up.

"You say that now," Twilight said, seeming to feel nothing but excitement at the thought of Fluttershy wanting to kill her. "But trust me, that's gonna change. You'd be surprised just how easily somepony can be manipulated and altered. And I'll make sure that your pain won't end until the time is right. It's what needs to be done for my work!"

A chuckle that chilled the other pony to the bone.

"So many doctors would love to possess what I have here, to create ways to keep a pony from dying, to even help them resist pain!" One by one, the injectors hovered closer to Fluttershy before pulling back, the deranged pony smiling all the while. "And who knows, once the grand part of my plan is put into action, I might use them to help move things along. It's gonna be wonderful!"

The mentally unstable unicorn showed her teeth in a disturbingly wide, demented smile. Almost sporting a Glasgow grin similar to that of Sweetie Belle's just before her death.

"But my purpose for them here? I shall torture you in worse ways than you would dare to imagine. I'll mess with your memories to cause you to believe you've experienced this torture and cruelty all your life!" She chuckled, eyes flashing white again. "I will make sure that pain is all you know. What I will do would certainly kill an ordinary pony under normal circumstances. But I can do all these things, and you won't die until every drug I apply here wears off."

The pony wore a sadistic grin. "I've chemically enhanced them to be this way, with a little help from my magic, of course. I even could put you back into place if I tore a limb or two away!" Twilight placed a hoof on her chin, pondering her twisted choices. "Which I might do or not. It depends on what I feel I need to do to get that Kindness from you."

Fluttershy's chest was heaving with each word Twilight spoke, and her eyes were now tightly closed in her fear. Suddenly, as the unicorn appeared to cease in her speech, the trapped pony felt a sharp pinch in her body, and she cried out in a startled exclamation. The trapped pony opened her eyes from the shock, just in time to see one of the hypodermic needles hovering away from her and Twilight laughing.

"That injection I just gave you is Exhibit A. Testing, if you will. Thanks to a combination of chemical enhancement and magic, I have enough compounds stored to allow you to be alive for everything I do, if I wish!" Her voice turned practically into a screech, a cry of somepony desperate to make something work. "EVERYTHING! Whatever I have to do to extract that Kindness!" The injections were levitated away, Twilight no longer having a use for them. "So that one will be enough for the time being - I'll administer more shots accordingly."

Fluttershy trembled from the deranged look in the unicorn's violet eyes.

"I know you may appear timid at first, Fluttershy, but you're a lot stronger than you seem." The tone in Twilight's voice was almost proud. "I can't underestimate you - you put up a pretty good fight when the time calls for it!"

Fluttershy forced herself to put on a brave face in sight of her attacker. She had to somehow avenge her fallen friends, protect others from getting hurt. She was the Element of Kindness, after all, she couldn't fail them! Not after what Twilight had done! "I... I just fight for what's right," she stammered.

"And you do a great job at it!" Twilight affirmed with a smile, patting her captured friend on the head. "That's why I know I can't expect you to break so easily - I'll have to go all-out with everything I have in order to get that Kindness properly." She turned her eyes upward, briefly looking out of focus as if she were going into an elaborate daydream. "It will be hard work, but it'll all be worth it!"

Fluttershy was absolutely dreading what was to come.

"Now, Fluttershy my friend," Twilight moved away from her friend with an enthusiastic expression. "It's time we got down to business!" She looked over toward Fluttershy's animals, who were trying in vain to escape, before turning back to Fluttershy. "I know that you teach your animals a lot, Fluttershy... do they know the alphabet?"

Fluttershy slowly nodded, frightened as she glanced upward, but still managing an answer. "I... I teach it to all of them." She didn't know what the alphabet had to do with Twilight's deranged manner, but she had a strong feeling it wasn't good.

The scientist's expression brightened as she clapped her hooves together. "That's great! Because today, I'm going to get to teach them a new kind of alphabet, and you are going to help me out! We'll all learn it together, and I'll be able to extract Kindness while teaching you all something new!"

Based on Twilight's previous actions, both caretaker and pets knew that the 'alphabet' Twilight would have them learn wasn't near as simple as introducing them to a letter on a card and using it in a word.

Twilight then spoke in a voice similar to Cheerilee's. "Alright everypony, now who can tell me what the first letter in the alphabet is?"

Visibly terrified by the mechanism she was now positioned under, Fluttershy said nothing in response.

"Go on, Fluttershy," Twilight gently goaded, "I'm sure you know it."

"... A..." the pegasus finally murmured.

"Good job!" Twilight exclaimed. "I have a couple certain methods planned for A, and one is one I'm already familiar with using from one of my participants before!"

Fluttershy worriedly glanced upward, terror in her eyes.

"Oh, don't worry," Twilight assured her, "it's not the Scalper here - it may start with an S, but I have to do that first so I can prepare to mess with your mind as we start the ABC's of Torture - or, should I say, Kindness Extraction!" She grinned, violet eyes narrowed dangerously. "Won't that be fun?"

"N-No!" Fluttershy said firmly, trying and failing to shake her head. "No it won't be fun!"

"That was a rhetorical question, Fluttershy," Twilight gently scolded, switching on the trusty Scalper to let it whir to life. "My actions wouldn't change no matter what your response was!"

Fluttershy quaked in terror as the whirring of machinery grew louder, barely seeing the glint of the small scalpel lower steadily toward her head, just as what had been done several times before. Trying as hard as she could to get away, but failing.

As the metal blade inched closer, Fluttershy squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to brace herself from the oncoming pain. But despite this, she wasn't at all prepared for it.

The pegasus screamed as the sharp scalpel dug in through her head, slicking through the epidermis and causing some of her mane to fall to the ground. Shaking, strapped down tight, the impact of the blade against her skull vibrated in a jarring impact throughout her entire body, and all she could do was watch, terrified, at the unicorn grinning and taking notes. The blood from the scalpel's incision steadily began tricking down from the wound, mixing with her tears.

The blade followed its familiar path along the head of its recipient, carving around to the sides of the skull so that the sides of the brain could be more easily reached, just as had been done before. Fluttershy tried to force herself to endure it as her skin, coat, mane, muscle and bone were sliced through, but the pain was more intense than she had imagined.

It only got worse when the Scalper's metal claws on the part resembling an egg beater lowered over the suffering pegasus, the sharp metal digging just above her skull and slicing through the remaining sinews of muscle, lifting it up and exposing the skull underneath. Quickly following that up, Twilight got the platform from before to bring herself higher and retrieved a sterilized scalpel continuing with the familiar routine as the entire top of Fluttershy's skull was carved away, removed to reveal the brain.

"Perfect!" the scientist said happily, not seeming to notice her friend's cries. As she returned the Scalper to its normal position, putting the removed cranial cap into a proper containment chamber, she levitated the neuron router over the top of Fluttershy's head.

"Now," Twilight went on, attaching the headphone-like mechanism to Fluttershy's head that would make her mental images visible and easy to manipulate, "for the others I've just used the neuron manipulator to mess with their heads, and torturing them separately in ways to correspond with what I needed to do. But for Kindness, I'll have to do a combination of both simultaneously in order to get that Element properly!" She laughed. "So, it's time to start off with the first method I have for A - abacination!"

Fluttershy managed to open her eyes, incomprehension and fear the primary emotions present in her gaze, overpowering anything else. "Wh-What's..."

Twilight glanced over at Sweetie Belle's body with a sinister grin, as she made the metal plate from Sweetie Belle's torture session materialize, cleansing it with alcohol before casting it alight in a burning hot glow. "You remember this, right, Sweetie Belle?"

While of course there was no answer from the cadaver, Fluttershy quickly pieced together just what it was
the lunatic scientist had planned for her. Her own eyes twitched, as if they were already anticipating the pain that Twilight promised to bring. "No! T-Twilight, P-PLEASE!"

"I wouldn't do these things if it wasn't necessary, Fluttershy," Twilight insisted, with no mercy in her voice or expression. "And for me, for what I have to do, it is necessary!"

Using a combination of her machinery and magic, Twilight got to work on her Tartarus-like multitasking. She began using her magic to let the neuron manipulator do its work on a cellular level, focusing primarily on the temporal lobes to the sides, where memories were stored.

"Time for me to break that Kindness out of you in both past and present!" Twilight exclaimed, switching on the machine that would allow her to see into Fluttershy's "mind's eye" as the struggling pegasus was thrown into a vision. Before Fluttershy could protest, the sterilized, red-hot plate was pressed firmly against Fluttershy's left eye.

The pegasus screamed in agony, the fierce burning on her face joining the pain from the scalping she had endured. She felt the metal plate burn at hundreds of degrees against her coat and skin, charring it and utterly burning out the visual organ, just as had been done with Sweetie Belle before her.

As the hot plate was pressed firmly against Fluttershy's face, the neuron manipulator was used to alter Fluttershy's thoughts, her memories... Fluttershy was just a filly in this memory, surrounded by a group of ponies from the flight camp she had once attended. They had her tied down, unable to move. One of the fillies was about to press a hot metal plate to her eye identical to the on that was pressed against her in the present - and it unusually looked a lot like Rainbow Dash, but with a gray coat and mane and bright red irises instead of the real Rainbow's magenta.

"This is for a little initiation!" The filly said with a smile as she pressed the hot plate against filly-Fluttershy's terrified eye.

Unknown to Twilight, the assemblage of the Element-torn ponies were still watching everything that was taking place.

"Why didn't I think of ever doing that to those stinking Cloudsdale pegasi?" Rainbow Dash muttered to herself. "That could have been very useful before..."

No matter how much she tried to struggle, whether in the present or fabricated past. Fluttershy couldn't escape the blistering agony that was being inflicted on her face.

After what seemed like an eternity, the hot plate was lifted away from Fluttershy's eye, and the altered memory faded from Fluttershy's immediate vision to settle itself into one of her memories.

Twilight tilted her head down slightly to see Fluttershy's terrified face. "Abacination hurts, doesn't it?"

Crying and cringing from the pain, the pegasus managed a whimper of acknowledgement.

"Well, luckily for you, that's done with," Twilight said brightly, so it's time to move on to the next item on my A list - asphyxiation!"

The pegasus was shaking, too traumatized and fearful to ask what it was.

Twilight answered her captive's unvoiced question. "Asphyxiation is also known as a form of oxygen deficiency. In other words, it inhibits a pony's normal ability to breathe."

Readying the neuron router, Twilight used her magic to bring over an unusual-looking mechanism - it looked similar to a device that was used to transmit anesthesia into a hospital patient. But the mask-like part meant to go over a pony's mouth and nose was attached to a container, which seemed to be filled with a colorless gas.

"Carbon monoxide," Twilight explained, looking downward so she could quickly attach the mouth-peice to Fluttershy's face and begin pumping the toxic gas into her captive's body. As she reworked the neurons in Fluttershy's brain to manipulate her memories here as well, she didn't hear the pegasus's attempted screams - they were muffled by the mask around her mouth and nose.

As Twilight observed the pony's heartbeat steadily slowing due to a lack of oxygen in her system, she brought forth another "memory" to Fluttershy - being locked in a room with nopony around, just her and the carbon monoxide that was being pumped into the room. While in the fabricated memory she could move, there was no escaping her confinement, and she could only scream and cough as the gas entered her body.

After about 5 minutes of being deprived of breathable air, the mask was removed from the pegasus's mouth and she was finally able to take in a few much needed gasps, fighting to get oxygen back into her lungs.

A light scribbling reached Fluttershy's ears as she heard the scratching of a quill on the paper - Twilight had been taking notes throughout the whole thing.

"I have a feeling my notebook's gonna be pretty full after all this," the unicorn commented, almost to herself.

Fluttershy took several large, shaky breaths, still trying to cope with the torment of her physical ailments and memories that Twilight had surfaced. With a cold sweat coming over her as she attempted to recover, it hit her that even with the suffering she had gon through thus far, this was only letter A - there were still 25 more letters in the alphabet to go.

As the scientist took notes with a deranged smile, she glanced over at the monitor that showed a scan of Fluttershy's brain, looking for even a fragment of the Element of Kindness. Nothing yet.

That's okay, though, she thought, I just got started with this anyway. Glancing down at Fluttershy, she spoke again. "Now, it's time for the letter B, which in this case stands for 'boot'!"

Through her pain, Fluttershy managed a wary look - a boot as she knew it was relatively harmless, unless you hit somepony with it. Unfortunately, the beaten pegasus had a feeling that Twilight didn't mean the kind of boot that a pony would normally wear.

She was right to assume the worst.

With a little tune of gleeful humming from Twilight, Fluttershy barely noticed a small glow of Twilight's darkened magic aura off to her right, as two large metal boots were levitated toward her. At least, she assumed they were boots - each one was more like two large metal plates stuck together, with spikes on the inside and a crank on the outside to tighten the pressure.. The pegasus attempted to somehow flex her hooves to kick the large metal boots away, but the straps just above her hooves that held her legs in place held firm, making any movement impossible. With no resistance, the torturous boots began to be placed over her exposed hooves.

"I don't know why they're really called 'boots'," Twilight commented, as if she were merely talking to her friend in the library and not about to torture her with the device in question. "They don't even have a bottom to them like normal boots."

Fluttershy cried out in pain as the spiked metal wedges on the inside of the boot began to dig through the sides of her hooves, penetrating the skin and causing blood to flow out of the wound and flow down from the metal construct. The cranks on each boot were turned by Twilight's magic, and the pressure of the boot increased, tearing through her flesh and muscle.

"AAAAHHHHHH! TWILIGHT, STOP! PLEASE!"

The unicorn ignored her friend's screams of anguish, instead focusing on creating another "memory" for Fluttershy to experience. With the sparks of electrical manipulation to parts of the brain, analyzing the memories, Fluttershy was sent into another world yet again.

Within the pegasus's new vision, she found herself yet again experiencing the torment as a filly, the boots on her hooves being tightly cranked by the Rainbow Dash look-alike from earlier.

Fluttershy wailed. "STOP, STOP! IT HURTS! PLEASE, S-STOP!"

Whether the suffering pony was addressing Twilight or the ponies in her vision was uncertain, but all Twilight was focused on was the pegasus's brainwaves increasing in her panic.

The boots were cranked further and further in both states of mind, with more intensity, until at last the metal sliced through the bones of Fluttershy's hooves, causing them to crack in several places, some white bone ligament visible as at last the boots were removed.

Being jolted back into the present and out of the memory, Fluttershy was crying, sobbing. She could see her pets staring at her from across the room, some huddled in fear while others were desperate to help their caretaker.

"I'm.... I'm sorry...." Fluttershy sniffled through her sobs, hoping that her pets could hear the regret and sorrow in her voice.

Unfortunately, the momentary release of new torture implements was short-lived, as Twilight Sparkle quickly moved on to the next step.

"And now," the unicorn said with a grin, putting in a bit of an announcer-type tone to her voice, "going into a category rather than individual devices, it's time for the letter C!" She moved her head a little closer to Fluttershy, speaking in a tone similar to Cheerilee when she was talking to her students. "Do you know what C stands for?"

Fluttershy looked as if she were about to say something, but the words seemed to die before she said them. As painful as it was, her mind tried to think of some sort of word that could relate to what Twilight was doing. Maybe if she came up with a suitable answer, her pain would be less. Whatever would make her already painful experience lessen. So she thought up the first science-related 'C' word that came to her mind, though thinking of the possibility filled her mind with dread. "Che... Chemicals?"

Twilight looked visibly surprised. "That's exactly right!" Pleased, her grin grew wider. "You're really catching on fast! 'C' stands for 'chemicals', this one's gonna be fun!"

Clapping her hooves in anticipation, she practically trotted over to her cabinet, opening it up and levitating several syringes and vials out. "I had been considering doing them in a straight alphabetical progression too, but I changed my mind on that. Instead, I'll be using a few in combination with each other - that will give us a really interesting collection of effects, and I'll be able to compare them!"

Twilight spoke in an over-enthusiastic voice, as if she were an announcer in a production introducing the next act, as she looked from Fluttershy to the cleansed bodies of the others she had killed. "Here I give you the newest chemical craze sweeping Equestria..." she held up the bottle high with a dramatic flourish. "Krokodil! So called because after an extended period of use, it makes your skin all green-looking over time, like a crocodile's!"

Fluttershy managed to open her remaining eye in horror. Even in her delirious state, she remembered having been around crocodiles before. They were dangerous, and being around them once was enough. The idea of looking like a crocodile didn't exactly sound like the most appealing thing in the world, but after what she had gone through and what she knew was to come, looking like a crocodile would be painless, right?

Unfortunately, Twilight wasn't done with her explanation.

"It's a chemical derived from morphine, particularly made of a compound known as codeine, mixed with cleaning solvents, and if it's used right, it can be used for the purpose of medicine. However, if it's made incorrectly, it can have devastating effects. And those effects are just what I'll be experimenting with!"

The unicorn chuckled, much to Fluttershy's increasing horror. "Do you want to know what it does?"

"N-NO!"

Twilight ignored her. "It's simple - this stuff rots flesh."

Fluttershy's pupil contracted as her skin and coat went pale, sweating at the very thought of her flesh rotting away from her body.

"And no, that isn't an exaggeration, it literally rots anypony's flesh and muscle, basically everything except the bone, without any blood flowing. And yet there are still groups in Equestria that use it on themselves on a regular basis."

The thought of anypony willingly using such a terrible substance on themselves was unbelievable to Fluttershy. "Why would.... they d-do that?!"

"Because they've become so addicted to the drug that it keeps eating away at them. Of course, not quite to the degree I'll be using it on you." The unicorn looked absolutely gleeful as she moved the vial a little closer, circling around the pony who was to be the drug's recipient. "You see, ordinarily, you can survive for a year on it - imagine living for months in a haze brought on by the drug, only able to feel a desire for more of it and the agony of your body slowly rotting away, every moment you breathe. It sounds terrible, doesn't it?"

Fluttershy looked upward, eyes wide as she noticed the purple pony bend her head down to look at her again.

"Well, like I said before, I've altered these chemicals through magic so the effects surface a lot quicker than they normally would!"

Fluttershy was shaking like a leaf in the wind, wanting more than anything to be released from there and get as far away as possible, alerting everypony of who the true culprit was and what she was doing...

"Now here," Twilight went on, "I have another chemical that can be used in conjunction with that." She used her magic to retrieve another vial and hold it up in front of Fluttershy's face. "For instance, this hydrofluoric acid is a strong oxidizer, and can seep through the skin and damages nerves and bones." She levitated the vial closer. "Basically, it can melt bones while leaving the flesh above unharmed. It's like completely removing somepony's bones!"

A sinister, cold, chuckle.

"So I have a drug that destroys everything but bone, and a chemical that destroys the bone and leaves the flesh above perfectly intact. Combine them together, and it causes complete destruction." Twilight laughed, her voice a hushed yet excited whisper. "It's the perfect combination, don't you think?"

Fluttershy whimpered.

"So I've decided to use the first on your right front leg, and the second on your left! That will be fun, won't it?"

A series of choked gasps and sniffles were her only response.

"But now there's the manner of your hind legs," Twilight went on with a grin, her neuron manipulator poised and ready in anticipation - she seemed to be especially excited for this chemical torture. She levitated a third vial within Fluttershy's sight. "Now this will be used on your right hind leg. It's just a little nerve agent called tabun, which can cause convulsions and paralysis." Twilight was grinning. "This one isn't really deadly, but this chemical compound led to some more deadly toxins being developed."

A fourth and final vial was levitated in front of the captive pony, and it was clear that Fluttershy was terrified as to what in the world this last one would do. With a little forceful tug from Twilight's magic, the top of this vial was removed and a faint fruity aroma wafted to Fluttershy's nostrils.

"And finally, your left hind leg will get its treatment with this. It's fluoroantimonic acid, which is many times stronger as an acid than pure sulfuric acid. Do you know how powerful sulfuric acid is, Fluttershy?"

The broken pegasus managed a shaky answer. ".... No..." Even with that simple word, the terror was clear in her voice.

"Well, it's very powerful," Twilight said dismissively. "More powerful than anything you've felt before. And think about it, this particular acid is about 20 quintillion times stronger than that."

Fluttershy seemed about to open her mouth to say something, but Twilight had already guessed the question. "Yes, a quintillion is a real number, and a very large one."

Before Fluttershy could speak she suddenly felt the sharp, quick pinch of another syringe or two, and glanced up nervously at Twilight.

"That's just to make sure I don't lose you to shock after this," the lavender unicorn said casually. With her neuron manipular and notepad at the ready, each of the four vials were opened and positioned at a slight tilt just over Fluttershy's limbs.

Her breath coming in short gasps, Fluttershy clenched her eye shut, her body tensing up as she braced herself for the pain.

Nothing so far could have prepared her for what she then experienced.

All four vials were poured onto Fluttershy's exposed limbs at once, and the pegasus's face twisted into an expression of pure agony. She screamed, her voice rising into a terrible shriek as the effects of the chemicals quickly did their work, thanks to enhancements from Twilight's twisted magic.

The krokodil on Fluttershy's right front leg swiftly turned her coat and skin a horrible green color, before it began to eat away at her leg. The epidermis and muscle steadily began to disappear as it was disintegrated by the enhanced drug, spilling no blood from that leg as everything except the bone was rotted away. As Fluttershy tried in vain to move, her right front leg was reduced to merely the bones and joints that held it together, looking as bare as the skeletons that Twilight had displayed.

Her left front leg was assaulted by the hydrofluoric acid, which quickly began to seep through Fluttershy's skin on that leg. While the flesh above remained normal and undamaged, Fluttershy could feel the terrible pain as the nerves and bones in her left forelimb were eroded away. The only merciful thing about such torment was that the moment the nerves were gone in that leg, she could no longer feel it. With no pain receptors, her entire, boneless leg was more-or-less numb to her. But it was the only relief in this Tartarus-like environment.

The hind leg on her right felt the stinging sensation of the tabun chemical, and the contact with her skin caused the leg to convulse and jerk wildly from the chemical's effects, as much as was possible with the limb bound to the table.

The agony from the left hind hoof was easily the worst, as the extremely corrosive substance stung and burned, dissolving every bit of matter on the limb, with a pain that felt as if Fluttershy's leg was lit on fire. The skin, nerves, muscle, and bone were all practically vaporized in the burning acidic substance, and when the limb was completely eroded away, it was only the strap around Fluttershy's hoof that kept that untouched part of her limb from falling to the floor. The place where the leg had been still burned, as her brain had not become accustomed to having that limb vanishing so suddenly - the "phantom limb" phenomenon wasn't helping matters.

As if that wasn't enough, Twilight manipulated Fluttershy's memories to cause another vision to surface. Within the monitoring of Fluttershy's mind's eye, those same chemicals were being used - except in this false memory, Fluttershy was having each of her legs dunked in vats of each acid.

Fluttershy screamed in terror and agony, her face contorted in an expression of pain and fear that nopony would ever want to behold. She much more like a banshee than an ordinary pony.

In the purgatory prison, the former Element holders had mixed reactions toward the sight before them. Rarity, of course, felt nothing at all, simply staring at the hellish torture that was taking place. Applejack's charred legs shook, remembering her own torment and thinking how - if what she remembered was true - her's had been so much less than this.

Pinkie Pie was taking this the least well out of all of them. Her eyes were closed, trembling as silent sobs poured down her face. Her mane, tail, and coat and straightened and darkened even more than they already had. This was worse than anything that she had ever seen... any sense of hope for Twilight she had was gone completely.

She clung to Rainbow Dash desperately, her body wracked with sobs as she sought out some form of comfort in her traumatized state.

Rainbow Dash, who had been staring at Twilight Sparkle with an expression of pure malice, jolted out of her stare and whirled around to face the trembling pink mare.

Much to Pinkie's surprise, the cyan pegasus didn't immediately shove her away or snarl at her to leave. Instead, the mare turned her rose eyes to Pinkie, whose body shook with heaving sobs. Rather then trying to get the pony as far away from her as possible, Rainbow Dash only nudged the pink pony before she spoke.

"We are witnessing the pits of Tartarus."

And as she opened her grief-striken blue eyes, Pinkie's expression made it clear that she agreed with every word.

The group watched Twilight continue to take notes, the unicorn glancing at the monitor. They could tell that the brainwaves were going haywire from the anguish that the pegasus was being put through... but was there a spark?

Twilight's violet eyes lit up excitedly as she thought she saw a brief pulse of genetic energy present on the monitor, but it quickly passed.

"Even with all this, you still have kindness in your heart," Twilight muttered, scribbling down notes. "I'll just have to manipulate those memories of yours a lot more..."

"Twilight, LISTEN!" a desperate voice suddenly cried out to the insane unicorn. A voice that clearly wasn't Fluttershy's. "STOP THIS!"

At the sound of the other voice, Twilight swung her head around, Fluttershy in too much delirious pain to notice. The yellow pegasus hadn't heard the desperate voice, but Twilight did. It was her own voice, her conscience again, and her wispy ghost of a form was visible on the surface of the machinery. Entrapped on the flat surface and yet looking so real, so solid...

"Not you again! Why should I listen to you?!" Twilight's gaze hardened, eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to will the vision away, believing it to be an hallucination. The physical manifestation of her conscience remained.

"Because I know that this is wrong!" The voice of Twilight's conscience rose, as if volume would be able to reach out more to to her deranged self. "You call this harmony?! Why can't you see that you're only bringing chaos?!"

"Shut up! That's not true!" Twilight was breathing heavily as she leapt angrily down from the platform, shaking her head in refusal to believe this other-Twilight's words. "When I'm through, there will be no more of the tainting of chaos!"

The other Twilight was insistent. "If anything, YOU'RE the tainted one!"

It was at this accusation that Twilight could no longer contain her anger.

"SHUT UP!" Twilight shouted with a furious stomp of her hoof, her eyes glowing white as she stared at the apparition of her conscience, hurling a knife at the mechanism the other Twilight could be seen on. "SHUT UP, CONSCIENCE! SHUT UP!"

Despite being reflected on a flat surface of machinery, the other Twilight's horn seemed to shimmer with magic - the normal, magenta shade of magic that Twilight ordinarily had - and attempt to stop the knife hurtling toward her. When that didn't work, as the scientist near Fluttershy had expected in her deranged state, the other Twilight ducked as if afraid the knife would hit her. The weapon merely impacted the surface of the metal, and fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

It was as if Fluttershy shrieks of agony fell deaf on Twilight's ears, only focusing on that invisible presence. The scientist claimed it was her conscience, but consciences weren't physical... it seemed that Twilight had truly snapped for good, completely out of her mind. As if these painful experiments weren't already evidence enough for that.

"You can't stop this! This is for harmony, you'll see! I HAVE to do this!" Her eyes seemed to brighten still further, the extremely dark magenta aura of her horn becoming almost black. "Once I know how to find it, everything will be fixed! Chaos will be gone forever!" Twilight was breathing heavily, panting, and... were those tears pricking at her eyes? "Harmony will reign! You'll see, just- AGH!"

Still in insufferable agony from what had been done to her, Fluttershy's eye widened as a violent shudder coursed through Twilight's body, the unicorn holding her hooves to her head as the surge of energy afflicting her caused her to bend over, shutting her eyes, the glow now appearing to have faded. One second Twilight had been snarling in anger, the next she was crouching on the ground and seemingly in pain. What was happening to her?

It was those pulses of hot and cold that were afflicting Twilight, much more severe than before. It left her unable to concentrate, to think...

No! Twilight thought to herself, insistent as she forced the pain away, shakily getting to her hooves. I have to focus, I have to complete my task! Gotta ignore my conscience, ignore the pangs of hot and cold - just focus on getting. That. Element!

Forcing out a laugh, Twilight looked at the broken, partially destroyed pegasus, who was sobbing at the agony of her impossibly mutilated limbs.

"Well, friend... that's three letters of the alphabet down... and we still have so much more to go!"

She turned her head toward her conscience, still reflected on the metallic surface of the machinery. The apparition of herself looked hurt, saddened and desperate, as if trying to figure out some way to bring herself back from the brink.

"And you can't do a darn thing to stop me, conscience."

The other Twilight stared hard at her for a moment before fading away, leaving the machinery blank once more.

Twilight turned to Fluttershy again. The deranged smile was still present on her face, but there was something else in her eyes. A feeling of turmoil that she was trying her hardest to hide.

Another wave of heat and cold briefly surfaced, but she shook it off. There was work to be done, an Element to extract, and genetic signatures to analyze.

"Now... let's move on, shall we?"