The Lost Fics: "Back to School"

So, if you haven't read a previous blog of mine about not being able to write up ideas I get, you may be surprised to learn that I also have a mountain of fics that I did get started on, but haven't finished to the point of publishing. (Let's not even get started on the fics that I did publish, but haven't completed.) As the end of 2015 creeps ever nearer, I'm getting a bit tired seeing my mighty list of unpublished/WIP fics malingering about like a bunch of ravens cawing "Nevermore."

And so I'm gonna start posting excerpts/adaptations of my fics into blog form and give a bit of background (whenever I remember) on where the idea sprang from. Maybe people think the idea is interesting, maybe not. Maybe someone asks to use the idea and I can get a chance to read it as thought out by someone else. Who knows. It's not like I'm desperate to see these ideas of mine finally see the light of day, even if they're written by others. Ok, I am. Terribly, terribly desperate.

The first such fic I'll blog about is a comedy/slice of life story featuring Twilight and Trixie: "Back to School"

In her first days as an Equestrian princess, Twilight Sparkle made two startling discoveries about Trixie Lulamoon - first, that Trixie's last name was Lulamoon. But the second one was so great a surprise that she invited the showmare to Canterlot for a reunion. Specifically, to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

This Trixie was drawn by Concious-Aberration

Background info:
I got the idea for the fic and started work back in...

me, are you serious? Ughh. Anyways the idea first came to me when I learned that Lauren Faust had tweeted about Trixie being an alumnus of Celestia's school.

As my brain is wont to do I started figuring out connections and proceeded to type whatever first came to mind, even if it meant leaving gaps in the narrative that I'd fill in later. Essentially all I ended up getting from my thoughts to the keys was Twilight discovering Trixie's alumni status, giving some reasons for Trixie's attitude toward magic, and then coming up with the primary conflict that the duo must overcome. I originally had Twilight as a normal unicorn searching through old academic manuscripts and she so happened to find Trixie's stuff. The story sat around for a while until Twilight became a princess. But even then, as a couple of episodes went by and I did other things, Twilight hadn't really done anything princess-y and so I wanted to try my hand at writing the then-nascent alicorn's bumpy adaptation to royal life, deciding that having Princess Twilight would help things move along.

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Prologue

Twilight Sparkle was looking around her new quarters in the castle. In terms of style, it was no more resplendent than her room as Princess...no, as Celestia's student. Rather, Twilight noticed quite quickly that her suite was grander in size than what she had in her ivory tower, growing up.

She didn't plan on living in Canterlot, though. It was hard to fight the feeling that Ponyville was her home now. Despite only being there for a few years, Twilight couldn't imagine living apart from her friends beyond a week every so often. But still, it was important that she had a residence in the capital whenever she was called for her princess duties. Whatever those were.

Celestia and Luna were far more capable and experienced in tending to the comings and goings of running the country. Not to mention the numerous ministers and clerks that dealt with the minutiae of bureaucracy for the princesses to deal with the more "important" issues. And it wasn't like she was bound for some new kingdom like Cadance was in the northern remains of the once vast Crystal Empire. Twilight was supposed to meet with her fellow princesses later in the afternoon to discuss such matters, so the nascent member of royalty supposed that she could explore a bit until then.

Considering such a situation of being in-between roles - one of being an authority without anything to be responsible for - Twilight eagerly decided to visit her Alma mater, Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

She was granted even more extensive access than what she had as Celestia's student.

"These...these are brilliant!" She read through them.

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Chapter 1

Since receiving a royal summons, the Great and Powerful Trixie had made her way to Canterlot, pulling along her wagon.

"Princess Sparkle." Trixie curtsied.

Twilight blushed from the act.

"Oh...those..." Trixie viewed the papers with less enthusiasm than Twilight.

"They're just theory." Trixie continued to downplay her work, which in all honesty baffled Twilight.

"You're usually so...proud of your accomplishments, Trixie." Twilight noted.

"What's the point when I don't even have the ability to demonstrate them?"

"Couldn't you have asked another student?" Twilight asked.

"And risk having them steal my idea? Take credit for the research and long nights without sleep?"

"Why not ask the princess, yourself?"

"Sparkle, you may not have realized it, but not everypony has a direct line to Princess Celestia."

After the Alicorn Amulet incident, Twilight and Trixie became pen pals. Twilight wrote about the things she learned and discovered while living in Ponyville while Trixie wrote back about the things she saw while traveling around Equestria; the shows she put on and the efforts she made to fix her earlier reputation.

"But I tried to send my ideas to the princess. I asked my professor to do so for me. But she said the princess wasn't interested in my ideas, and I'll admit it, I was disappointed."

"Just disappointed?" Twilight asked warily, looking at the sheer amount of work that was put into just one of the thesis papers and the dense clustering of words scrawled on the pages to fit them all.

"...ok, I was devastated. Enough so to leave the school."

"Did you ask her what went wrong?"

"No. I was too swept up in my self pity that I just wanted to forget it all."

"Whatever happened to your professor? Maybe we could try to find out what happened.

"The headmaster?!"

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Background info (cont'd)
What a twist! Trixie's former professor stole her work and managed to advance her own career by doing so! Trixie wouldn't know what transpired because she all but left behind her academic past for the bright shining horizon of showbiz!

I imagined that during the course of the story Twilight and Trixie work to out the highly esteemed headmaster's shenanigans and vindicate Trixie. Maybe by way of Trixie revealing something about the theory that not even the eggheads of the School realized while they analyzed the dissertation. Of course, while she appreciates all that Twilight had done for her, Trixie, by this point in time, is more in love with the life of a traveling showmare, but she'd be remiss not to hang her framed diploma in her cart.