Twilight's Perspective (1)
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Earlier...
"I'm going to chalk that up as a lesson just so we can stay on schedule."
Twilight walked away from Spike and Pinkie while shaking her head... and trying to hide her laughter. Spike had been growing up in a lot of ways for a while now, but this particular day had been a huge shift. Seeing that he could still be a child at heart? That was precious. Subconsciously she'd already started doing a quick circuit-check on her heatproofing (fireproofing was a nominal term at best, as even subcritical heat could do damage to the tree) before giving Spike the 'OK'.
Her own minimalist work on the food preparation was already complete, and the further one stayed out of Pinkie Pie's path when she was working? The better. That left Twilight with little to do, to the outside observer. But the real secret of being Twilight Sparkle is that she was always occupied with something, no matter how trivial. Specifically, yesterday had been yet another mark on the ever-mounting ‘Spike and Twilight get their entire lives turned upside down’ list. A list that, even by the standards of a dragon in pony society and the Student of the Sun... Well, the list had a trend towards updating with greater-than-average frequency.
I get my Cutie Mark, Spike gets born. Either simultaneously or the next day, depending on how generous you are? I get accepted to Celestia's School and now I have Spike to care for! Before that my parents barely trusted me with Ms. Smarty Pants and she's plush. Fast forward through a hoof-full of socially awkward years and I discover Nightmare Moon's return the same day that Celestia (bless her enormous plot...ting heart) sends us both to Ponyville!
Yeah that was a stabilizing event to be sure, just send the neurotic unicorn and her draconic charge to a foreign city out of stone-cold nowhere and let them blind-solve the return of one of history's greatest threats... I mean, it worked out. But that just kept the upheaval train rolling! Become the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Save Equestria. Reform our long-lost second Princess. Face nigh-on-monthly threats to our sanity or safety, ad infinitem, in perpetuity. Discord, DISCORD happened at some point...
And then the wedding, of course. My sweet beautiful dumb-as-a-sack brother and his equally-pretty and equally-forgetful fiancee... Although maybe that late invitation was Chrysalis' fault? I never did think to ask about it in the aftermath, I just assumed 'Yeah Shining would, wouldn't he' and moved on. Trixie came back, and oh my stars I hadn't even thought about the first time! That mare, I swear...
Homeschooling Spike, that was a rough patch... He'd probably be able to try going to school with other ponies again now that his sleep schedule is, well, either non-existent or closer to normal. Then Shining came into town with his O+O books in tow, that probably had a lot to do with starting THIS entire mess. And we can't talk about messes last year without giving some credit to Luna's... guilt incident. Although Spike didn't catch much of the backsplash from that one, come to think of it.
And now, when Celestia and I finally reach 'that' milestone, Spike hits his adulthood... Hits it like a train with the raw power to match. On top of that I have my own new infusion of magic to worry about... Which would probably be a better direction to focus my thoughts on, rather than all of this wool-gathering.
Even before her train of perceptible thought had moved on from its previous topic, Twilight was already returning to her magical 'stretching' exercises... It was called stretching at least, although it had far less in common with muscular stretching than the name would imply! In reality it belonged to a school of what might be called 'useless' magic, or perhaps 'wasteful' magic? Unicorns who grew in power or were still learning to handle their horns needed some form of practice with minimal risk, both to gain control and test limits.
Thus, 'stretching' exercises: Spells that would have as little consequence as possible if they failed, and minimal but measurable impacts if they worked. For normal unicorns this just involved using increasingly-convoluted and degraded versions of basic spells like light generation, or levitation. Levitation was the better example in this case: Either they failed to levitate the object, or they succeeded. Success would (in turn) involve a measurable distance, speed, duration and so forth: Optimal statistical hallmarks of a benchmarking system!
Of course there was only so far you could warp the matrix of a spell before it became actively dangerous to attempt, and Twilight was years past the point of testing herself with bootleg levitation. Attempting a convoluted light-generator spell at this point would almost certainly succeed, but even then the gross inefficiency involved would risk scorching the velvet clean off of her horn. So after her whirlwind one-day weekend with Celestia, she'd broken out a collection of extremely obscure and difficult spells that met her criteria.
She already drew deeper into her reserves than the average unicorn at the best of times, so finding options for this was tough. Eventually she settled on a very old and purely interior spell, recorded as Hoofin Tongue's Cloven Knowledge Condenser... Although she was positive the spell actually traced back to Snowfall Frost, and the self-styled Cloven Cast was just taking credit for the work she had rediscovered. Which is valuable work! Just, maybe not 'put your name on it' valuable.
The spell's concept was incredibly simple and extremely stupid (even though Twilight tried to avoid using that sort of term about theoretical magic): Just make knowledge appear in your brain. Of course if you actually said you were trying to do that? Most ponies would assume you were weird at best while knowledgeable spellcasters would try to get you restrained for your own safety. The details were... a little more simple.
The mechanisms of the spell had been firmly established in her mind, and she continued what her body was doing (talking with Pinkie and Spike as they finished setting the table, apparently) while triggering the overwrought spell at the same time.
Spike wasn't the only one in the Library who knew how to do waking meditation, after all: She had a very bad habit of doing spellwork in her head while the rest of her was on auto-pilot. That was a bit of a cruel term really, because it assumed she wasn't paying attention to her friends: And she was! Maybe more than anything, these days. But the fact is that her brain was not a single-threaded engine, and she could accomplish both things with what would normally be 'full' attention.
Percentages are relative anyways, and... Calm down. You're not even having this debate with anypony but yourself. Don't get too caught up in the joke Pinkie just made, take your serving of stir-fry and get back on task. Ideally the spell would produce a useful but trivially-acquired piece of information from her environment over time, at intervals dependent on the successful execution of the matrix. And even if it failed? The worst she'd get was a mild headache.
Within three minutes (and about half of her stir-fry being eaten, WOW this turned out delicious!) she'd already found out the exact temperature at the ceiling height of the room she was in. It was technically knowledge drawn down from nothing, acquired serendipitously: But it was useless, trivially guesstimated, and a fact she could verify with minimal effort. That was the nature of this spell: Even when it was operating correctly and not twisted into a testing tool? You didn't learn anything you wouldn't be able to figure out regardless.
Twilight has a dab horn with her magical control, at least in terms of expenditure. Right now she was casting at about 115% of what had formerly been her first-safe threshold, just a few days ago. Now it felt like she still had room to go before the second line, so Twilight pushed more mana into the construction while externally complimenting Spike's work with the wok.
A few minutes later they were completely finished with the delicious main course (she'd have to get Spike to start experimenting more, if it kept turning out this well), and Pinkie brought out her dessert.
"Dig in everypony! Well, singlepony and singledragon. And me!"
She held back a giggle at that: Little did Pinkie know she wasn't single any longer, even if she had meant the other form of single. That was just how puns worked sometimes, which had admittedly taken her a while to pick up on in her youth. As for picking up the fork... Mmmh! Sweet Celestia it was so good. The extra crunch and texture from the gems elevated the mix of airy cake and dense cooked fruit, and the sweetness had an There are exactly ninety four pieces of cutlery in the silverware drawer almost savory... layer.
"WOW! I mean... Wow. That is something else, Pinkie Pie!"
Pinkie was blushing at Spike's compliment, and Twilight filed that away under Things Not To Think About Right Now. She had barely pushed The birdsong coming from the southeastern window is that of a rufous-tailed scrub robin the spell any further but it was already reacting significantly faster. She kept the proportion of mana steady for a moment, and counted the seconds in her head. Spike and Pinkie were having some kind of exchange, but This trifle can be safely kept at current room temperature for longer than most due to containing no eggs she'd gotten fully distracted now.
Despite keeping her mana output at a steady percentage of Pinkamena Diane Pie has more hairs per square inch in her mane than active follicles in the same space capacity, the spell was working with much greater efficacy. And improvements to magic efficiency didn't work like that! Which could only mean that the change was...
"Spike?"
He turned to look at her, and she could see a hint Your current heart rate is 94 bpm of excitement in his eyes: Had he realized what was Your current heart rate is 108 bpm happening, or was he just enjoying the food?
"Yeah Twilight?"
She struggled to get the words out for a minute, stubbornly (even by her own standards) keeping the mana input Precisely three minutes have passed since you finished your main course to the spell flat. She could dial it back later, but she had to know first.
"Can you tell me exactly what this combination is doing, according to your system?"
"Oh! Sorry, one second... It says Increased maximum mana, 4 hours."
It was pure instinct when she shifted her power-flow into a memorized teleportation matrix, blinking out of the dining room as rudely as possible. Also as smoothly, quickly, and accurately as she had ever teleported in her life. A reflexive levitation brought a paper bag up near her mouth in case she started hyperventilating, and she scrambled over to her writing desk and started making new plans.
It was real.
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Wait, so she hadn't really believed him until now? It makes sense, given how "not scientifically possible" is borderline word salad even before you consider she was describing something right in front of her, but you seemed to be angling towards an iteration who actually earned the nickname "Purplesmart".
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I think she might've been referring to how her magic and concentration has been steadily growing over the last couple of minutes, and it was real, and not in her head.
Woah, nice. The writing feels different this chapter. It fits very well with the perspective change.
It looks like twilight still had her doubts about spike and his new abilities. Doubt no more my purple furred friend.
"If your mana extension lasts for more than four hours, contact a doctor"
I like that random piece of information spell, somebody could go crazy very quickly if they don't meter their input.
I look forward to seeing what she does next.
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Oh, wow. Never mind then, go for it full speed. That's cool though, having someone with that kind of background be the one to do a story like this.
So, this takes place somewhere between Trixie's second visit, and Twilight getting her wings. (I think?) It'll be interesting to see how her stats change when/if that change comes around.
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Knowing Twilight's tendency to babble when she's excited about a topic, she'll probably blab the mana-boosting properties of kumquats and carnelian to Ponyville by the end of the day, causing ponies to go into a buying-frenzy like in "Leap of Faith" where Flim Flam marketed that fake healing tonic.
Starlight Glimmer: "Soon, I'll enough KUMQUATS to conquer Equestria! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!!"
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Starlight: "Why isn't it WORKING?!"
Twilight: Mineral-based magic boosters only work on dragons, earth ponies, and alicorns "Uh, yeah, about that..."
These fun facts really add an extra layer of delight. Your formatting of them is very well chosen.
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.... Dangit, so they're trying to see who'll break first. I bet it'll be the comment section.
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XONXT is correct here: Twilight's final line before the chapter break is solely and specifically referring to the effects of this one food buff. She's already spent multiple hours testing his other food buffs, Observe, his combat skills... It would be completely stupid if she didn't believe in / comprehend the existence of the general abilities of The Gamer.
Oh dear, Twilight is feeding Spikes mana inprovements into a self referential sense and analysis function? Like her version of All Pass Observe and Net?
How long before it starts talking back to her?
Pinkies Sense of new Pony in Town. They have 4 hours, not including any more enchancement stack discoverys, before the complexity blows right past the limit of conciousness?
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Fair enough, although this is apparently enough of a step up on the Impossibleometer to warrant hyperventilating over? As in, this just plain isn't supposed to be a thing that's possible, at least not on anywhere close to this scale?
i dun wanna sound like a broken record, but-
media1.tenor.com/images/6d5343471a4f0d9bca2acc0d5c12e7f9/tenor.gif?itemid=11056773
I worry for any pony else that eats kumquat dishes cooked by Spike, but isn’t used to magic as much as Twilight is. If they were using magic that was draining at least half their magic reserve then imagine their reaction to suddenly having four times their reserve. Earth ponies would make plants grow wild, Pegasi would fly faster and possibly cause clouds to form, Unicorn magic would go haywire for those who can’t handle it.
Unless the effect is gradual and just activated so quickly for Twilight since she was using magic at the time the buff kicked in. For her reaction though, I guess directly experiencing something is more shocking than just seeing it. Like seeing someone run a marathon and running one yourself—maybe the extra magic will get Twilight some experience for Mana manipulation since her reserves are larger than average unicorns. Imagine what a Pegasus like Rainbow Dash would do with the extra speed boost due to pegasi needing their magic to fly.
Would we get to experience a Quadruple Rainboom? How would the boost affect someone like Princess Celestia or Princess Luna? They move the celestial bodies so their reserves must be huge! I wonder if there is a boost for specifically special talents, like Fluttershy’s ability to talk to animals suddenly getting cranked up to where they come running toward her.
Uhhh, is no one even going to question this sentence?
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As the rest of the sentence (and the chapter's perspective) implies, that's Twilight making a joke about how she, Twilight, is no longer single at this point. Although at least Pinkie has a pretty strong prospective option to change it for herself.
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Ah okay, with it's placement just after Pinkie speaking almost made it seem like SHE was talking and it's Connotations were....Interesting as it seems Pinkie Really has a thing for Spike.
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I second this. How is this effect different from everything else so far?
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Long answer? Spoilers.
Short answer? There's a reason this chapter had a (1) after it. Patience until Friday. :V
That bit about Pinkie’s hair is concerning.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like just increased max mana at least when applied to a unicorn such as Twilight.
Aww what happened to the extreamly suggestive cover art?
Pinkie Pie logic is spreading! Were are doomed
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Oh, extremely sugestive cover art?
Do tell me more
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Pinkie logic cannot be stopped, we'll all become one with the Pinkie Logic...
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Have you never seen 4-dimensional haircuts? Of course there's more hair in 3D space when you fold it over 4th dimension a few times. No, not the taste one. That dimension is 4th for food and this is mane we are talking about.
POWER OVERWELMING!
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We are going to party until the universe gives out around us