Twilight Sparkle the Dragon

by PlutoMilo


Step One

A week passed in the blink of an eye and almost no progress had been made to reverse the effects of the botched ritual Copper did. Twilight was on the verge of another breakdown and the only thing keeping her up and on her paws was the fact that Spike was still dutifully doing his rounds without complaint.
Now, she was sprawled in front of the open fire oven in Sugar Cube Corner, watching Fluttershy attempt to blow up a balloon and tie it without all the air escaping it. The dragon watched the pegasus attempt to tie it multiple times before growing exasperated and using her magic to knot the balloon.
Fluttershy flashed her a small embarrassed smile and set the inflated balloon on the table. Twilight watched her in a daze, warm from the fire at her back.
“Is everything fine with you, Twilight? You’ve been so stressed these past few weeks. You really should take a break, you know,” She added reproachfully.
Her words were like a bucket of cold water, dousing her languid mood with the very thing she was attempting to forget about for the time being.
Twilight attempted a smile, “It’s ok, really. Rainbow Dash is just really struggling with her animals and I’m really worried about Spike,” 
While that wasn’t a complete lie, Twilight still felt guilt flash through her.
Fluttershy sighed and a small smile ghosted over her lips, “Dashie always bites off more than she can chew. Maybe I can help? Celestia knows I’m not doing much good in here,”
Seeing that Twilight had nothing to lose she sighed and got up, “Alright, Operation save Rainbow Dash is commencing,”
Fluttershy giggled and followed Twilight as she made for the cottage. As they flew, Twilight took a moment to ruminate over her current situation. Based on Spike’s observations, all of her friends’ memories were intact. But they also didn’t find it strange that they were suddenly doing each other’s jobs. Which made absolutely no sense to the dragon whatsoever.
She gave up trying to make it make sense. Tentatively, Twilight reached out a claw and opened the cottage door silently. She learned from the last time she opened it too fast and had to deal with a small stampede of ferrets.
Fluttershy gasped at the state of the cottage and Twilight grimaced. All of the floorboards were scratched up, something blue and shredded lay in the corner, and Spike was in the middle of the room refilling the indoor birdfeeders. Rainbow Dash was nowhere to be found.
Spike finished up, wiping sweat from his brow, “Hi Mom, Fluttershy. Rainbow just went to bed. She was up all night because she couldn’t get the rooster to be quiet,”
“Oh, just tell Dashie to drape a cloth over the hen house or to put up a shade,” Fluttershy suggested, glancing every which way, “And you filled up the birdfeeders a little too much. The birds need room to stand somewhere and no animal wants to stand in their food,”
Spike exchanged a glance with Twilight, “Ok, thanks. I’m playing this by ear,”
A couple of rabbits hopped over, overjoyed to see Fluttershy again. Fluttershy smiled and stroked their heads and looked around for some lettuce. When her eyes landed on the food bowls, her already large eyes rounded further.
“Um, Spike? Where are the nuts and berries for the squirrels? Or the fruit for the ferrets?”
Spike grew sheepish, “I thought they ate the same things as rabbits,”
Fluttershy fled into the kitchen, “Oh you poor dears!”
Spike dusted off his hooves and stood next to his mother, “Is it me or is she acting almost normal?”
Twilight tore her eyes away from the kitchen doorway, her mouth still agape and blankly asked, “What if that’s how we fix it? Just shove them back into their old job and see how it works?”
Spike made a face that was an exact reflection of her logical brain, “Can’t be that easy can it?”
His question was answered when Fluttershy burst back through the door with the correct food and all the animals swarmed her. Fluttershy’s radiant expression was a little alarming, especially when she began to blabber excitedly.
“Oh, I feel so strange! I feel like I understand them,” She turned to Twilight with an imploring expression, “Goodness, I’m being silly aren’t I?”
Twilight shook her head so roughly she got a little dizzy, “‘Course not Flutters. You do you, alright?”
Fluttershy smiled brightly again and bounced in place, flapping her wings in excitement, “I feel like this is what I’m meant to do! Like it’s my destiny!” Twilight nodded encouragingly and Fluttershy shouted (or what passed for shouting for Fluttershy), “This is who I am!”
Nothing could’ve prepared Twilight for the huge beam of magic that blasted the entire cottage. There was no fanfare, no nothing. Just normalcy one moment, and absolute anarchy the next. She might as well have gone blind from the overexposure. Her claws tingled and she tasted cupcake frosting.
After two weeks of nonstop stress and anxiety, that was it for the dragon. Twilight let her body crumple to the ground and moaned in pain, not that she could hear herself. Static crackled in her ears and she wasn’t sure if she was up or down. Time was meaningless and gravity didn’t exist.


Twilight was… somewhere. She looked down at her claws and clenched them to make sure she was real. She felt them move, good. She looked back up to the large expanse of sheer nothingness. There was no clear floor, even though she felt some kind of surface underfoot. It wasn’t bright or dark. She could see very far off into the distance.
The longer she looked, the more white spots floated into her vision. The more she tried to blink them away, the more of them appeared. After a few moments of rapid blinking, Twilight decided they were part of the scenery and promptly ignored them.
Turning in a circle, Twilight concluded that the entire space looked the same. She was strangely at ease as she sat and waited. Waiting for what, she had no idea, but she waited nonetheless. It could’ve been hours or seconds later, but Twilight distinctly heard someone hum in disapproval. There was no time to ponder or look for who did since something very heavy crashed into her head and Twilight keeled over like a sack of dropped rocks.


An undetermined amount of time later, Twilight cracked her eyes open to see Fluttershy and Spike peering worriedly down at her. Twilight immediately sat up, ill at ease whenever someone had to look down to see her. The entire room tilted on an axis and Twilight groaned, throwing out her wings to stabilize herself. Predictably, that only made the situation worse and she ended up on the floor again.
“How long was I out?” Twilight asked with part of her snout pressed against the floorboards, “Can’t have been too long could it?”
“Not even a minute. What happened?” Twilight saw Spike tilt his head out of the corner of her eyes.
“Are you ok?” Fluttershy the ever carer.
“I don’t know, and I don’t know,” Twilight rattled off, sitting back up, “Oh! It worked! Your cutie mark. I don’t even know what we did, but it worked!”
Spike adopted a perturbed look, “Did you sleep at all last night?”
A simple look answered his question and Spike pursed his lips, decidedly staying silent. The tension was broken when Rainbow Dash poked her head out of the bedroom.
“Guys? Everypony ok? Yeesh, can’t a pony take a nap around here?” Rainbow Dash yawned and step-sided the still-eating critters.
Everyone waited for the ball to drop but it didn’t happen until Rainbow Dash came back out of the kitchen.
“Wait. Huh?” Rainbow’s sleep-blurry eyes stared at Fluttershy and then back at her own flank, “Why do you have my cutie mark?” then the pegasus frowned and she turned to look at the content creatures, “Why are they so relaxed? I haven’t gotten attacked yet. Nope, I’m dreaming,”
Everyone winced when Rainbow Dash took it upon herself to punch her own face, “Ow, ok. Not dreaming. Good to know…” Rainbow trailed off, eyes darting from one being to another, “Is this some kind of massive prank?”
Fluttershy smiled serenely, “No Dashie, we were just planning on helping Rarity get rid of those clouds. They’re awfully dangerous, right Twilight?” As Fluttershy bluffed her way into helping Rainbow Dash get her cutie mark back, Twilight’s mouth had fallen open at the ease in which Fluttershy fabricated the entire thing.
It took embarrassingly long for Twilight to react. And when she did, it was with such awkwardness that even Fluttershy’s expression faltered briefly to wince.
“YES! Help Rarity with the clouds! I mean, yes. Would you like to help us Rainbow? There aren’t enough able-bodied pegasi to help me clear the clouds and Fluttershy agreed to help,”
“But what about my cutie-” Rainbow Dash began to protest, but Fluttershy cut her off so smoothly, Twilight had to do another double-take
“Aw, come on Dashie. Don’t tell me a little thunder and lightning has you hiding under the bed,”
As Rainbow Dash sputtered indignantly, Twilight marveled at the way Fluttershy knew exactly what buttons to push to get Rainbow fired up. Spike snickered into Twilight’s shoulder as Rainbow Dash hotly proclaimed that she wasn’t scared of lightning.
“Fine! I’ll help with the stupid clouds, happy?” Rainbow huffed, “I mean, somepony needs to make sure you don’t fall out of the sky,”
Fluttershy laughed and beckoned Rainbow. Twilight followed in a daze, letting Spike climb onto her shoulders. It was only when they were halfway to town that Twilight’s gut twisted as she remembered Rarity’s predicament.
“Uh, when we find Rarity, she may or not be super upset,” Fluttershy’s eyebrows rose up to her hairline, prompting Twilight to continue as they flew, “I- I removed Rarity’s ability to do magic. So she wouldn’t hurt anyone else,”
Fluttershy nearly fell out of the air in shock and only Rainbow’s quick reflexes managed to get the weaker flier back in the air. The yellow pegasus didn’t need to say anything for Twilight to know how horror-stricken she was. There was a beat of uncomfortable silence before Fluttershy softly said, “It must’ve been very extreme for you to do that,”
“She zapped someone with lightning,” Twilight forced past her closing throat, “She could’ve killed them,”
Nothing was said until they landed in the town square, “All the more reason to help her, right? I don’t agree with what you did, but I’m glad no one else is hurt,”
Twilight nodded and swallowed thickly. They found Rarity sitting forlornly on a bridge, the metal still grafted to her horn. She heard their hoofbeats and looked up.
Anguish flashed across her face as she snarled, “Come to gloat, Twilight? I could not possibly believe you would be so uncouth. And yet, here we are,”
“Shy and I are going to look for the clouds, cya!” Rainbow Dash escaped the conversation with all the subtly of a boulder.
Fluttershy threw Twilight a reproachful look and followed Rainbow. Spike slid off her shoulders and stood next to her.
“Oh Spikey, look at what Twilight has done to me,” Spike averted his eyes and scuffed the ground.
Clearing her throat, Twilight reached up and gripped the metal. The moment her claws hovered over the metal, it was as if all the color in the world disappeared. When her claws actually made contact, she felt blind and lost. But she soldiered through it and pried off of Rarity’s horn. A snap later and the titanium was returned to Discord.
Unfortunately, the moment the metal disappeared from her claws, luck decided to have some fun, and again, Twilight was blind. This time from overexposure. Magic saturated her senses. She breathed Magic. Her blood was Magic. Her bones were Magic.
This time, her ears rang from the intensity, and dimly, she felt her body hit the ground. If this is what it would feel like every time one of her friends got their cutie mark back, she was going to end up with dead magical nerves. Twilight groaned and let herself slip into blissful darkness as the pain increased.