//------------------------------// // Blank Slate // Story: Fitting In // by PotatoJoe //------------------------------// “ Hey Twilight! Wake up! I have to go to school!” Twilight blinked, slowly waking. She sat up and immediately winced as she smacked her head on the ceiling. “ ....you okay?” asked Spike. The little colt trotted to the size of Twilights overborne bed. The previous day, Twilight Sparkle and Spike had used magic to switch species, part of a rather elaborate and poorly conceived plan to allow Spike to “fit in” for a week and go to school. Of course, Twilight had to go though wacky dragon puberty almost immediately, growing to the size of the wagon she’d taken to the Grand Galloping Gala. This was the current greatest of her problems - she was a big dragon in a small bedroom - but not the only one. She was now facing a week without magic and had slept on her brand-new wings funny, leaving them tingly and uncomfortable. “ ....yeah.” she said, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she looked down at the little dragon. She smiled as she saw the eager little look on his face. His eyes sparkled like he was staring at a plate of rubies and the dance in his step was the type only the most excited foal could manage. “ I suppose we should get your lunch packed, shouldn’t we?” “ C-could I have a peanut butter and amethyst sandwich?” he asked excitedly, galloping around the room randomly. He was practically - WHAM - no, literally bouncing off the walls. As Twilight got out of bed, carefully avoiding the ceiling, she wondered if she’d been that excited to go to school. “ Uh, ponies don’t eat gems.” she said, nodding to the door. Spike ran out to the top of the stairs, where he turned to wait for her. “ Oh.” said Spike, looking down. “ Oh, so peanut butter and jelly, right?” “ And some other snacks.” said Twilight, carefully squeezing though her doorway. She was just the right size to not damage anything if she was careful. “ A few cookies, two apples - “ “ Two?” “ One for Ms. Cherilee.” explained Twilight with a smile. “ You want to make a good impression, right?” Had Spike smiled any wider he might had hurt himself. The morning was idyllic. Twilight and Spike prepared him a lunch, enjoying their newfound methods of manipulation. Spike managed to spill a lot of jelly while trying to levitate too many things at once and Twilight poked a few holes in the apples with her claws, but all in all they got things done. Soon, a knock came on the front door. “ Hey! Thats the school wagon!” said Spike excitedly, galloping to the front door. “ Yeah, look! Its in front of the library! Hey, Applebloom’s waving!” “ Don’t forget your lunch!” said Twilight, leaning out of the kitchen and tossing the paper bag to him. He caught it with magic, levitating it into the foals saddlebag they’d picked up for him and zipping the bag shut. Twilight inched out of the kitchen safely and into the hall. “ Uh, you might want to get going.” “....um....theres, uh, one last thing.” said Spike, kicking one hoof to the ground. “ It’s, um, kinda tradition - at least, i’ve heard it is - that you give me a kiss on the head and hug me before I go to school and I act annoyed about it.” “ You’re going all out on this, aren’t you?” “ Look, we switched species. Let’s not skimp on the little things.” Twilight leaned over and gave Spike a gentle but loving hug, kissing him on the cheek. He returned the hug - Twilight smirked, glad he’d not chosen to protest like he’d claimed he was going to - and trotted outside, getting onto the school wagon. She waved as it raced off, Spike already talking to Snips and Snails excitedly. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, then waving the smoke from the air, Twilight Sparkle looked around. The Library was in good shape. There wasn’t much checked out and the pile of unshelved books was small - so she had the morning to herself. Usually, she would have taken this time to study a few new spells - but today wasn’t one for curling up with a book on magic. Procuring several large - and suddenly delicious looking gems - from the cupboard, she sat at the dining table and set down the Eggheads Guide To Dragons. Like she’d said - not a day for books on magic. Which did not exempt any OTHER books. She’d began to browse though the book - she’d done so before, but only the sections that applied to Spike. As a baby dragon he was fairly easy to deal with and didn’t have many things to worry about - no wings meant she’d never looked up how dragons fly, no hoard meant no adventurers seeking to loot it, and while he was a little pudgy, he ate a healthy enough diet that he had very few physical problems. Pausing, she reached for a diamond. It was the size of an apple, so she fiddled with it in her claws, looking it over. As it shone in the morning light she found herself starting to drool. Flinching, she opened her mouth and took a bite. The crunch was loud and strangely satisfying. It was like biting into the driest and most flavorful fruit she’d ever tried. Its taste was unlike anything - she guessed she could only describe it as diamond. She found herself devouring the rest of the gem in two messy bites, ravenously chewing and savoring the flavor. Glancing to the plate, she knew she needed to know what rubies, emeralds, and amethysts were like IMMEDIATELY. One short and highly satisfying binge later, Twilight Sat back on her haunches, batting her full-feeling stomach. She let out a belch, a puff of pink flame fluttering though the air. She quickly covered her mouth and looked around - then remembered she was no longer a mare. She was a dragon - holding in burps was a bad idea. Spike had once tried that to keep from grossing out Rarity and nearly exploded. Picking up a crumb of ruby, she turned back to her book, looking for the section on gems. When she found it, it was disappointing, only listing that dragons could eat gems and what types were needed for a balanced diet. She noted a little warning she hadn’t before - that baby dragons should refrain from eating even depleted uranium, comparing it to liquor, and that plutonium was considered a dangerous hallucinogenic. Flipping through more of the book, she found it considerably drier and less useful than she needed it to be - the flight section talked only of the mechanics of dragon wings and fingers were only a footnote! Fingers! A footnote! She clacked her right claw along the top of the table as she shut the book in disgust. This was about about dragons. Not one about being a dragon. Eventually, there were a lot of things Spike would need to know - ! Twilight was a dragon. She could write the book on being a dragon. She could experiment with the hows and whats of the body so she’d know how to help Spike when he grew. In fact, she could do better than that! She could write a book so that anypony would know what it was like to be a dragon. She’d seen Spike rub his hands together when he had a good idea, so she took the chance to do just that. ============= “ Allright, class, for this week we’re going to have a guest student.” said Ms. Cherilee, her students falling quiet, save for the ever-chatty Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. She “ahemed” a few times, eventually silencing them. She then gestured again, indicating the little purple unicorn standing next to her. Spike smiled a big goofy nervous smile. “ Hey Spike!” said Applebloom, waving. “ He’s going to be just like a normal student, so treat him as you would your friends!” said Ms. Cherilee. She then gestured to a empty desk in the middle of the room, behind Scootaloo and next to Silver Spoon. “ Spike, that will be your desk.” “ O-okay!” he said quickly, trotting over and setting his saddlebags beneath it. As he sat, he could hear Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon whispering. He didn’t catch much, but he was sure he’d heard the words “blank flank.” It hadn’t occurred to him until then to look at his flank. He, indeed, had no cutie mark. It was strange - he’d never wanted one before, but now that he didn’t have one, he felt disappointed. Class began slowly, with role call and a discussion of what topics they would cover that day. It was strangely familiar to Spike - he’d heard of such things from Twilight when he’d been even younger than he was now. The foals mostly seemed bored and disinterested, barely listening to Cherilee. Finally, they started the first unit of the days lessons - math. “ Okay, class, let’s start easy.” said Cherilee, taking a piece of chalk and turning to the board. The moment she did, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon exchanged notes with each other and Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell glanced to each other and whispered something. Snips took the chance to take a candy bar out as Cherilee wrote a number of math equations on the board and chomped down on it. “ Spike, we start math with a few warmups. Anypony who wants to give it a try can come up to the board - “ “ Oh! Oh!” Spike leapt out of his seat and ran to the board, drawing a number of laughs. “ - and give the problems a try.” finished Cherilee with a wide smile. “ Well, aren’t you eager? There are twenty problems on the board. For each one you finish you get one question off of your homework.” “ 4, 8, 28, 45.5, pi, 0, 18, 10000000, 19, 2^2, X is equal to 9, X is equal to 3Y, 1, 32 canters per hour, nine thirty the following evening, 7, 777, 777.7, and 29.” Spike had read from left to right, going from problem to problem as Cherilee’s jaw slowly dropped, stopping without answering the twentieth question. “ Uh, I guess I should have left more than one for somepony else.” said Spike awkwardly, looking down and rubbing his mane. The class was silent. ================= Flight was amazing. Twilight was not soaring with anything that could be called grace. In fact, ‘soaring’ was an abuse of the term. But she was flying - flapping hard, teetering from side to side, and fighting to keep herself from losing her breakfast, but she was flying. Unfortunately, she’d originally been trying to ascertain how sensitive her claws were and began to fly by accident. She’d began simply, touching the flesh around the nails and feeling between her fingers. It had raised a tingling sensation on her spike and her tail had thumped a little. Remembering that Spike hated having is paws tickled, she decided to try using a feather to ticking the little pad scales in the center. She’d laughed so hard she’d breathed fire, her tail thrashing and wings flapping so hard she had taken flight. Through the roof of the kitchen. But, she had other things to focus on at the moment. News had gotten out to most of Ponyville of what she had done, but knowing that the local magician had turned herself into a dragon and seeing a dragon, trails of flame and smoke roaring from her mouth, flying across the top of ones village was something completely different. Case in point - the flower mares were running in blind panic through the market, the carrot cart had been knocked over, sending the round vegetables pouring down a hill and into the busy streets, tripping dozen of ponies, and the Mayor had decided that it was time to try out the air raid signal. All in all, a memorable first flight. “ Look out look out look out!” she shouted, her roaring voice betraying her panic as her right wing cramped up. She lost control completely and barreled towards the Barrel store, the poor old pony who ran it fleeing back inside. She flinched, throwing her arms in front of herself and hoping the building was unreasonably soft. Then, she got the wind knocked out of her as something struck her in the stomach, propelling her past the store and into the back alleys. She landed in an inelegant heap, rolling through several garbage cans and mud puddles. “ Wow, Twilight, you don’t cause small problems, do you?” The voice laughed and Twilight recognized the small blue shape fluttering before her as Rainbow Dash. “ Nope.” said Twilight, rolling off her side and sitting up. It was several more seconds until the world stopped spinning and she could focus her eyes. She noted how long it took - dragons didn’t seem to have the greatest balance and their optic nerve wasn’t as quick as ponies, speaking to a less-advanced inner ear and less visual acuity. “ Uh, thanks for saving the store.” “ No prob.” said Rainbow with a laugh. “ Moment I heard the air raid siren I knew you’d tried to fly. Well, that or it was Scootaloo again, but she’s in class.” “ Okay, so, lets try....lets try walking.” said Twilight, standing up. “ Yeaaaaahhhh, put off flying for a while.” Rainbow Dash fluttered over and followed Twilight as she crept from the alley. “ So, uh, what are you up to today?” “ Research!” said Twilight excitedly, noting Rainbow Dash wince. She lowered her volume. “ Sorry, my lungs are five times bigger than a ponies. I’m trying to learn everything I can about a dragons body firsthand so I can write a book about what it’s like.” “....you would, wouldn’t you?” said Dash with a sigh, facehoofing. “ Come on, Twi! Have some fun! You’re only going to be a dragon for a week, right? You’ll remember everything and can write the book later.” “ I am having fun!” protested Twilight, accidentally stepping on a crate and smashing her paw through it. “ Uh, shoot. But I was having fun earlier - I was testing how ticklish dragons are - “ “ Okay, thats already going weird places.” Rainbow Dash let out a little laugh. “ What next after something like that?” “ Well, logically, erogenous zones and -” “ Twi, don’t say it out loud!” laughed Rainbow Dash, blushing deeply. “ Nopony want’s to know that kind of thing.” “ Not quite true.” said Twilight, cringing. “ I, um, did once come across a book of medical speculation on the subject. It was, um....well, you don’t want details.” The look on Rainbow Dash’s face showed she clearly agreed. “ Anyways, I was thinking of heading out of town and trying some flying - and some fire breathing.” said Twilight, carrying on into a different and less awkward subject. “ Do you want to come? It could be pretty cool.” “ Cool? Twilight, fire is was more awesome that just ‘cool’!” said Dash energetically. “ Of course I want to see! Theres this big old elm that I accidentally killed with a lightning bolt last year - I bet it’d go up in flames in a second!” “ Lead on!” said Twilight excitedly, stepping into another box with another foot with a loud crunch. =============== “ ....uh.....wow.” Cherilee looked to the board, which she had covered with equations from her old college physics class - the ones she’d sometimes needed a night to solve. Spike had ploughed through them a miniature living calculator. He stood there, looking proud, while the class quietly chatted and goofed off behind them. “ I guess living with Twilight’s really paid off.” said Spike with a smile and a shrug. “ Uh, so I should probably let somepony else go.” “ Um, yeah, you may return to your seat.” said Cherilee, shaking her head. Spike trotted back and sat down, an amused looking Diamond Tiara looking at her. As Spike looked up he saw she’d written his name on the board and put a star by it. “ So, Spike, since you did the best in math this morning - “ “ Hey! We never got a chance!” protested Sweetie Bell. “ Like we coulda understood any o’ that.” said Applebloom, dismissing her. “ - you get a star. You can get one for each subject we study before lunch. If you get a second, you get an extra ten minutes of recess after lunch.” continued Cherilee. “ And if you get three, you get a piece of candy as well.” “....uh, how many are possible?” asked Spike, glancing to the candy jar. “ Twelve.” said Cherilee with a smile, guessing Spikes game. “ Are you going to try for all of them? I’ll give you something special if you get them all. If you can do that, you won’t have any homework tonight.” “.....um....could I have something else?” asked Spike. The entire class laughed, leading him to blush. “ What a nerd!” cackled Diamond Tiara. “ That weirdo librarian who owns you must have really rubbed off on you!” Spikes eyes narrowed. The other foals noticed the glare, but Diamond Tiara did not. “ Ms. Cherilee?” he asked, turning and staring at his desk. “ If I get all twelve stars, will you make Diamond Tiara sit between Snips and Snails after lunch?” A number of the foals looked shocked and chattered with each other. Diamond Tiara looked shocked. Snails didn’t notice anything had happened and continued to try and levitate a booger from his nose. A sly little smile crossed Cherilee’s face. “ That can be arranged.” she said, turning to the board. “ Time for geography!” Spike smirked as he looked to the angry looking Tiara. “ Better hope you get a star. I hear Snails has a crush on you, he might try and kiss you.” “ You won’t look so smug in five minutes.” said Diamond Tiara angrily, turning towards the front of the room and setting her teeth. Knowing he would, Spike sat back in his chair and thought of the time he and Twilight had made a game of memorizing the atlas of Equestria. =============== “ So, fire burns.” said Twilight, jotting down the note as Rainbow Dash forced a few more spurts of water from her cloud. The tree had indeed burnt quickly when Twilight breathed fire on it. However, she had let out a much greater gust than she had expected - it had spread to eight other trees. Then to twenty more. At the moment they were standing in the ash of roughly a hundred trees, a number of singed and angry looking animals staring at them. “ ....and thats a bad thing.” continued Twilight, finishing her note. “ So, um, animals of the forest....I guess I need to apologize.” Various murmurs and squeaks met her, as did a horde of glares. “ So, I’m sorry.” said Twilight awkwardly, scratching her headspines. “ And I’ll look into getting this fixed. It’ll take a few days, I kinda don’t have my normal magic at the moment. D-do you know where Fluttershy lives?” The animals turned and made their way away from Twilight into the forest. “ Good thing we decided to go with fire breathing first.” said Rainbow Dash, bucking the emaciated cloud back into the sky and landing by Twilight. “ Imagine if we’d started with something hard, like not causing a disaster.” “ Shut up.” huffed Twilight. ============ “ And correct, the end of the Non-Linear Age corresponds with the defeat of Discord.” said Cherilee, giving Spike a wide smile. The colt was leaning back against his chair, his arms behind his head, his face as smug as he could manage. There were eleven stars by his name. The class was cheering for him, save for Silver Spoon. And Diamond Tiara? She was in a state of panic that only furthered when Snips began to make kissy-lips at her before breaking into laughter. “ Now for the last unit, the pop question!” said Cherilee, picking up a book from her bookcase behind her desk. “ It’s a random question that I will choose by opening to a random page in the encyclopedia. Is everypony ready?” “ Just ask it!” shrieked Diamond Tiara, looking ready to hyperventilate. “ At what date,” began Cherilee, looking into the book. “ Was the largest meteor shower over Equestria recorded?” “ HOW COULD I POSSIBLY KNOW THAT?” Diamond Tiara yelled so loudly the windows rattled. “ It couldn’t possibly have been....” said Spike, sitting forwards and dragging his words out dramatically. “ Actually, I pass.” Applebloom fell out of her chair. “ You pass?” she shrieked. “ Com’on, Spike, you can stick one to that little harpy!” “ I don’t feel like being a jerk.” said Spike with a shrug. A number of foals looked disappointed, but Cherilee beamed at him. “ But now that I’ve passed, the date was 346 After Discord on midsummers eve, from three-fifteen to four in the morning.” “ Correct!” said Cherilee, shutting the book. Diamond Tiara stared at Spike, her jaw hanging open. “ Well, time for lunch!” The class filed out of the room, save for Diamond Tiara, who was too stunned to move, and Spike, who stayed for a moment by Cherilee’s desk. “ Uh, Twilight told me to give you this.” said Spike, levitating an apple onto Cherilee’s desk. It didn’t look very good compared to the one that Applebloom had given her, but she accepted it and gave him a smile. Spike turned and trotted out of the room. Only Diamond Tiara noticed eleven small chalk-outline stars on his flank.