It was the sort of beautifully lazy late spring day during which Twilight could start to believe in the prospect of getting dust organized: something which many ponies might view as a theoretical infinity of labor, but she was sure that a dedicated mare had at least a chance to get it done. And so she was cleaning, because it was also the kind of day which had her up to facing that challenge -- and additionally, there was very little else to do.
No work was on the well-inspected schedule. None of her friends were expected to drop by -- well, none that she knew about. But she'd checked her appointment book, and found a day-long vacancy of scheduled visits. Twilight always made sure to keep a written record of just when she could hope to see somepony, and closely scrutinized the columns in order to avoid the horrors of double-booking. Things had been known to happen when a pony was critically overbooked, and it was only through the placement of a carefully-jammed boulder that she'd managed to keep most of them from happening again.
The library's shelves were organized. There were no scrolls which needed sending and even if she had thought of a lesson, it would have taken a mission to make her pull Spike away from the sporting fields on such a beautiful day. And in a way, they were both playing. In fact, it was effectively the same game: they were herding. He in the goal, using his perhaps-unfair advantage as the only local sapient with arms to corral balls before they could cross the scoring line. And she with an assortment of color-coordinated dust rags (because Rarity had insisted that each correspond to its shelving unit) being partially held in her corona, encouraging tiny particles to move precisely through shafts of sunlight and, since that was how they could best learn whether they liked the experience, followed that by dumping them out the back door. Because since they'd discovered the joys of dancing under Sun, they could go do that outside and never bother her again.
It was a beautifully warm morning in late spring, with birds singing outside and, rather more off in the distance, what was either a chorus of amphibians or a paddling of hooded mergansers: one friend had told her that when it came to that particular species of duck, the diagnosis was often confused. She could hear children playing off in the distance, adults laughing, what almost sounded like a slightly-oversized pair of wings on the approach, and it was absolutely the sort of perfect day during which none of her previous actions could ever come back to haunt her.
That was what her friends were for.
There was a knock, and it came from the largest of the tree's upper-level windows. That was the one which had been hinged, because pegasi tended to treat any such sufficiently large portal as a potential extra door, and it had also been replaced several times, because Rainbow. Twilight started to look up --
-- the knocking repeated. The sound came from a slightly different place on the window, because no hover was ever perfectly level. It was also decidedly faster, had something of a frantic beat embedded within the half-kicks, and was rapidly approaching the sonic barrier which would allow it to vault from 'knocking' to 'pounding'.
Twilight, whose mild frown of annoyance at having been interrupted was quickly beginning to warp into the furrowing of pure concern, finished raising her head. The hue of fur and features-obscuring mane were immediately noted, and her corona released the mahogany rag in order to lance towards the window, undoing the latches and moving the panel inwards --
-- the pegasus almost streaked inside without so much as a pause to make sure the full saddlebags could get through the gap, and did so at a speed more appropriate to cyan than yellow. Those slightly-oversized wings refolded in what was almost a single motion, and then four hooves slammed down in front of Twilight with enough force to make a number of books jump. Along with most of the dust, which meant she was probably going to have to start all over again --
-- the pegasus facing her was doing so while displaying but one visible eye, because that was the normal count. But it was a little too wide. The iris seemed to have retreated around the edges of the pupil, and Twilight could clearly see herself reflected in the black because nothing about the eyelid seemed to have moved in some time.
It was an eye which was getting ready to Stare and, judging by the way the neck was threatening to jerk and flip the mane back, it was about to have company.
Twilight froze.
Ponies often froze in the presence of this mare's anger and for those without experience, it would be because they didn't truly know what to do with it. Relative newcomers to town generally reacted to such encounters with an extremely visible attempt to muffle their laughter, as if they had just found themselves in the presence of a furious shrew: the lucky ones found another response before learning about the venom.
But for ponies who'd been through it before, it was rather like being beaten to death with a rather shapely pillow. The mere prospect of such a threat tended to leave the victim's legs locked. Any mind trying to reconcile that situation was a little too busy for giving orders.
The mare's first words emerged immediately, and at normal volume. Neither was a good sign.
"Twilight Sparkle! What did you do to that frog?"
There was a rather long silence, accompanied by a sudden rather specific expression of frantic internal autobiography consultation. Twilight had the kind of life where somepony demanding to know what she had done sent the brain into the sort of desperate deep dive full review which could take a few extra seconds to notice the additional qualifier of 'that frog'.
Fluttershy's neck jerked, and the full sprawl of coral mane went back. Both eyes were locked and loaded. It encouraged a faster degree of thought.
Frog.
Frog...
...I haven't been kissing --
-- there's a reason I never tell her about the biology lab in the Gifted School and as long as I keep the rutile coming, Spike won't either --
-- why does she want to know about a --
The memory slammed into her and, combined with the phantom dual impact of a high-speed baker, sent Twilight staggering slightly to the left.
"I --" she barely managed, and now there was just about no iris left. "I -- I didn't mean to do it, Fluttershy! I was just trying to make an apple into an orange! That was the experiment!" Something she'd known had the potential to come with consequences, and so had made sure to precisely time the experiment: having it coincide with a barn-raising meant a lessened chance that the residents of the Acres would discover what had happened to their apple. "I was trying to concentrate, I was almost ready, and Pinkie went right into me! She wrecked my aim --"
Twice.
She went into me twice.
'Twice' made a desperate lunge for Twilight's tongue, and found itself blocked by the full myriad of survival instincts before it got curb-stomped against the uvula. Fluttershy was visibly, audibly, and incredibly upset about a frog. The frog had been the product of Wild Miss #2. There was no telling how much worse it would get if the pegasus learned about the bird.
"-- I just missed!" Twilight desperately finished. "I didn't mean to --"
The pegasus took a slow breath, and the next words emerged after the usual delay. Something which usually represented the need to summon strength so speech could take place at all, and currently indicated the pause required for shoving most of the anger rather temporarily out of the way.
"...I know you missed," a soft waft of false calm relayed. "But what did you do after that?"
Well, after the bird, I had to get myself untangled from Pinkie's forelegs. And, based on the way she had me wrapped in the hug, all twenty of her foreknees. That's per leg. Then the bird flew by and I was thinking about what to do, but then Rarity turned up and I lost track --
-- do not bring up the bird --
"Pinkie was talking, and then she was talking too fast about shaving twenty minutes off her time, and her head did the clock thing, and --"
And I went right back to the experiment for the next two hours.
...don't tell her that either.
"-- I lost track, Fluttershy! It was Pinkie!" At least she had a convenient source of blame -- and more than that, because the source had gone plural. "It was the day when the town got flooded with Pinkies! I didn't have a chance to do anything about the frog!" Other than during those two hours, but the experiment had been important in a way which she had no hope of explaining to Fluttershy right now. "One of the duplicates said they saw it outside, but --"
"-- I know getting the right Pinkie was important," Fluttershy cut her off. "So that was the first priority. But after that? You had days, Twilight! Moons! It's your magic, so it's your responsibility! Isn't that what you always told us? One of the first things the Gifted School teaches, to clean up after your own mistakes! You didn't fix the frog! You didn't even try to look for it, did you?"
There were a lot of experiments.
And missions.
And even when it was back down to being one of her, there's always a really surprising amount of Pinkie. With a lot of knees.
Plus books don't reshelve themselves.
The verbal end of this emerged as a rather defensive "I was kind of busy. And it just hopped off. I thought the problem would take care of itself --"
"...what," Fluttershy softly said, "did you think was going to happen?"
The autobiography went through a few desperate edits.
"Winter."
"...winter," Fluttershy repeated.
"I thought it would die during the winter," Twilight helplessly said. "And that would be the end of it."
Yellow eyelids found a way to ratchet back by one more crucial notch.
"...do you even know how frogs hibernate?"
Multiple ancient biology lessons were sorted. Nothing helpful fell out.
"No," Twilight acknowledged. "But I know what happens to an orange if you leave it frozen for too long. It still goes bad --"
The pegasus reared up on her hind legs, and did so at the same moment when the wings spread again, flapping in an attempt to maintain the position which was allowing her to glare down at Twilight, along with completely ruining everything which had been done to the dust. The hidden contents of the saddlebags jostled against each other.
"...you didn't clean up your mistake! Ponies shouldn't meddle with nature!"
Twilight helplessly looked up at her. The pegasus blinked.
"...except for weather, obviously," Fluttershy softly added. "And never needing to worry about crop rotation. Plus maybe moving Sun and Moon? I really don't want to think about that too much..." and then decibels surged. "...animals! Never with animals! You tampered with Things Ponies Are Not Meant To Do! There's a price for tampering, Twilight, and you're going to pay it! You're going to pay today! Starting from no later than eleven this morning!"
The last part didn't make any sense. "No later than --"
Fluttershy ignored it. The yellow wings flapped all the harder, and the pegasus went up and over. Landed behind Twilight, before the smaller mare could try to make a move.
"...you should have prayed," Fluttershy whispered. "You should have prayed unto Sun that it died. Because there's a price to pay, Twilight. And the bill just came due."
The pegasus lunged.
Having Fluttershy drag her through Ponyville's streets by the tail was also something like being beaten to death with a shapely pillow. The sheer shock produced by the scenario might easily paralyze the target and allow that first blow to land. Or, in this case, allow Twilight to be pulled backwards past roughly twenty buildings and three times that number of spectators, feeling questioning-but-not-willing-to-intervene-because-they-could-be-next ponies staring at her while all of the dust she'd taken so much time to evict happily galloped into her coat. And then, since they were still in Ponyville, it made some friends.
After enough time had passed to allow her the dubious luxury of new experiments (corona projected under belly and barrel meant no smoothing of the journey, crossing her forelegs added extra bumps from the cobblestones, but holding a miffed expression was doing wonders for her facial muscles), Twilight reminded Fluttershy that the dragged party possessed four perfectly functional legs. This was in addition to the horn which technically would have allowed her to teleport out at any time, and Twilight made a point of not mentioning that she'd personally failed to remember that part until they were well past Quills & Sofas. Being tail-dragged by Fluttershy tended to concentrate the mind on other topics, such as how surprisingly strong the pegasus was and why Ponyville really needed a higher street-cleaning budget.
Fluttershy had learned about the frog. Something which should have never been discovered, should have simply died. Twilight couldn't think of anypony who might have told her. And Fluttershy had clearly been dragging Twilight towards something. This seemed to imply that the pegasus had found it.
The frog had lived. It was a chance to study --
-- to fix. To fix her mistake.
But maybe she could study it first.
She didn't mention that part either. Twilight simply told Fluttershy that she was willing to go along freely and of her own will. Without trying to run away, or teleport, or anything else. She was just tired of being dragged along, and she wanted to see what had happened.
(In soon-to-come retrospect, she realized that she shouldn't have mentioned that part. At the very least, rephrasing might have helped. And most of the eagerness could have been filtered out.)
Fluttershy slowly lowered her own body to the ground. Released the striped tail, while keeping her jaw close enough to show that a reclamp was very much an option.
"...so you'll come with me."
"Yes."
"...and you'll pay the price. Freely."
Of course she would. Because the price? Was getting to do some more spell experimentation. Discovering the process of reversion. The price was, quite frankly, a shot at the Thaumaturgy Review's front cover and the chance to make a speech in front of the entire Gifted School, which would finally let her shift that lectern two hoofwidths towards the center of the stage. "Yes."
"...you swear?"
"Pinkie Promise."
They both automatically looked around. No baker appeared, and two mares exhaled.
"...all right," Fluttershy softly told her. "I'll honor that. Let's go."
They both got up. Fluttershy put herself in front, then began to trot. Twilight followed.
"See?" she helpfully offered. "I'm going with you."
"...yes. Twilight, did you sex the frog first?"
The smaller mare blinked. Approximately three hundred equally horrible images refused to go anywhere.
"Um."
"...did you ever think to check its gender? Before it changed?"
"The experiment... wasn't on the frog..." She'd passed Biology. She was sure of that. Remembering anything beyond the grade was currently giving her some trouble. "How do you do that?"
"...well, all of the reproductive anatomy is internal. Everything comes out through the cloaca. But there's usually some sexual dimorphism," several years of doctorate-level studies patiently lectured. "The females are typically larger. And they won't have the same vocal sacs. The tympanum won't be any bigger than the eye. And the males get rough patches on their feet, or even the larger toes."
"Really?" asked the perpetual student. "Why?"
"...the male is on top when they have sex," Fluttershy calmly said. "Always. And it helps him hang on. Since frogs are sort of slippery -- stop blushing, Twilight: every animal does it, or we wouldn't have more animals." There was a soft snort. "Every animal... But that's usually how most ponies tell, although you won't catch them having sex very often. But when I try to tell, I usually just ask. Politely. Except now..."
Another snort. Twilight tried to remember what the altered frog had looked like.
I guess it would have taken out the -- vocal sac identification? Since I think those are on the throat.
And maybe the tympanum. I think that's got something to do with hearing.
I know it still had feet.
But why does she want to know?
On one level, learning was important. Under one of the other hooves, asking was probably just going to lead into more information about the amphibian sex life. Besides, there was a more important question to deal with.
"Where are we going?"
Twilight didn't like cypress trees, and sometimes wondered if Applejack shared that opinion. If they might even have the same reason to find them upsetting, because something in Twilight's mind insisted that the bulk of roots were supposed to stay in the ground. Arches and curves sticking out of wet soil and -- everything else -- which left gaps big enough for a pony to walk under (with the roots themselves large enough to walk on), and the tree just seemingly balanced atop the whole mess... no.
She didn't like getting dirty. As far as Twilight was concerned, she didn't have Rarity's outright rupophobia: it was just an internal insistence that cleanliness was organized and dirt was a conspiracy. Any patch of mud large enough to fall into was probably plotting something against you. The drag had already put road dust into her coat, and now every step was making it worse.
There was no scent of methane in the air because technically, methane didn't have a scent. The bubbles which swelled from the surface of the ooze... even the ones which weren't large enough for a pony to bounce off tended to come with a few byproducts. Hydrogen sulfide: that was the usual source of the stink, accompanied by impure phosphines.
She was getting most of the stink, because she kept taking short breaths and holding them for a little too long. Searching for a different scent. And ears which almost constantly rotated as they searched for a roar were mostly picking up on --
-- leaves?
Swaying up and down. Slowly. Like they're caught in the wind.
There isn't very much wind here.
There were deep shadows, in the places where the cypress groves were thickest. She knew one major Sun-exposed patch was somewhere ahead. And there would be a hill, and a few cracked pieces of rock where natural columns had once stood.
Twilight sniffed the air again. Nothing.
"...you know the Princesses had the hydra extracted," Fluttershy softly told her. "After we wrote the palace and let them know there was one this close to town. It isn't here any more, Twilight. It hasn't been here for a long time. We're safe."
"I know that one's gone," Twilight tightly replied. "It doesn't mean an underwater cavern big enough for a hydra to move in won't pick up another."
"...it's gone," the pegasus stated. "The cavern was collapsed, so no more lair."
"Multiple giant biting heads could clear --"
"-- no monster, Twilight. It's just Froggy Bottom Bogg again."
She knew. And on some level, it still didn't matter. She was never going to like this place, not after she'd had to gallop for her life from something with four heads and too much land speed, unable to teleport to safety because in small part, she hadn't wanted to leave her friends and in very large and significant part, having multiple large objects fall on her head for most of a day had come with a few consequences.
One more sniff. The hydra's stench was gone. The Bogg just smelled like a swamp. Swamp and...
...air freshener?
"...the only unnatural things here now," Fluttershy quietly informed her, "are what you created."
But I can fix it...
It could mean two published papers. Or possibly one longer paper and a photo essay.
They kept moving. Rotating ears picked up the first sounds of nearby frogs. Twilight's hooves were now fully coated in mire, and she was starting to scent slightly cleaner water, somewhere up ahead beyond swaying cattails. And air freshener -- no, it was as if somepony had stripped off a length of peel at high speed and sent the oil sac moisture flying everywhere --
-- it hopped out of the cattails.
It came to a stop right in front of them.
Twilight wasn't sure if it could see them. The rind had no visible eyes. Perhaps something in the hard outer skin was capable of conducting sound --
-- exocarp.
I haven't been able to remember what a 'cloaca' is for the whole trot and I know the technical term for the outer peel layer is 'exocarp'.
Also that each visible piece of internal slice is actually a segment, the juice is stored in vesicles, and the entire citrus family is technically part of a category called the agrumes.
I know all of that out of bucking nowhere, but not what a cloaca does.
Stupid brain.
It looked... well, not like an orange that had been frozen for too long. Or which had been refrigerated to excess, because Twilight wasn't always good about clearing out the kitchen in time and had learned that didn't help either. But it wasn't rotted, and the exocarp didn't seem to have any soft spots. None of the exposed segments in the open 'mouth' were dripping. The citrus part seemed to be fine. And as for determining health with a frog -- that was Fluttershy's department.
As softly as she dared, "How did you find it?"
The little abomination didn't move. A number of unseen leaves seemed to be swaying again. Up and down, only all the faster.
"...the usual," Fluttershy quietly explained. "Relocating some of my own excess out here. Since it's safe again. It was... hard to miss. Then I asked around."
Twilight's horn ignited.
"Okay," she whispered. "I'm just going to pick it up..."
"...don't."
The wind began to shift.
"Don't? Frogs don't stay still for long. It's going to hop away eventually. I don't want to chase it! We have to catch it, so I can start working on changing it back --"
Which was when a surge of mixed citrus scents blasted into her snout.
Her olfactory bulb promptly decided she was next to a produce stand. Having her back legs go out from under her, however, allowed her hindquarters to discover that she was still in a swamp.
"...'it'," Fluttershy observed, "is a really funny pronoun."
The altered frog casually hopped back into the cattails. Twilight, her mind paralyzed with horror, briefly operating on instinct alone, automatically stood and pushed forward into the waving fronds, trying to follow...
"...because sometimes," the pegasus whispered from the half-concealment of the cattails, "even though a group is technically 'them'... 'it' could almost be a plural."
There was an orange with frog legs hopping peacefully about the perimeter of the slightly-cleaner pond. There were also several jumping limes. A few lemons had apparently just reached the age where they'd found themselves with legs and were still hoping for a little advice on what the things were supposed to be used for. A stately grapefruit had perched on a low tree branch, all the better to eyelessly keep watch over all.
She couldn't see any eyes. Or ears. But there were mouths, expressed as regularly-opening gaps in the rind. Segment walls made sounds. 'Ribbit' was a falsehood taught to foals. So was 'croak'. It mostly came across as 'ree-deep!' And then the exocarp sealed itself. Perfectly. But every time they spoke, there was a spray of oils. The air became all the fresher. All the more wrong.
Twilight wasn't incredibly familiar with the full range of the citrus family as a whole. You couldn't hang around Applejack without reluctantly memorizing ninety percent of the world's cultivars, but citrus came from a different category. All she had to draw upon was her shopping, and it told her that the bumpy one was a citron. This was followed by several groves' worth of things she couldn't identify, green and yellow and all shades of orange, right up until she found the leaping pomelo. She'd had a pomelo once, and now she never wanted to have one again.
"I changed one frog," she desperately whispered, trying to push her voice through the swaying plants to where Fluttershy's form was now low against the ground. "One!"
"...but you didn't sex it," the pegasus said, and the soft words were far too calm. "But maybe that part doesn't matter. Maybe it was a female, and she was about to lay her spawn. Or male, and it just got on top. Maybe the lady frog let it stay there because it smelled nice. I think maybe it was female, though. Because the eggs were in her body, and got changed with her. Or it didn't need another frog at all. But no matter how it happened, it reproduced, Twilight. Or maybe, given what you did to it, we should just say that it spread its seed. There was one. And now there's more than one. A lot more."
Twilight kept staring, and her magic wouldn't allow that frantic horror to be expressed through her eyes as anything other than a loss of lid control --
-- Fluttershy's head had gone back. One of the saddlebags was being opened.
"What are you doing?"
The pegasus waited until the notebook was fully extracted and set down on the most solid patch of ground available (not very) before answering.
"...cataloging. Different citrus types, because those could be mutations -- or more like fur colors, where it really doesn't mean much. Noting behavior patterns." Fluttershy paused. "Not reproductive ones. It isn't the right time yet, and I really don't know what they're doing because they're not quite animals any more. It could be eggs. Or seeds. But that'll go in eventually. I'm... sort of hoping I can get a paper out of this. Published in one of the taxonomy journals." Almost politely, "But you can co-sign. As pony of first blame."
A quill came out. Ink bottle. Binoculars...
She's going to write --
If regarded from an academic perspective, it made perfect sense: in her own way and field of study, Fluttershy was just as much of a scholar as Twilight. But now they were in competition --
-- no.
I have to fix --
"-- I think that one's the original," the smaller mare desperately said. "I didn't get a really good look at it, but I'm pretty sure that's the right size and color. So once we capture it, and I work out how to change that one back, I can do all of the others --"
"-- change them back to what?" Fluttershy almost placidly asked. "They've never been anything else. Except for maybe tadpoles with fruit heads, and I don't even know about that because I haven't found their young yet. This is how they are, Twilight."
Morphic residue. There's always a base pattern lurking under the new one after a change in form.
The base pattern for the ones which were born is...
...oh no.
"The first was a mistake," Fluttershy mercilessly observed. "This many is a species."
The pegasus made a few more notes. None of them bothered to record the exact speed at which Twilight was beginning to hyperventilate, but the general condition was placed into the annals of science.
"...you should breathe more slowly," the team medic observed. "Or you'll pass out."
Twilight made an effort.
"They... they aren't supposed to exist! It's --" What was the term? Oh, good: her brain was willing to supply that much. "-- an invasive species! It could just breed out of control, because it doesn't have a natural predator --"
Leaves swayed, up and down.
Then they flapped.
A mostly-red body, adorned with yellow seedlike growths on the belly and leafy ears atop the head, streaked across the surface of the bog. Multiple little abominations tried to dive under the water.
Most of them made it.
"...fruit bats," Fluttershy calmly stated. "That's their initial predator." She paused. "Fringe-lipped bats eat citrus too, but they're not local. And we really shouldn't be importing a species right now. So it's actually sort of lucky that we had the fruit bats around."
Twilight's head slowly tilted back, moving at the reluctant speed of horror. Found the other little monster, and the place it had been hiding within among the trees. Fluid dripped down.
"...Applejack's happy," the pegasus added.
"She is?" asked the one fully-conscious neuron.
"...because this is the colony from the West Fields. Part of it, anyway. They've been coming out here because they scented food. And some of them are staying. She might lose enough to get those trees back. And it could be year-round hunting, because I don't know if the citrus frogs hibernate, Twilight. Or maybe they're just really good at it. Normal frogs can have their entire outer bodies freeze without dying, because winter makes their bodies produce a lot of glucose. The sugar keeps their organs warm. And these things have glucose all the time. But I'd have to compare the levels..."
Twilight was still watching the fruit bat feed. Citrus frogs were warily beginning to emerge from the water.
"That's a lot of juice," observed a valiant, overextended dendrite. "And the color..."
"...well," the naturalist passively observed, "it was a blood orange."
Twilight rallied.
"Did you... sex them?"
"...no." There was more than a little irritation embedded in the soft syllable, and still more flowed into the ones which followed. "Because I don't know what to look for yet. Physically, they've changed so much that for sexual dimorphism, I'd need to know the sexes first, or see them having sex. Just for starters, I don't think their skin has to stay moist all the time now. Because they have the oil sacs in the rind --"
"-- exocarp "--
"-- and make their own juice. And they're also half plant, so I can't ask them any more. How do you think I'm supposed to tell?"
As mistakes went, "Dissection?" was automatic.
Fluttershy's responding glare wilted nine reeds.
"Juice them?" wasn't an improvement.
"...but you're right, Twilight," Fluttershy finally admitted after deigning to set her pupils back to Simmer. "They haven't existed before. Not here, not anywhere. That could cause a lot of problems. Which is why I'm writing so much down. Trying to figure out what has to be done, especially once we know how far they've spread. I've been trying to figure that out for a while now. And it's part of why we're here. But you had to see what happened. Because you didn't clean up after yourself. Because there's a price to pay. And you have to pay it."
The pegsaus looked up. Checked the position of Sun in the sky, and a little bit more. Twilight didn't notice.
"...you're going to pay," Fluttershy told her friend. "And in a way, I don't want you to, not really. Because I know how hard it's going to be. But you have to. I've been thinking about that for a while. That you had to pay. Or you might let it all get away from you again."
"...a while," was, in many ways, just about all Twilight had left.
And immediately, at normal volume, "Four days."
Twilight's head slowly, slowly turned. Purple eyes did their best to stare at blue-green, and failed to find the capital letter which might save her. But all of her attention was focused on Fluttershy, and it meant she missed a few things. Such as the exact position of Sun in the sky, for it was very nearly eleven in the morning.
"...I moved my frogs out here," Fluttershy gradually explained, "four days ago. And then I took one day for surveying everything. The second was for calming down, so I didn't do anything silly. But yesterday was just for taking a trip. So I could set up an appointment, and make sure you paid."
She also missed the sound of wings approaching from the northeast.
"An appointment..."
Very. Large. Wings.
"TWILIGHT SPARKLE!" roared the world entire.
The little mare, who hated being dirty, did the only thing she still could. Dropped low into the mud and mire, felt the burial site of first convenience squelch up through her fur, and waited for the end.
"YOU HAVE TAMPERED WITH THINGS PONIES ARE NOT MEANT TO DO!" declared the hovering giant white mare. "ALONG WITH FAILING TO CLEAN UP YOUR MISTAKES!"
Several fruit bats, stunned into immobility by the Royal Voice, fell out of the trees.
"THERE IS A PRICE FOR SUCH MEDDLING! AND AS SUN IS MY WITNESS, YOU ARE GOING TO PAY IT!"
Technically, it wasn't a cell. The slightly-damp room was in the palace, it was on the lowest level -- but it wasn't a cell. According to the Princess, Twilight was free to just trot out -- immediately after she finished. And finishing required making the thick, ceiling-high quasi-bars go away. Or, to be more accurate about it, the mostly white, ink-stained multiple columns which stood between her and the door. Also her and the hallway, the exit ramp, and most of the world. It had taken two hours just to clear enough for allowing a tight, desperate squeeze towards the restroom.
She had been locked away in the lowest level, far from the sort of beautifully lazy late spring day during which Twilight could start to believe in the prospect of getting government paperwork both organized and completed: something which many ponies might view as a theoretical infinity of labor, but she was sure that a dedicated mare had at least a chance to get it done. And so she was writing, because it was also the kind of day which had given her no choice but to face that challenge -- and additionally, there was very little else to do, because the Princess wasn't letting her go home until it was over.
There was a price to pay for tampering with nature. Not cleaning up after mistakes. And because there had been unicorns in the world for a very long time and Twilight hadn't been the first to just hope the problem happened to die on its own, that price came in the form of ecological impact statement forms. Because there were citrus frogs in the world, and she had to write down every possible way in which they might affect ecosystem and food chain and what was possibly going to wind up as some very confused produce vendors, plus a few exceptionally curious omnivore gourmands.
And she had to do it in triplicate.
She'd already snapped six quills. Pressing hard enough to make copies did that. The four which had been bitten in half, however, could be put down to stress.
Pinkie should be filling a few of those out.
Or it could be just me.
Move Tom out of the hole and it's lots of just mes.
...which means getting out of here. And probably more paperwork.
Plus yelling. I'm completely sure there would be yelling.
Fluttershy, who had insisted on remaining nearby, was standing quietly in the hallway outside the not-cell. Watching.
"...I can see a little of the forms from here," she said.
Twilight silently kept writing, and wondered about any government forms regarding a fast-approaching National Ink Shortage. Also what she was supposed to fill them out with. Possibly blood orange juice.
"...I know you just reached the Species Variants part. And I already did some of the work there," the pegasus finally offered. "You'll have to write it all on the forms yourself, since that's part of the price. But you can copy my notes out."
Twilight paused.
"Thank you," felt natural enough.
"...only it's going to be my published paper. So just copy them onto the forms. Nowhere else."
The grumbling mare started into the next stack.
"...are you going to send the Princess a scroll?" Fluttershy eventually asked. "About taking responsibility and making sure a mistake doesn't get out of control?"
"No," Twilight firmly stated.
With open surprise, "...why?"
"Because my horn hurts. And my mouth." She'd been writing long enough to switch back and forth a few times. "Plus we're in the same building. I can just go into the Solar throne room. When it's finally over."
Fluttershy silently nodded. Twilight merely sighed.
"At least it's down to the last eight columns," the weary mare observed. "So I'm more than halfway through. Maybe if I push..."
They both heard the hoofsteps on the approach. Very heavy hoofsteps, accompanied by the radiance of a trailing yellow glow.
The Princess stopped in front of the cell, with horn ignited and more yellow light suffusing the fur of her flanks. Twilight, with vision partially blocked by columns and Very Large Mare, couldn't quite see what was behind her. Fluttershy simply gasped.
"We found the birds," the Princess calmly said.
Twilight swallowed, and the last hope fell into her stomach to drown.
"...don't you mean 'bird'?" asked the most doomed of students.
Fluttershy's mane almost flipped itself back. Seventeen fresh columns of glowing, floating government paperwork simply moved forward. Went past royal shoulders, and then slammed themselves into the marble floor.
"No."