Princess Twilight Sparkle stands at the center of the room with a corona of white-hot magic blazing around her.
"Stands" may not quite be the correct term, for all four of her hooves are off the ground. Her wings are spread, but are not flapping, the force of pure magic holds her aloft. She hovers, then, in the center of the room, while everything around her is thrown into stark black and white shadows by the intensity of the light that her magic casts.
The room itself is quite ordinary—the parlor of a small suite, converted into a kind of scholar's sitting room. It is half library, half office, and entirely filled with books. The room is a little bit cluttered, with books strewn about on tables and papers stacked untidily here and there. Said papers are growing more and more untidy as Twilight's magic sweeps through the room.
The door to the bedroom behind it is shut. The door to the hallway in front of it has been reduced to small, smoking fragments.
The room's other occupant, besides the raging alicorn, is an orange unicorn, who is attempting to hide under his own dark brown mane. This is failing quite spectacularly, though the mane is fairly long. But the magical wind emanating from the enraged princess is blowing it about, revealing his teal blue eyes.
They are, understandably, rather frightened eyes.
He had previously been attempting to hide under a sofa. The sofa, smoldering ever so slightly, now lies overturned against a broken bookshelf, with books spilling onto the floor.
By this, an observer might correctly deduce that Twilight has gone quite mad. A sane Twilight would never damage a book.
"I'm sorry!" cries the cowering stallion. "I didn't mean it! I'll retract it! I was obviously wrong!"
"Oh now you will? Now?" The voice is ragged from prior shrieks of rage. It is not exactly quiet and well-moderated currently, either. "A retraction only made on threat of death is meaningless, you tiny-minded, arrogant, ignoramus! It's too late for retractions!"
"Please, don't kill me, I'll do anything!" grovels the stallion.
Suddenly a third voice interrupts. "Twilight Sparkle. What exactly do you think you're doing?" This voice belongs to the tall, elegant, white-coated alicorn who has just arrived in the hallway. She stands regarding the floating alicorn, cowering unicorn, and general destruction and chaos with a stern look.
Twilight slowly settles to the ground at the center of the room. She blinks twice and her white-glowing eyes fade back to their normal purplish hue. The wind coming from her ceases, and she stands, facing Celestia, with an expression of utter calm. Despite this expression, tiny sparks of magic still crackle off the tip of her horn and ripple along her wings. There is a sense of doom held back by the thinnest of threads in her level gaze.
"I am dealing with an issue of academic misbehavior," says Twilight, her voice no longer a ragged shriek, but a soft, deadly calm.
Celestia's eyebrows go up ever so slightly. "Oh?"
"Yes. Allow me to explain..."
"Welcome to the archives, Princess Twilight." The archivist smiled warmly, looking up from the scroll in front of her.
"Hi Scribble. You really don't have to call me 'Princess', you know. You've known me since I was a filly."
"I am a big fan of proper categorization, and your proper category, Twilight, is Princess. So indulge me."
Twilight chuckled. "Well, if you insist. Is the latest copy of Mathemagica out yet?"
"Hot off the presses this morning. I've already skimmed over all the articles to properly index them in our system." The elderly mare gave Twilight a conspiratorial smile. "I happen to have noticed a particularly lengthy article with a very familiar name on it."
Twilight couldn't quite hold back an undignified little squeak of delight. "I know! I can't wait to see it!" She clapped her front hooves together excitedly. "I've already ordered a copy for my own archives, but I know you always get them here first. Mine won't be delivered until tomorrow."
"Well, let me go get it for you then," said the archivist. She vanished into the stacks, but returned quickly with a thick magazine floating in her magic. Twilight took it from her eagerly, trying not to dance in place like an excited foal.
"Thank you!"
"You're welcome," said the archivist, but Twilight had already turned away to find a table. She almost turned back, it was probably rude, but then the archivist no doubt understood exactly how excited she was. She spread the magazine out in front of her and consulted the index on the first of its heavy, glossy pages, then flipped rapidly to her article.
"Emotional Harmonics: Charting the Effects of Friendship on the Classic Thaumatic Power Curve," she read out loud, her tone almost loving. Then she blushed and looked around, but nopony seemed to be within earshot. She looked back down at the article, with her name printed just below the title. A warm little glow blossomed inside her. Here was years' worth of hard work, laid out in clean black and white text.
She knew every word of it, of course. She'd slaved over each and every line. She read all the way through it anyway, and ran her hoof gently over the charts and diagrams. The beautiful tangle of numbers that made up her final formula hummed in her mind as she read and it was immensely satisfying to finally reach the end and read that equation, complex and yet so perfect, there on the page. It was her dream, the seed of which had been planted when she she faced off against Nightmare Moon, when she first began to realize that friendship really was magic. Proving that in the most literal sense had been taxing, yet in the end she'd done it, and here it was.
Twilight carefully closed the magazine. With a soft, almost regretful sigh she returned it to the archivist, and headed home. Today was truly one of the best days of her life. All her work, summed up in one glorious article that would no doubt change the practice of magic all across Equestria. She wondered what other ponies would do with it. She would probably never know in most cases. But she made a mental note as she boarded the train to Ponyville to check the archive's citation tracker next time she was in Canterlot. She couldn't see how her article was being used directly, but she could at least see how other scholarly articles were referencing it. That would give her some idea of the uses to which her grand theory was being put.
"None? As in zero? As in not even one?"
Twilight looked at Scribble in shock.
"It takes time for an article to acquire citations. Just think about how long writing this one took you," she said, giving Twilight a small, reassuring smile. "It's only been a couple of months. Anyone wanting to use your theory will be in the early stages still."
"I... well... of course. I just was excited to see the reaction ponies would have. There are so many potential applications! But you're right, of course something like that will take time."
"And it was a little bit... difficult in places."
"Difficult?"
"The math is quite complicated."
"I suppose... but surely the readers of Mathemagica will all be familiar with calculus?"
"It goes a bit beyond straightforward calculus, Princess. I'll admit I didn't fully grasp the final equation, even with the previous formulas provided. Now I'm not a theoretical mathematician, I'm sure they're all quite excited, but it's a bit beyond some of us."
"Oh. I see." Twilight's ears were even flatter than her tone of voice. She tried to raise both and put on some semblance of optimism. "I, ah, I guess I'll check in next month?"
"Please do. I'm sure eventually it will be cited in all sorts of papers."
"I'm sorry, Princess Twilight."
Twilight mentally did the little hoof in, hoof out gesture Cadance had taught her, though she only pictured it, it didn't look terribly dignified to perform her calming ritual in public. "It's fine. Like you said, it's a difficult subject. I know not everypony will be able to do anything with my equations. Still... it's so beautiful! And so revolutionary! I would have thought that somepony would have at least mentioned it by now. It's been six months!"
"I'm afraid that 'revolutionary' may be part of the problem. It's very new and different. In some ways it's an entirely new way of casting spells. Quite a few of the scholars who might otherwise be interested are rather traditional, shall we say."
"Oh."
"I'm sure that work is being done with your formulas even now, Princess. I understood enough of them to know how amazing they are! But not everyone will be prepared to copy your methods. It will take time for them to become common."
"I see. I suppose that shouldn't surprise or disappoint me, but it does, just a little bit."
"There is a citation of one of your other works in this month's The Practical Magician."
"Oh?" Twilight's ears perked up. She wondered which of her still rather small collection of published papers it was.
"Yes. Your article on textile shaping via magic was cited as a source in a how-to on making shaped mane decorations... for... uhm... foals." The archivist took a half step back at the expression that had appeared on Twilight's face, her voice turning slow and hesitant as she finished speaking.
"You're telling me that my magnum opus, the definitive work on both magic and friendship, has not been cited one single time in six whole months, but a collaboration on fashion has been cited just a month after it was published?"
The archivist coughed and straightened, giving Twilight a somewhat hesitant smile. "Well... the fashion world moves quickly sometimes."
Twilight snorted. "Yes, that's true. Though The Practical Magician is not exactly a fashion magazine." She let out a long breath and tried to calm herself. Getting angry over something she couldn't change would accomplish nothing. "I'm sure Rarity will be delighted to have her work mentioned there. The article really was mostly her project. I just helped get it written up in the proper format."
"I remember reading that one last month. The technique was amazingly simple and elegant."
Twilight managed a smile. "That's Rarity for you! For the elegance, at least. The simplicity... well, I guess that's why it got used in a how-to for foals." Twilight heaved a sigh. "I guess I'll just check back in again next month."
"If you prefer, I could write to you when I get a citation to enter in our citation tracker? That way you won't have to travel so often."
"I..." Twilight found herself oddly hesitant to stop her by-now regularly scheduled visits to check on her citations, but she had to admit that the archivist's idea made sense. She visited Canterlot now and then anyway, but it wasn't on anything like a monthly schedule. "Yes, that's probably for the best," she finally replied. "I mean, I may check in sometimes anyway, if I'm in the area."
"Of course. I'll send a scroll as soon as something happens, then."
Twilight stared at the scroll on her desk in confusion. It was the citation she'd been hoping for, though it had taken over ten months to arrive. She had given in and checked in twice in the intervening months, but Scribble had finally convinced her to stop fretting over the nonexistent citations. Or at least to stop expressing her fretting by regularly harassing the archivist.
She wanted to be delighted now that the citation—hopefully the first of many—had arrived, but the contents of the scroll were actually rather confusing. She recognized neither the author of the article nor the name of the journal it was published in. The Journal of Mathemagical Discourse sounded very official and proper, but it was completely unfamiliar to her, and she thought she'd read every reputable publisher of mathemagical content in Equestria.
She frowned. The title of the article wasn't terribly encouraging, either. The Folly of Friendship did not sound like a proper exploration of her theory. It sounded like a refutation. Of course refutations were an important part of the academic tradition. Perhaps there was something she'd missed while constructing her theory, perhaps that was why it was not yet widely cited? She decided that she needed to read this article as soon as possible. As the librarian, though admittedly part-time now that she had so many other things on her plate, she knew that the Ponyville library didn't have the publication in question. No doubt the Royal Archives at Canterlot would have it, though. They had everything.
Deciding that this was urgent enough for the massive magical expenditure, Twilight began charging her horn. Her brow furrowed and her eyes closed in concentration as her corona grew and grew. Finally it exploded in a wave of white light and Twilight vanished with an emphatic pop!
She reappeared on the familiar marble sweep of the Canterlot Royal Library steps and hurried inside, to the archivist's desk.
"Princess Twilight! I take it you got my scroll?"
"Yes! And I really must read the article in question. I assume you have a copy?"
"Well," the archivist looked vaguely worried. "No, we don't."
Twilight blinked at her. "No?"
"No. The publication in question is relatively recent and... well..."
Twilight found her eyebrows going up. "Well?"
"It's not considered especially reputable."
"I see." Twilight attempted to keep her reaction in check. Not reputable. A lifetime's worth of work, cited once, in a journal that was not reputable. She felt her ears laying down flat and her lips twitched, trying to snarl. No. No, she couldn't accept it. It had to be some kind of mistake. She took a breath, seeking calm. "Where would I go to find a copy?"
"I'm not sure. Let me ask some of the other librarians and see if anypony knows."
"Thank you," said Twilight, managing to lift her ears upright and appear politely calm as she responded. Inwardly she was a surging churn of emotion. She scuffed a hoof on the floor and was mildly surprised to see it leave a trail of magical sparks behind. She clamped down on the earth pony energy that had escaped her. She mentally checked that her horn was not sparking—no—and that her wings were also not leaking energy. She carefully spread and re-folded them with a kind of exaggerated calm and tamped down the channels that had allowed a few static sparks to fall from them. Everything was fine. Everything would be completely and entirely fine. There had been some mistake. She would find a copy of the journal, read the article, and then submit a new version of her theory with whatever corrections were necessary. The academic process was working as intended, that was all. Her great work was not being ignored by academia only to be featured by some incompetent hack. Of course not.
"Princess?"
Twilight spun around, sparks again arcing behind her hooves. With a scowl she re-asserted her control over her magic. She really did need to practice working with earth pony magic more, it was obvious she was less familiar with it, if being a little bit upset could make it leak like that. "Yes?"
The archivist's expression was somewhat wary. "I'm told that the publisher of The Journal of Mathemagical Discourse is considered something of a vanity press. No library branch we know of carries it. There is, however, a small bookstore that sometimes deals with the press in question and may have a copy. I wrote down the address for you." She held it out to Twilight cautiously.
Twilight wanted to snap that she was not going to bite anyone, but that would probably be less than helpful. She took the scrap of paper in her magic with utmost care, and managed to not set it on fire. "Thank you."
Looking down at it, she noted that it was just off an intersection she knew well. A moment's thought and she vanished from the library to reappear on the sidewalk in front of a small cafe. Two doors down was the sign for a bookstore that hadn't been there last year. She knew every bookstore in Canterlot, so she was quite certain it was new.
She crumpled the bit of paper with the address and threw it into a nearby trash can, resisting the urge to burn it to ashes. Everything was fine. She would just read the article, and everything would be fine. She could handle academic critique.
Everything would be just fine.
"I take it that the article was not a reasoned academic response?" says Princess Celestia.
Twilight, small sparks still crackling off of her wings, shakes her head. "It claimed that my math was entirely wrong."
Celestia blinks. "I read your article. I noticed no mistakes. It was frankly one of the most elegant explanations of magical theory I've ever seen."
"The refutation contained at least half a dozen basic mathematical errors. Also the article following it had been written by a cat."
"...what?"
"It had been written by a cat. Or rather some academic wit gave their cat the by-line and submitted an article about the mathematics of mousing, presumably as some form of joke, or perhaps protest against the journal's publication process. Three seconds' worth of editorial oversight would have seen it rejected. It was accepted and published."
"I see." Celestia's ears twitch, a tiny emotional tell not usually allowed by the serene alicorn ruler.
"Not only that," Twilight speaks through clenched teeth now, and the sparks flying from her feathers grow brighter. Her horn and hooves also begin leaking magic once again. "Not only that, but this stallion's 'refutation' of my theory claimed that any sensible scholar would regard the notion of having friends in order to capitalize on my theories as absurd, regardless of the potential magical benefits."
"Having friends. Absurd." Celestia's eyes narrow infinitesimally. Her gaze flicks to the cowering stallion, who manages somehow to cower even more.
"I'm afraid I disintegrated the issue of the journal that I was reading," says Twilight, unclenching her teeth. "I paid the bookstore for it, of course," she adds.
"And what are your intentions here?"
"I believe I'm done here, actually. I have no intention of killing this stallion. I just wanted him to... fully appreciate my opinion of his level of mathemagical expertise." She gives him a withering glance. "I intend to next visit the offices of the publishing house responsible for the journal in question and set them on fire."
Celestia regards Twilight, still leaking magic, very obviously keeping her calm by only the thinnest of margins. She looks at the devastation around her, and at the would-be mathemagician huddling in terror. Then she gives Twilight a small nod and a faint but approving smile. "Carry on, then."