Excess

by Twinkletail

Bewitchment

Twilight Sparkle had been having a great couple of days, if a bit strange.

The picnic was a perfect example of that. She'd had a wonderful time with her friends, although the entire event had been punctuated by an air of strangeness. She had often been able to predict her friends' behavior fairly accurately in a number of situations. Yesterday, though, it was as if the five of them had made a conscious effort to act outside of their norms, at least as it pertained to their arrival times. In fact, knowing Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie's pranking ways, it was entirely possible that they had arranged the whole thing to mess with Twilight's perception of her friends' habits.

On second thought, that wasn't really much of a possibility. The more Twilight ruminated over it, the more holes there were in that theory. Fluttershy was too kind and sweet to participate in a prank that stood any chance of upsetting its recipient. As for Applejack and Rarity, while they both enjoyed having fun, their ideas of fun were usually not as...immature, to be frank...as those of Rainbow and Pinkie. Besides, AJ was far too honest. If it was a prank, she never would have been able to make it through the whole picnic without spilling the beans.

Despite the odd beginning, the picnic was a huge success overall. Everything had been just fine, despite how much her friends seemed to be against her verbalizing such a thing. The idea of things going awry simply because she had called attention to the fact that they hadn't was absurd, and it surprised her that her friends would believe such baseless superstitions after the incident with Zecora. Even the silliness of this was not enough to dampen the mood of the picnic, and all ponies involved had a wonderful time.

Then came the post-picnic events. Twilight had found it quite odd when her horn had lit up of its own accord to open her front door. She couldn't remember a single time prior to that day where such an event had occurred, and it fascinated her. The majority of her afternoon and evening were spent reading over books on magical lore, searching intently for another example of a unicorn or alicorn's magic acting on its own. While she did find a few examples of such things happening, none of them seemed to fit her current situation. She was showing no signs of any illness, physical or magical, and she was certainly not experiencing a foal's magical outbursts. Try as she might, she couldn't find a single thing in any of her books which matched up to what she seemed to be dealing with.

This excited Twilight even more. If there wasn't a precedent for her predicament, then that meant it was undocumented. If it was undocumented, that meant that it was something that needed documentation, and if it was something that needed documentation and she was dealing with it, then that meant that she could be the first pony in history to document it! Visions of books written to educate others on her discovery, important scholars congratulating her, and awards granted to her for her amazing discoveries danced through her head. Or rather, they danced around her head. The alicorn squealed with delight as her horn lit up and created illusions of her celebratory thoughts that orbited her little purple head. She still had no idea what was causing this, but she figured she could get used to it.

She had briefly considered the possibility that there was some negativity behind this. She couldn't possibly have considered her studies to be thorough if she hadn't. As far as she could tell from her experimentation, though, these strange new abilities were having no ill effect. The phenomenon, which she'd begun referring to as passive magic (she would come up with a catchier name once her research was complete), had only cast either spells that she'd intended to cast, such as the door manipulation, or harmless spells, such as the dancing illusions. She wasn't feeling pained or wearied from it. Her ability to actively cast spells had not been hindered. She'd even asked Spike to assist her with putting a magic-restraining ring on her horn in order to see if the passive magic would work through it. Sure enough, it did not. If there was a downside to all of this, Twilight sure wasn't seeing it. Everything seemed to be just fine.

"Twilight!"

Twilight tilted her head at the panicked shout of Rarity upon her arrival. The poor unicorn looked absolutely frazzled, but it wasn't as if this was a wholly uncommon occurrence. Twilight glanced over to retrieve a fainting couch for Rarity, only to find that her horn had already taken care of it for her. She took a quick mental note of the passive magic's ability to still work under conditions of mild stress before addressing her friend.

"Rarity, what's the matter?" Twilight asked gently as Spike rushed in with a glass of water for her. She was used to Rarity freakouts, but something in her gut told her that this wasn't one of her typical dramatic outbursts over a missing spool of thread or a torn dress.

"I don't know!" Rarity exclaimed. "And that is just the problem! I've been acting strange ever since yesterday!"

"You've been acting strange?" Twilight asked, her magic bringing a towel over to wipe the sweating mare's forehead.

"Yes!" Rarity responded. "And I do not know why! I gave Sweetie my last apple tart when I wanted it for myself, and I gave Minuette a huge discount on her dress!"

"I'm...failing to see the problem," Twilight said, head tilted in confusion. "So you think something's wrong because you gave things to other ponies?"

"I know it sounds peculiar," Rarity said with an exasperated sigh. "But I did not intend to do these things, and yet I did them anyway!"

"I still don't think I understand," Twilight told her. "If you didn't want to do those things, why did you?"

"If I knew that, Twilight, I would not be asking you the very same question," Rarity said with a frown. Before Twilight could give her a response, the front door opened again.

"Twilight!" a very flustered Fluttershy whimpered as she entered the library. "Something's wrong!"

"You too, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked, her horn fluffing a pillow for her while simultaneously refilling Rarity's depleted cup of water.

"I'm sorry for interrupting," Fluttershy said, sitting down on the pillow. "But I've been doing things without meaning to, and they're not bad things, but they keep inconveniencing me and I don't know what's happening..."

"So have I!" Rarity insisted. Twilight let out a sigh.

"Like what?" the alicorn asked.

"I was late getting home yesterday because some fillies asked me to referee their hoofball game..." Fluttershy said. "And I went out of my way for food for Angel, and..."

"Those don't sound like bad things," Twilight offered with a slightly-bothered smile. The door flew open again, and Twilight let out a groan as she watched both Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash barrel through the doorway.

"Twilight!" the two shouted in unison. They both tried to skid to a stop to avoid crashing into Fluttershy, but a quick magical grasp from Twilight's horn stopped the two in place. All involved parties breathed a sigh of relief as Twilight once again silently thanked whatever it was that was causing this passive magic.

"Let me guess," Twilight said as the two ponies were placed back on the ground. "Something's wrong?"

"Really really REALLY wrong!" Pinkie whined through little giggles.

"Then why are you giggling?" Twilight asked. Everypony was doing a stellar job of confusing her today.

"I don't know!" Pinkie cried. ""And that's the problem! Usually when I'm giggling it's because something funny happened, or I was thinking of something funny, or maybe there was a good chance that something funny WAS gonna happen, but nothing like that was happening at all! There was even some really UN-funny stuff going on and I was still laughing!"

"And I've been getting really mad at anypony who says anything bad about my friends!" Rainbow cried. "I punched Caramel!"

"You PUNCHED Caramel?!" Rarity exclaimed.

Pinkie burst into laughter.

"It's not funny!" Rainbow shouted.

"I KNOW!" Pinkie whimpered between guffaws.

"Poor Caramel..." Fluttershy sighed. "Maybe I should go help him..."

"I could give him my bed to rest in if he needs," Rarity offered.

"Hey, I hurt him, and it's my responsibility to help!" Rainbow demanded.

"Everypony calm down!" Twilight shouted into a megaphone that her magic had summoned. The room fell silent, save for a few lingering giggles from Pinkie.

"Okay," Twilight said evenly, trying to keep her calm. "Now...let's all just sit down and discuss things calmly, like civilized ponies, and we'll try to figure out what to do about these problems." The girls all nodded and did as was requested of them. Twilight took a deep breath, getting ready to get her research on. She understood quite well why her friends had come to her, and she considered it her duty to solve their problems. They were her best friends, after all.

Then she tilted her head curiously.

"...Where's Applejack?"

Comments

[Starlight Shadow]

Oh sheet.

[terrycloth]

In prison. Because of all that tax dodging that she just confessed to.

[Cold Spike]

AJ chapter next, yay.

[Personifire]

Looks like stuff's going down in ponytown.

Er, ville.

[Butterwings]

3978328 "Ville" means town in french, so calling it Ponytown would still be correct.