Three days later, I knew I would be up most of the night on a job. Sunset Shimmer had also presented me with a late afternoon exam appointment on the same day, on the second floor of the university's Luna Tower. I noted the red and gold wax royal seal. The curlicue signature confirmed it had been penned by the school's headmare herself, Princess Celestia. I had regarded it with trepidation, but at least it wasn't a personal interview. I would have declined that. She didn't know my true name. In any case, I'd also taken my placement exam for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns in the obviously repaired white spire and knew what to expect.
So, I slept in and skipped all my classes.
I levitated an insulated glass bottle of strong black tea made syrupy with sugar as I trotted up to the round white brick tower with its new copper conical roof. What interested me most was the line of crushed boulders that filled the chasm that the runt had opened during the magic storm she had "unleashed" during her examination. I scratched my nose with the bottom of the bottle, sighting down the straight line fault. It ran through an enormous gnarled oak that had been split in two, both edges burnt. With a shock, I realized that a chrysanthemum garden was surrounded by the foundation of a destroyed building, the entrance and egress being the fault line. By some miracle, the chasm followed the path of least resistance down Alicorn Way and off the cliff a few miles away. The catastrophe must have been the talk of the town.
Many of the travertine blocks in the tower looked a bit whiter and more precisely cut than the others. The ragged line ran from foundation to roof. Sunset Shimmer insisted that Princess Celestia herself had intervened; likely the tower would have collapsed into the Regents Building had she not.
And this had happened... I frowned. I was going to have to check the date. It was about the time Sunburst got his cutie mark—and I didn't.
I spilled the remaining tea in a long brown fan across the obscene line of rocks in disgust, my face afrown. Too many bad memories.
"Well!" I took a deep breath. That was the past. Today, I was rested and wired on primo black tea and twenty teaspoons of sugar. "All I have to do is unleash a storm of magic!"
I found myself alone in the auditorium. There had been five other applicants the last time. The four proctors, the same four as before, presented me with a blackboard, a piece of chalk, and math problems to work out. I'd have just treated the math problems like magic and solved them in my head, just providing only the answers directly from my horn, but this time they told me to write them out so that they could see my reasoning. They quizzed me on potions, physics, chemistry, violation physics, and history. I only sweated the history as the proctors scribbled notes on clipboards.
When I finished, I expected a drill of some common spells, just like they had asked the five of us taking the test the last time I'd been here. Instead, the proctors climbed the steps to the fifth row of desks and took a seat. The yellow one with the greyed pink curly mane said in a Hooflyn accent, "Impress us with your magic, Dearie."
The brown-maned grey stallion said, "Chop chop, we don't have all day!" He said it in a way that implied that somepony, perhaps the princess herself, had arranged this command performance, but he wasn't impressed. In fact, now that I had time to think about it, I had registered a hint of resentment in all the proctors' voices, and not just because they had had to stay after the school day to administer an ad hoc exam.
I felt a smile grow on my face that masked the outrage in my heart. You are so on!
I could surely impress them by cutting through the side of the building with a pure force spell, or by triggering my Barthemule transform spell that would upend the blackboard and break the bolts holding down the first row of desks—though really, that spell was still a work in progress.
My most impressive spells were battle magic; they'd ensure I'd be expelled, likely as not. Impress them, they said? My smile became feral; I returned their bored looks with a fanatical glare. Meanwhile, I luxuriated in spell prep I never had time for in battle. One of them, a manila-colored mare with a dirty brown razor cut mane repeatedly cleared her throat. Despite the discomfort starting to register on their faces, three of the four started scribbling notes when nothing happened.
I cast Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear.
Risky?
Yes, because I had to maintain hyperawareness against very observant ponies, but if I couldn't concentrate now, perhaps I didn't belong here anyway. Always test your limits!
The blue stallion with the white hair stood instantly, knocking his desk into his seat-mate to the right with a wooden clack. His seat-mate clapped a hoof atop her clipboard before it fell. The manila pony whinnied when she looked to find me gone. Pink Curly Top said drolly, "A silent teleport? Might be considered impressive. Do hope she comes back soon." When a few seconds passed, they scanned the auditorium only to conclude erroneously that they were alone.
The blue stallion, the eldest, asked, "How long do we wait?"
The dirty brown razor-cut brunette sneered. "The princess will insist we give her the standard five minutes. Shrinking Violet has used a minute of that so far. Right?"
The others nickered agreement as I made my way up to the fourth row of seats, just as the blue stallion put down his clipboard at the front edge of his desk. I grabbed it with my teeth and slid it forward so it tumbled behind the desk beside me. I lightly kicked it so it slid three seats over and tumbled over the edge and down one more row.
Dirty Brown chuckled. "Your levitation getting a bit shaky there, Eye Dropper?"
I sensed Levitate probe out, but as an added bonus, since I was between him and the clipboard and the spell prevented him from looking at me, he couldn't grab the thing. He chuckled without amusement and trotted over to fetch it.
I stepped over the chair back and gingerly slid into his seat. His pen rested in the slot routed out of the wood... I looked to Curly Pink on my right and Dirty Brown on my left. They'd given me good marks in everything but history. No surprise there. Dirty Brown watched Eye Dropper's progress, so I scooped up Eye Dropper's pen with my lips and positioned it with my tongue between my teeth. I'd learned to write like an earth pony, and had done so until I was four. I could still print passably. I drew an A+ next to my practical score.
Eye Dropper levitated his clipboard before him and was at the start of the fifth row. I hurriedly put the pen down, but missed the pencil holder. It rolled.
I flinched out of the way, standing, but somehow not striking the desk.
Curly snickered. "I think gravity is your enemy, today." Though she unconsciously had to lean forward to see around me, she added, "I wonder where Starlight Glimmer went?"
"Two more minutes," the grey-furred stallion at the end said. He adjusted his bow tie as I gingerly stepped to the sixth row, brushing the dirty brown mare's mane with my tail in the process. She brushed it back in place as the grey stallion also straightened his green pinstripe jacket.
I stood there, heart beating rapidly, perspiring copiously, working to keep the numbers marshaled as I kept track of every movement 360º around me, renewing the slippery-eel of a spell, and trying not to grin so hard I lost it. Watching Dirty Brown readjust her nerd haircut gave me an idea. I leaned over and blew lightly into her ear.
Her ear flicked.
I waited a few beats and blew again, a bit harder.
"Eye Dropper!" she cried, ears down, chocolate brown eyes infuriated. She shoved her face into his space and he jerked.
He shook his head, startled, and looked into her glare. "What?"
"You—" She coughed and blushed slightly. "Never mind." Under her breath, I barely heard, "You're smelling horsey today."
I sniffed at my upper foreleg. Right. My spell didn't include a Don't Smell clause.
Curly spoke up. "I don't know about you, but this tactic of hers isn't working for me. Her scores are good, except where Her Majesty advised us, but this 'shrinking violet' routine is a bright red zero as far as I'm concerned. She's a first year taking, what, third through seventh year coursework? Now she has the hubris to ask for advanced placement as a senior so she can attend university part time? Not on my watch."
I sat to her right, dripping-sweat splat-splatting on the maple desktop; thankfully nopony was looking there. As she spoke, she gestured with her pen suspended in her light pink magic. I followed the trajectory with my eyes, like a frog following a fly buzzing excitedly around a rotting plate of honeyed fruit. I moved my head, trying to match its path, my mouth open. Not so easy a task when you've got a cloud of numbers spinning in your head, obscuring your vision—numbers from equations you absolutely had to keep balanced.
I was having fun.
Chomp!
I had to wrench it from her magic, causing the nib to stab my tongue, leaving a bitter taste of ink mixing with blood, but though she noticed immediately and she looked me in the eye, her face remained blank with surprise. She didn't see me, or the pen. I concentrated beyond the pain; the pain was nothing compared to my fight with Fellows on the catwalk.
She continued to look right through me. Her mind didn't even register that I stood between her and the loudly ticking wall clock. In a hideous whine, she turned to Eye Dropper and said, "I told you to stop with the practical jokes!"
"What? I did not! Did you see a magical aura, Clear? Come on. You dropped it."
"Whatever," Dirty Brown said, exasperated. "That's five minutes. Let's fail her and go home."
I prepared a quick draw teleport spell, causing Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear to spin out of balance. I stood at the same time, pushing the desk I sat in aside so that it crashed loudly into the next one.
Around the pen still jammed in my mouth, I said, "I fink I fassed."
As Professor Clear looked in horror, I spat her pen onto the desk, where it bounced and rolled to the edge and dropped to her hooves. They all stood with equal lack of grace, and looked as if they stared at a ghost. Clipboards scattered. Pens dropped to the ground.
"I think I passed." I stuck out my tongue to confirm that it was now colored blue. "And I certainly didn't request advanced placement. I was given no choice but to accept it. Of course, you could make my life easier and fail me, but what would the princess say?"
"Watch your tongue," the grey-furred proctor at the end warned.
I complied, sticking my tongue out again, looking at it. Keeping it out, I said with distorted words, "Is ink poisonous? Professor Clear kind of stabbed me." I looked up.
My clowning got Dirty Brown over her shock faster than the rest. With a dawning smile, she said, "You were there the whole five minutes? One illusion spell cast continuously for five minutes?"
Wasn't the sweat lathering me obvious? Somepony had once told me I could be the perfect assassin, though my magic had demonstrated the idea was impracticable because it wouldn't let me hurt ponies offensively.
I teleported behind her on the sixth row and said, "Yes," then immediately used a quick draw to teleport to the fourth row in front of her, just to make the point that I was the highest level unicorn in the room. I had to step forward because my second spell was off-target by a half step, a decent quick draw margin of error. I pointed with my nose. "Look at your clipboard. You've already given me an A+." She looked down and gasped as I amended, "Well, okay, I wrote it in for you, but I was pretty sure you would agree."
"Where did you learn that. What was it?"
"Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear. I got it from Arches Bald's Compendium of Neat Unusual Illusions. His recursive math gave me headaches, but I found one spell I thought might be practical so I stretched myself, rewrote his lame mnemonic poetry, and worked hard to master it..."
The interview lasted another hour, and even then the excited unicorns were loathe to let me go. I showed them the spell in my personal notebook, the math I used to simplify it (without mentioning the alicorn I'd stolen it from), and all my margin notes in my copy of Marlin's on how I made it accessible. I made the mistake of then showing them my work up of Teleport.
Okay, the attention felt very nice.
Yeah, I passed, but it made me late for my job. Some kind of guard duty, I'd been advised. I trotted out the instant they gave me leave.