Twilight Sparkle could see the disappointed look on Rainbow Dash’s face as she made the final approach toward her, huffing and puffing with every step. The pegasus was jogging in place, pumping her legs up and down, bouncing on her hooves, making the act of motion look utterly effortless. She yearned for that ease of motion, as much as she knew that it was beyond her. At least now she would be able to take a rest, however briefly.
“Y’all doin’ alright there, sugarcube?” There was a gentle pat on her shoulder from her other exercise partner, standing beside her. While Rainbow Dash had long since passed them to run a second lap around the course, Applejack had set herself to match the alicorn’s pace so that she could keep track of her. It was mostly in case she needed assistance from an earth pony, but of course she also appreciated having a friend at her side regardless.
“Yeah…I’m…I’m doing alright,” Twilight Sparkle replied between gasps. She leaned forward and planted her palms on her knees while catching her breath, a motion that required spreading her legs to the side in order to reach around her gut, the protuberant mass oozing toward the ground. The pose wasn’t merely for support; in running her palms upon her legs, she also felt the currents of mana which ran through them, a subtle heat that was separate from the pumping of blood vessels. The raw power of the earth was different from what magic she had experienced before, more physical, heavier. With Applejack’s assistance, she had learned how to draw it into her, and with that she had been able to provide herself with stronger support and strength, yet the effort of calling upon this power was a considerable strain in itself, so the net gain was minimal.
“Here.” Rainbow Dash tossed a water bottle toward them and Applejack snatched it out of the air, unscrewing the cap and liberally pouring it into her waiting mouth. There was something breathtaking about the sight of her, rivulets of crystal liquid cascading from her jaws, meeting with the sweat-dampened fur along her form. She shook out her long blonde mane before depositing her signature Stetson back onto her head.
“Don’t stare too hard, Twi.” There was a knowing smirk on her face as she handed the bottle over again.
“Good thing nopony’s inviting stares, huh?” Rainbow Dash commented in the background—certainly not without her own eyes roving about. In contrast to Twilight Sparkle’s tracksuit (the same look as before, but a new, larger one now), the pegasus wore a sports top and pants that conformed snugly to her figure. Applejack was closer to the latter, except the only thing she wore above the waist was a broad crimson sash tied around her chest.
Twilight Sparkle took a long draught of the sweet, life-giving nectar, relishing in the sensation of it passing down her throat. “Maybe…maybe I should take a page from your wardrobe, Applejack,” she muttered after coming up for breath. She pawed at the scratchy fabric of the suit over her front. The bagginess would only be a consolation for so long, and it felt so claustrophobic to wear. “I’m getting tired of tracksuits…”
Applejack barked out a booming laugh that made her exposed body quiver. “I’m sure Rares’ll be glad to hear that if nothin’ else.”
“If you fatasses are done,” Rainbow Dash interjected harshly, “we should move on with the rest of the exercise before our portly princess loses her pace.”
“Hey now, Dash, no need to be like that,” Applejack replied while sauntering over to her, and though her voice was stern there was a smirk upon her muzzle, “if you’re so concerned about our fat asses, you can just ask and we’ll bury you between them.”
Rainbow Dash snorted but stared back unflinchingly, her defiant gaze silently saying, “I dare you.” Twilight Sparkle, looking on, chuckled quietly.
With her two coaches standing beside each other, the distinction between them was all the more apparent. Rainbow Dash was among the slimmest ponies she knew, as was typical of her tribe—pegasi trended toward far lower rates of obesity than unicorns and earth ponies, as necessitated by their need for flight, and there were few who needed flight as much as Rainbow Dash. Virtually all unnecessary fat had been shorn away, leaving a slender, toned physique, sleek sides meeting a slight flare of the hips and thighs. Applejack was just about the polar opposite, an earth pony in her prime, her frame broad and dense and powerful, every ounce of fat paired with an equal portion of muscle. There was no sag to her body, only bulging and burgeoning, rounded gut and breasts and buttocks accentuated by limbs thick with cords of sinew. The two of them had a rivalry streak a mile wide, but there had been a time when they competed more directly in athleticism, until, shortly after Twilight Sparkle’s arrive in Ponyville, Applejack had started gaining more drastically in order to better support the work at the farm, then they could no longer race with each other. Rainbow Dash may have had no intent of abandoning her dreams of being a renowned flyer, but that could change if Applejack managed to coax her into too many eating competitions.
“Well, I’ll leave y’all to what you gotta do,” Applejack chortled before starting to walk away, “I’ll be takin’ a stroll ‘round in the meantime. Just holler if you need anythin’, Twi. And don’t be afraid to drop on top of Dash if she’s givin’ you a hard time.”
“As if I’d just let that happen,” Rainbow Dash shouted back at her.
Applejack gave one final glance back over her shoulder, another sly look that suggested “Is that so?” before sashaying back toward town.
The pegasus rolled her eyes. “Alright, fine, you ready to give this a go, Twilight?” she asked with a sigh. There was a rustle as her wings snapped open, feathered fans spreading to their full width in an instant.
The mare gulped. “Y…yeah.” There was a moment of hesitation, but she was able to get her own wings to open smoothly. She had managed to muster a smooth level of control over them, if nothing else. Now she just had to be able to use them.
As with running, Rainbow Dash was effortlessly able to flap her wings and, with a gust of wind, take off from the ground. Twilight Sparkle had to raise an arm over her face as dust and leaves kicked up at her, which she knew was counter-intuitive—she was supposed to be watching to get an idea of what she had to do. “Now remember!” Rainbow Dash called down to her, “It’s not just a matter of flip-flappin’ about like a chicken! You gotta feel the air currents in your feathers! You gotta pump the feeling through yourself!”
Grimacing nervously to herself, Twilight Sparkle flapped her wings. She felt the way her feathers rippled one after another in sequence, and the faint tingling of the magical energy which they sifted from the loose particles of air in the atmosphere. Again in stark contrast to earth ponies, the magic of pegasi was very thin and sparse, easy to gather but difficult to work with. It gathered in the lungs, pumping out with every breath, circulating throughout her.
She started to run. Her hooves and legs ached, so she drew on the power of the earth again for support. These conflicting powers warred with each other, making it all the more difficult to maintain her concentration. The profuse jiggling of her body at the same time certainly didn’t help matters, her rump vigorously bouncing about behind her with every step. Her wings fidgeted uncertainly before managing to settle into the motions of flapping.
With a stamp of her hooves on the ground, she jumped. In the split second of weightlessness that followed, she pumped her wings, batting at the friction of millions of microscopic molecules. The exhilaration filled her chest. But it wasn’t enough, and gravity pulled her back down. Ache exploded in her ankles and knees as she landed, yet she kept going.
“That’s good, try again!” Rainbow Dash’s encouraging voice rang from overhead somewhere. They both knew it was at least better than usual; often Twilight Sparkle would lose her balance upon landing and fall in a heap.
She fought with herself, drawing on the sources of magic that were alien to her. Her instinct was to focus through her horn, but it wasn’t time for that yet. Run, drawing from the hooves up through the legs and into the body. She could feel the power within her with every quaking motion that her body goes through, wobbling gelatinously. Gusts churned around her as she flapped her wings in time with her steps, each push getting her a little more airtime. The circulation through her chest eased the strain upon her vitals, a cooling system to offset the burn produced by her internal machinery.
Twilight Sparkle bent her knees, and she looked straight up at the blue sky, and she didn’t think about how overweight she was, she only thought about flight.
The alicorn kicked off and beat her wings at once. She didn’t hear the boom of her cannonball bulk erupting from the ground all at once over the rush of air in her ears. She dimly registered passing by Rainbow Dash, her face stricken with surprise and amazement, an expression that likely mirrored her own. The grass and bushes and trees fell away beneath her and her mane and tail trailed out behind while the wind rustled through her fur and feathers. Along the roads leading back toward the buildings of Ponyville, she could see Applejack jogging away, now so much smaller. Mirth bubbled up from her and left her through her laughter.
“Twilight!”
There was a sudden blankness in her mind where before there had been thoughts.
“Twilight, keep going!”
She looked down, and she saw the earth now some dozen or more meters below her. And it was getting closer.
And before she realized what was happening, she was tilting forward, tumbling uncontrollably, and everything was spinning around her. Rainbow Dash was shouting at her, probably winging fast in her direction for an interception.
The unicorn in Twilight Sparkle’s brain was panicking.
The earth pony was screaming.
The pegasus was calm.
She knew that she had mere seconds to take some kind of preventative action. Rainbow Dash might be able to get her out of this, but likely not without significant injury to either of them. Getting herself hurt would be one thing, but she couldn’t tolerate the idea of getting one of her friends hurt over her own mistake. Something would have to be done.
She stretched herself out, letting the air drag on her rotund frame, and prepared to extend her wings to brace her fall. She understood the motions that she had to go through from her training drills, she knew that this was something that she was capable of. What she also knew, however, was that no matter what Rainbow Dash taught her, she still wasn’t going to be a pegasus, nor an earth pony, nor even a unicorn. Twilight Sparkle was an alicorn now.
The falling mare opened her wings. She knew that, with how great her weight was, she would have to put a great deal of effort into her hold on the air currents in order to sufficiently slow her descent. It was even possible that she would be able to succeed in an endeavor like that. At a time like this, though, she felt that she had to resort to alternative methods, even if it meant going out on a hunch. It was a tickling sensation at the base of her skull, an inkling of an idea that welled up from her subconscious, something that she knew without even being told.
While still maintaining the force in her wings, her horn lit up with brilliant sparks of magenta. Unicorn magic may not have been conducive by itself for the purposes of a pegasus, but in the hands of an alicorn it could be combined and repurposed. She drew in mana from all around her and suffused it throughout her body. Self-levitation might have been an option, a spell that few unicorns were able to master due to the precision that it required, though that still wasn’t what she had in mind. Instead, she used this magic much as an earth pony would, bolstering her physical structure, but this wasn’t for support as much as alteration. A churning, giddy sense rose up from her gut, and at the same time the strain upon her shoulders lessened, the struggle of keeping herself aloft considerably diminished.
Her downward trajectory slowed, tilting toward the horizontal, sailing forward over the land. She opened her eyes, not realizing that they’d been closed all this time, and she saw the ground beneath her; she had slowed considerably with mere feet to spare, but the landing was still fast approaching. Knowing that it was going to be rough regardless, she channeled through her horn once more to fashion a modified barrier, so fine that it was like a glossy sheen over her form. When she finally crashed, sliding across the grass and dirt, she barely felt the impact at all. She only allowed her concentration to falter once she had come to a complete stop, and she fell limp. She wasn’t gasping for breath, but she was still exhausted, her consciousness blurring, vision fuzzy at the edges.
“Whoa, Twilight, what was that?!” Wind rolled over her back as Rainbow Dash alighted beside her. “I thought you were totally going to beef it there but you pulled through at the last second! How’d you do that? I barely felt any currents from you.”
“I…I cast a spell to lower my body’s density,” Twilight Sparkle muttered. She tried to look up at the pegasus, but that slight shift was enough to make her feel dizzy.
“What?! Aw, come on!” Rainbow Dash groaned and slapped a palm to her face. “This is supposed to be flight training, not egghead training!”
“Sorry, Rainbow, but I just…thought I had to try.” With some great labor, the alicorn managed to haul herself into sitting upright, flattening yet more grass beneath her rotund rump. This mental exhaustion was almost worse than any of the physical exhaustion she’d felt thus far.
Rainbow Dash only grumbled under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest and turning away.
“Look, you’ve been a real help for understanding pegasus magic, you really have. I just…I’ve come to a realization that I’m going to have to use all of my magic in tandem if I’m really going to get the most out of it.” After a pause without any response from the rainbow-haired pony, she added, “Think about it this way: next time I can try that right from the start, and maybe then we’ll finally be able to do some real flying drills, no more beginner stuff.”
The pegasus glanced back toward her. “You wanna try doing a loop?”
Twilight Sparkle gulped at the thought of doing more dizzying tasks, but she still replied, “Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah, that’s more like it!” Rainbow Dash pumped her fist triumphantly.
Twilight Sparkle put off her dread for what might await her in the days to come for now. At the moment, what was most concerning to her was what she was going to have to eat. The granola bars Rainbow Dash had brought with her weren’t going to cut it.