//------------------------------// // Day 1: Chapter 1: Nervous Breakdown (P. Twilight Sparkle, H. Twilight Sparkle) // Story: On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice // by McPoodle //------------------------------// P. Twilight Sparkle—Equestria, Canterlot. Late afternoon of Day One. The door to the testing room slammed open with a bang, and an amber-colored filly unicorn with a raspberry- and gold-colored mane ran out in tears. Her eyes were closed and she was wailing in despair. In a matter of seconds she had managed to dash blindly through the waiting room and out a second door, past an azure robed filly who was on her way in. Two older unicorns, the amber filly’s parents, followed afterwards at a slower pace, their heads bowed. At the back corner of the waiting room was a desk for the receptionist to sit behind. Today, that receptionist was Raven. “I warned her not to use the egg,” she murmured under her breath, before crossing off a name on a ledger. A few seconds later a voice came through Raven’s magical intercom: “Please admit the next applicant.” Raven looked down at the ledger, then stood up and addressed the two families in the waiting room. “Sunburst, they’re ready for you,” she said. An orange colt with light gray stocking markings and a darker orange mane stood up nervously, looking back at his own parents. “We believe in you, Sunburst,” the father said. “You’ve got this all planned out,” the mother added. Sunburst nodded, and then walked into the testing room, followed by the parents. The door was magically shut behind them. The sole remaining foal waiting her turn was now Twilight Sparkle. After looking desperately between the closed door and the one the panicking filly had fled through a few times, she pulled all of her books out of her mother’s saddlebags for the fifth time that day. Spreading them out around her, she flipped them all open and attempted to read them all simultaneously. Twilight’s parents looked on sadly. They knew from experience that nothing they could say or do would work at calming her down when she got like this. The blue filly at the door shook her head sadly at seeing Twilight’s actions. Steeling herself, she strode with purpose right up to the reclining filly. “Twilight Sparkle! What do you think you’re doing?” she declared. Raven prepared to shush the newcomer out of habit, before remembering that there were no other candidates in the room to be disturbed by this behavior. She had long since come to the conclusion that somepony needed to do something about the over-wound filly, so she sat back to watch. “Can’t you see I’m busy, Trixie?!” Twilight snapped, before catching herself in shock. “No, wait, I’m sorry!” she cried, springing to her hooves. “What are you even doing here?” “Well obviously I’m here to keep you from having a nervous breakdown,” Trixie said, stroking the hem of her robe with a hoof. “I…but…” sputtered Twilight. “I…got to get back to studying.” She turned her head towards her books. Trixie turned it back with a hoof. “You’ve studied enough.” “No I haven’t!” Twilight insisted. “Did you see what just happened? I have to be ready for whatever test the Princess has for me!” “The Princess?” asked Trixie. “Yes! I raced over here as soon as I finished lunch, and I spotted the Princess walking into that room! The Princess never attends the Class IV’s personally! So that means that this test must be really, really important!” Trixie looked over at the door in thought, then noticed the presence of Raven in the room. This caused her eyes to go wide for a moment, but she soon regained her composure. She turned back and put a hoof on the other filly’s withers. “Twilight, the Princess is fair above all things. She would never give you a test that you couldn’t handle. You believe that, don’t you?” Twilight silently nodded her head. “Then you’re ready for this! You just have to have the right attitude. Like me. In fact, I’ll show you.” Trixie then walked over to the receptionist desk. “Trixie Lulamoon, reporting in. Sorry I was so late.” Raven blinked a couple of times, then looked down at the ledger and made a mark. “Well, you’re next as a matter of fact.” She looked around the room. “Did you bring any parents or guardians?” Trixie looked back to make sure that Twilight was still watching. “The soon-to-be Great and Powerful Trixie has only one responsible parent, and she’s too busy in the palace today. But I’ll do fine without her.” “Oh, you’re the head housekeeper’s daughter, aren’t you?” asked Raven. “That’s right.” “You can go ahead and take a seat, Trixie.” Trixie nodded politely and turned around to face a gobsmacked Twilight. “See how calm I was?” “But…how are you a Class IV candidate?” Twilight asked, her eyes tearing up. “You can’t use your magic…thanks to me.” Trixie lifted her head up with a hoof. “None of that, Twilight,” she said sternly. “It’s those bullies’ fault, not yours.” “But if you hadn’t tried to save me from them…” Twilight began. “…Then I wouldn’t have gotten my cutie mark,” Trixie concluded, lifting a corner of her robe to display it. Twilight’s parents looked quietly at each other. Not only were they unaware of the origin of the two fillies’ friendship, they had also not known how badly their daughter had been bullied. “The point is, I’m a stage magician,” Trixie continued. “Regular old boring unicorn magic would have just gotten in the way.” Twilight wiped her tears away. “OK,” she said in a choked up voice. A second later, she came to a realization. “But you didn’t answer my question: How did you qualify as a Class IV?” “Can you keep a secret? I tricked the sensors.” Trixie leaned back from the whisper and pulled a thick loop of wire out of her mane. It had been colored cornflower blue to blend in, but now that it was on her hoof it sparked, sending faint streams of magenta magic to her horn. Twilight noticed that the loop was sized to go around the base of Trixie’s horn. “What is that anyway?” she asked in a whisper. Trixie pushed it back into her mane. “Just a little gadget I threw together,” she replied. “I was aiming for a magical battery that would let me cast unicorn spells. You know, just in case of an emergency. But all it does is give me the aura of a Class IV. You remember when I slipped away from you during the last Summer Sun Celebration? That was so I could get close enough to the Princess to charge it.” “Wow,” whispered Twilight in awe. “So it combines magic and technology? That’s amazing! But…that won’t get you through the test.” Trixie sat down with a frown. “No, it won’t get me through the test. Originally, I was going to use my stage magic to con my way through the test.” “What?!” demanded Twilight. Raven was doing her best to be nonchalant at this point, although the point of her ears made it very clear that she was desperately trying to hear every word of this conversation. “Yeah, I got one of the examiner’s sons to tell me what the test was going to be, and I was going to fake it. But you can’t fake anything in front of the Princess.” “So what are you going to do?” “I’m going to go in there and apologize for wasting their time. And explain about my magic coil if anypony asks me. And then I’m going to walk right out, with my head in the air, like this.” Twilight was in awe. “I…I can never deal with failure like that.” “Sure you can,” Trixie told her. “You’re a failure at P.E., and you’re fine with that. You have fun.” “Well sure, but I don’t care about P.E.” “Then don’t care about the test,” Trixie said with an encouraging smile. “I can’t do that!” Twilight’s mother put a hoof on Twilight’s withers. “Yes you can,” she said gently. “You already took the written test, sweetie,” her father told her. “And you said you aced that.” Twilight nodded. “Then you’re already admitted,” Trixie told her. “This is just extra credit.” “It is extra credit,” Twilight realized. “And I love extra credit!” “So are you going to have fun?” Trixie asked. “Yes!” “Good. Because that door has been waiting for me for the past five minutes.” Twilight looked over at the open door to the testing room, barely giving a glance to the defeated Sunburst and his parents making their way out of the waiting room. “Oh! Well, good luck!” “Thanks,” Trixie said with a beam. She then put on her stage face. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is here to put on a show that you’ll never forget!” She walked into the room, and the door was magically closed behind her. Twilight sat down in front of the door and waited. Her parents sat behind her, holding her in their embrace. # # # A very long time passed. There was a bit of muffled shouting coming out from behind the door at first, which disturbed Twilight. But Trixie was not thrown out afterwards, or dragged out in chains. More time passed. And then…laughter. “That’s a good sign,” Twilight told herself. Her eyes went wide when she realized that the loudest laughter was coming from the Princess. “Princesses can laugh?” she asked herself incredulously. A few minutes later came the sound of applause. Twilight jumped up and down in happiness. Finally the door opened. Trixie walked out, followed by the Princess. “I can expect to see you tonight for dinner, then?” the Princess asked. Twilight’s and Raven’s jaws dropped in unison. “Of course, Your Highness,” Trixie said with a dramatic bow. “Trixie is, after all, a pony of class and distinction.” The Princess bowed in response, and then returned to the testing room. “Please admit the next applicant,” said the voice from the intercom. Trixie turned towards Twilight, and only then showed the grin that was threatening to split her face in two. “What did you do?” Twilight asked gleefully. “I’ll tell you after your test.” Trixie looked behind her. The ponies inside could be heard laughing a little more, repeating her best jokes to each other. “I just warmed them up for you. Now go in there and knock them dead.” Twilight briefly gave Trixie an odd look at the choice of phrase before smiling. “Thank you so much!” she said, pulling Trixie into a hug. “Go ahead,” Raven told Twilight. “They’re ready for you.” “I’ll be waiting,” Trixie said, settling herself in the spot Twilight had been in a few minutes earlier. # # # Twilight walked into the testing room. It was a small auditorium, with four unicorn examiners sitting on the top bench. Those four were dressed severely, but had smiles on their faces, a result of Trixie’s performance earlier. From left to right, they were: Apple Polish, a small tan mare with a severe brown manecut and the cutie mark of a red apple; Gnosi Augur, a tall and thin pale yellow stallion with a yellow-orange mane and a cutie mark of an eye inside a star; Meridiem Tempest, a somewhat plump pale green mare with a turquoise-and-white striped mane and a yellow hourglass cutie mark; and Arpeggio, a gray stallion with a black mane and the cutie mark of blue eighth notes. All of them had clipboards hovered in front of them with their magic. And waiting for her on the floor of the auditorium was Princess Celestia, the one and only figure Twilight noticed, so why did I bother describing those other four? Anyway, all of them were in a good mood. Once again, Twilight thanked her friend for her efforts on her behalf. Before her, she saw a wheeled cart containing hay. Nestled in the hay was a large speckled egg. A sign on the side of the cart contained her instructions: hatch the egg. Slowly, she approached the egg. “That is a dragon’s egg,” Princess Celestia informed her. The examiners looked at each other in a mixture of disapproval and apprehension, because it was against the rules of the examination to provide any information to the tester other than what was contained in and on the cart. “You may do anything you’d like to get it hatched. And feel free to share your thought processes with us—you will not be judged on wrong guesses, and I find that speaking aloud helps with focus.” She turned back to the examiners to explain herself. “This is the last applicant, and I think we’ve inflicted enough stress on young ponies for one day, don’t you think?” The examiners nodded mutely in agreement. “The point of the test is to see how you handle a challenge that is beyond your current capabilities. So if you can’t do it yourself, just say so, and the test ends. We wish to see your magic and your mind.” Twilight closed her gaping jaw. It had dropped open when she realized that this was the longest speech she had ever heard directly from the Princess, and it had been addressed solely at her. She looked over at her parents for help. “No,” said Princess Celestia, perhaps a bit more sternly than she should. “You are the one being tested. You can tell us whatever you wish, but if you accept any outside help whatsoever, then you fail the test.” Twilight swallowed nervously, looking anywhere but at her parents. She noticed another cart in a corner, the same size as the egg cart. This one had a large hoop embedded in a sparkling stone, with the instruction of removing the ring without harming the stone. But that was not the test she was being asked to take. She walked slowly around the egg cart, looking at it from every angle. She looked over at her parents, who encouraged her with gestures to do her thing. “I don’t really know very much about dragons,” she said at last. “Other than the fact that they are unusually resistant to unicorn magic.” She tried to cast a spell on the egg, only to find that the shell formed an impenetrable layer. Not only that, but the same protection rendered it impossible to affect the egg in any way with magic alone. It couldn’t even be levitated. “I don’t know anything about hatching eggs,” she admitted with some reluctance. She wanted to blame a lack of studying on that, but she considered it extremely likely that none of the books she brought had anything to say on the subject. “I would guess that an infusion of raw magic would be enough, if the egg is ready to hatch.” She turned to face her testers. “Therefore, I would ask for the help of an expert, or maybe two: a unicorn who knew how to hatch dragon eggs, and a unicorn powerful enough to be able to safely force the magic into the egg. I don’t trust myself to do better than that right now, not without hurting the unborn dragon. If they needed me to give them my magic to help the spell, I would be happy to do it. So that’s my answer to this test. Maybe after I graduate, I can try again?” Twilight trembled as she awaited Princess Celestia’s response. It was the best answer she could come up with, but she was still disappointed in herself in not being able to come up with anything she could do personally. After a pregnant pause, Princess Celestia nodded in satisfaction. This was no future personal student, she reflected, but like Trixie before her, this filly was somepony who could grow up into a mare that would be a credit to all of Equestria. Just in completely different ways. “Yes, I think that is a wise and well-informed answer. Do you agree?” She looked back at the examiners, to see them busy taking notes. “Well, despite my presence here today, I am not here to sway your judgment. You are free to go, Twilight Sparkle.” “Wait,” said Twilight, looking intently at the egg. “Could I at least take a try at it? Just to see what I’m capable of? Just let me know if I’m hurting the dragon.” Celestia’s estimation of the applicant went up a couple more notches. First, because Twilight dared to contradict her, and had a good reason for doing so. And second, for the strong desire to test her limits. “You may proceed,” she said. Twilight concentrated, enveloping the egg in her magic. She felt the nature of the resistance. As she probed, it seemed that the block was fundamentally keyed into the very nature of the magic she was using. If she could mold that magic somehow, she would be able to get in. This meant that the problem was a lock-and-key puzzle, but on a level of complexity she had never dealt with before. Sweat began to bead on her forehead as she probed the egg from all sides, feeling out the shape of the metaphorical “lock”. The problem could not be brute forced, but it needed a lot of magic, more in fact than she could possibly summon. If she just had a little more… And there it was: a sudden fountain of magical energy appearing over her left shoulder. Pure, unfocused magic, free for her to use with no strings attached. Eagerly, she tapped into it. The magic passed right through her brain, and was shaped the way she wanted it to be. The egg hatched. But then it went wrong. She couldn’t let go of the new magic, and it seized on every random thought in her head. She opened her eyes, to see the examiners floating in mid-air, the dragon grown into a giant—its head bursting through the ceiling in slow motion, and her parents transformed into cacti. Somehow she saw this entire panorama without turning her head, the magic giving her more new senses than she knew how to deal with. Time seemed to be frozen. And yet, despite that fact, she was suddenly struck by another powerful stream of magic, this one coming from straight below her. This one was more like a fire hose. And like the blast from a fire hose, this stream also wanted to push her. She couldn’t be sure since she had never experienced it before, but this sure seemed like teleportation magic. It was trying to push her away, far, far away. Maybe even beyond Equestria. The old Twilight Sparkle might have put up no resistance. Surrendered herself to the guilt over what she had done. For in taking in that first magic stream in order to hatch the egg, Twilight Sparkle had cheated. The source of that magic had been distant, beyond the Canterlot city limits. Therefore it was not part of the test and in using it, Twilight had violated the Princess’ rule that she not use any outside help. So Old Twilight Sparkle would have accepted the punishment of an unknown teleport for cheating. But she wasn’t Old Twilight Sparkle, not since she had been saved from a beating by Trixie. Trixie had been willing to pay the price to do the right thing, and so would Twilight. Sure, the almighty Princess could probably reverse everything Twilight had messed up with her magic. But it wouldn’t be the same as Twilight fixing what she had done. Her parents would be ponies again, but they probably wouldn’t be the same ponies as they were before, not entirely, and Twilight couldn’t bear to live with the guilt of that outcome. So she fought the teleport. Not only that, but she wrenched magic out of the teleport to fix her mistakes. The dragon became a dragonling again. The examiners were gently put back down on their bench. And her parents were metamorphosed back into ponies, back into the exact same ponies they had been before Twilight’s magic had changed them. All of this took only a millisecond, long enough for the Princess to spread her wings and fly a full ponylength towards Twilight. But it was also a millisecond too long. Too much magic pulled and pulled at Twilight’s horn, until… Twilight opened her mouth to scream, as the most agonizing pain imaginable ripped through her horn… Twilight fell onto her back, her mouth open for a scream, but she never uttered it. The pain in her horn was gone. There was a pain in her eyes, an awful blistering pain, but compared to what she had experienced, this was nothing. At least for now, the madness inside her brain was more than enough of a distraction. All of her senses were going haywire, and unlike earlier with the magic surge, these new ones didn’t come with instructions. Also, the reasoning part of her brain seemed to be broken, as effects preceded causes and made-up formulae purporting to describe a universe without magic crowded around the mental image of herself so tightly as to threaten to squeeze it out of existence. But that wasn’t important. She had indeed been teleported. She was still in an auditorium, but a much bigger one judging from the acoustics. Twilight Sparkle loved the idea of teleporting. She had done a lot of research, and some nights when she was supposed to be going to sleep she would instead stand on her bed, lean into the ley lines, and imagine what it would be like to teleport. To the couch downstairs. To the roof of the school. To Manehattan. She knew that the longer she went without feeling the magical currents, the further she must have teleported. And now the only magical currents she felt were inside of her. It had seemed a short teleport, but where in Equestria was devoid of magic? Twilight Sparkle tried to open her eyes, but they refused to open. A sudden fatigue ganged up on her, trying to drag her into oblivion. “Goodbye, Mommy,” she whispered. “Goodbye, Daddy. Goodbye, Shining, BBBFF. Goodbye, Trixie… Goodbye…Princess. I’m…sorry I cheated.” There was a voice of a snooty filly, a thousand strides away. “Hey, Miss Second Place, what did you think you were doing, messing with my exhibit like that?! And…what’s wrong with your eyes? Um…medic? Medic! This girl’s hurt!” Twilight didn’t remember anything after that. H. Twilight Sparkle. Earth, Canterlot. Late afternoon of Day One. It was the day of the Junior Science Fair at Crystal Prep Academy, the first major science-related event of the year. The auditorium was buzzing, not only with the sounds of the various experimental exhibits, but also of the science reporters and college recruiters. Despite only being juniors, it was guaranteed that at least one exhibit would be good enough to provide an entirely new outlook to the world, and generate a full scholarship. After all, Crystal Prep students were the best of the best. And Twilight Sparkle, at age 15, was the best of the best of the best. She was far younger than any of the other juniors, having skipped two grades when she entered the Academy. The others looked to her with envy, not only because all Crystal Prep students were encouraged to see life as a zero-sum game, but also because of her age. She was certain to win the blue ribbon this year. Twilight tidied her exhibit as she waited for it to be judged, occasionally consulting a mirror to keep her tight hairstyle from coming undone—as much as she wished she lived in a world where looks didn’t matter, she was a young woman trying to break into a man’s field, and so her looks absolutely mattered. She looked around her at the other exhibits. Some of them looked quite good in conception, but none were as professional as hers. A cardboard box sitting under the table was filled with complete video documentation of both her research and construction—she was that certain that she would be accused of using outside help to cheat. It certainly wasn’t the first time that she had had to deal with that particular charge. “Ow!” Twilight turned to look at her neighbor, who was busy making her own adjustments to her exhibit. Unlike Twilight’s adjustments, these looked very necessary, as the mass of tangled wires at the back of the six-foot tall prototype oven kept giving off electrical sparks at random intervals. After studying the wiring for a few moments, she spoke up. “Would you like some advice, Puffed?” The girl with rosy-gray skin and straight raspberry hair turned on her. “Non!” she exclaimed in an affected French accent. “I will be disqualified for sure if I accept help from you!” “Yes, I suppose so,” Twilight said, and then quickly turned to face the judge who was right in front of her. Neither of them said anything for several minutes, as the judge read the presentation mounted next to the small rotating model of the planet. Twilight waited nervously as the judge made copious notes. In her mind everything was riding on this exhibit. The blue ribbon, and only the blue ribbon, would get her into Oxford, and nothing short of Oxford was acceptable. She held her breath. “The design is carefully controlled, and you have a very good data-to-noise ratio,” the judge informed Twilight Sparkle. “Overall, this is an exceptional model, but I’m going to have to apply a deduction because you used a clockwise Coriolis force in the northern hemisphere, instead of counter-clockwise.” The judge took some more notes on her clipboard before leaving a stunned Twilight Sparkle behind to check on her neighbor’s exhibit. I got the Coriolis force wrong? Twilight thought, retreating into the echo chamber of her own mind. I GOT THE CORIOLIS FORCE WRONG?!! This is it, this is the end! I am now the laughing stock of the entire universe! I’ll barely be qualified to haul garbage for a living after making a mistake that basic! Twilight felt her heart beating so fast that it tried to explode out of her chest. She was panting, but only the most shallow of breaths entered her lungs. As she watched, the world of the auditorium broke down into squares a meter on each side, which then drifted away from each other and into the void, revealing the cold and pitiless universe lurking just outside the puny realm controlled by humanity. Below her she could see a vast seething organic mass the size of the entire solar system, convulsing as it swallowed entire civilizations without a care. Her mistake was the tipping point, and now Earth was speeding into that gaping maw. The whole of humanity was going to die in horrible agony…because of her. Oh, and in one of those drifting squares she could see her neighbor’s exhibit building to a catastrophic explosion, the streams of data flowing through her brain. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. But these poor humans didn’t have to know that, not yet. So she reached out, spread the mass of wires wide, and crawled inside. The flaw was deep, deep inside the nest of electrical wiring. The mass was too tight for her to get her hands up to the necessary junction in time, so she reached out and tore it out with her teeth. It exploded anyway, microscopic shards of metal flying straight into her eyes. She was ejected from the exhibit with considerable force, flying backward through the air. But Twilight didn’t feel anything, for her overwhelmed nerves were no longer communicating with each other anymore. And then, all of a sudden, she did feel. She felt her bare bottom and both hands and feet touching the floor, in the manner of a dog or other quadruped. But the sensations returned by the extremities were much fainter than she expected. She looked around her. She was somewhere else, somewhere other than the auditorium of Crystal Prep. She could see. “Twilight Sparkle!” a voice cried out in alarm. She looked up into the face…of a unicorn. “Get out!” a male voice declared. “All unicorns need to leave the room immediately! Especially you, Princess.” The white unicorn looked away. “Yes, yes, of course.” “Do what the doctors tell you to do, Twilight!” a female voice called out from outside Twilight’s vision. “We’ll do everything we can for you.” The voice somewhat resembled her mother’s. Another horsey face filled her vision. It had some kind of clay on its hoof, which it then applied to Twilight’s forehead. He then raised a hypodermic needle into view. This creature was much smaller than the first one, more like a pony than a horse. Twilight was mesmerized. How was the pony holding the needle without dropping it? Then it injected her with something. “That will cut off the pain receptors and put you to sleep,” the pony told her. He looked like a doctor. He was probably a doctor. Twilight turned her head. A bunch of pony unicorns of various colors—plus the one horse-sized unicorn, who happened to also be a Pegasus—were looking at her through a doorway. The doctor and a nurse pony were putting her into a stretcher. Hey look! It’s a cute little lizard sucking on its tail! Oh, and she was a pony too. Probably a unicorn. Twilight Sparkle had dreamed of being a princess who played with unicorns when she was a child. Right before she had been shamed into giving up that sort of thing, she had even fantasized about being a unicorn. And after she had been shamed into giving up those fantasies, she had wondered what it might be like to dissect a unicorn—one who had died of natural causes—to see how their magic worked. It was obvious to Twilight what was happening to her. She had just experienced a nervous breakdown. And while her broken brain rebuilt itself, this was a fantasy that her personality was being subjected to. Her body was probably in a coma right now. And, considering some of the nightmares she had had about her inevitable first nervous breakdown…being a unicorn wasn’t bad. As long as they weren’t like…evil unicorns. She hoped that she hadn’t jinxed the fantasy by thinking that. “Okay,” she said to the doctor pony who was shining a bright light into her completely unresponsive eyes. “What happens next?” And then she passed out. Her only regret—besides having a nervous breakdown and becoming trapped in an inescapable fantasy—was that she couldn’t feel her horn. If she could feel her horn, that would be a good first step to figuring out how to use it.