What Shy Did on Her Summer Vacation

by FanOfMostEverything

Twilight Sparkle

Twilight bounced on her heels, words tumbling from lips that she couldn't stop from smiling. She wondered if this was how Pinkie Pie felt all the time. "I hypothesized that as far as magic's concerned clothing is actually a part of the human body which is Pinkie-level bizarre but it explains so much like how Sunset and my counterpart came through the portal already wearing something and also you know how animals—"

"Twilight."

"Yes, Rarity?" The interruption was barely a hiccup for Twilight's train of thought. "I was planning on breaking for questions in a few minutes but if you have something urgent—"

"When I said 'What have you done?', I was being rhetorical." Rarity sounded far less enraptured by the possibilities before them than Twilight had expected. Her sour expression matched the anomaly.

"Oh." Twilight took a moment to take stock of her mental state. "Oh! Sorry, I think I'm experiencing some kind of magic-induced euphoric state going after channeling that much energy through something so close my brain and with relatively little experience so—"

"So sorry to keep interrupting, dear, but I was being rhetorical because what you did is self-evident. Namely, you turned Fluttershy into a tree!" Rarity thrust a finger at said tree, which gave off a gentle crackle of residual magic. Much of the trunk was birch-white, but it shaded to mossy green at the exposed roots and an odd yellow hue along the branches. Angel Bunny glanced down from among those branches, baffled but unharmed.

"Well..." Twilight bit her lip, her motor mouth finally running out of gas. "Yes. I suppose I did." The first bell rang, as if to punctuate the confirmation.

"And now we are late for class," said Rarity. "I don't suppose you can reverse this before anyone comes out to investigate?"

"Uh... probably?"

Rarity narrowed her eyes. "How probably?"

Twilight gave an anxious chuckle. Well, good news, she was teaching her friends in exchange for how much they were teaching her. Bad news, she was teaching them how to work around her usual evasions. "Definitely a nonzero probability." She took a deep breath and considered the tree. "The problem is that I may have been experimenting with relatively uncontrolled arcane expressions at the same time."

"Meaning?"

Twilight gulped. Rarity should've been about her height. How was she looming over her like that? "Well, those entail a number of undocumented variables, making reproducible results a problematic venture—"

Rarity folded her arms. "Twilight, you're hiding behind terminology."

"To put it simply, I... kind of just threw magic at Fluttershy to see what happened."

Rarity facepalmed. "For Harmony's sake." She perked up and hummed to herself. "Though I suppose Sunset could turn her back to normal if all else fails."

Twilight looked away. "Well... yes. But I'd really rather she not find out about this."

"Because it was a very foolish and horrifyingly unsafe experiment that even Mr. Discord would consider a bad idea?"

"That's a rather harsh way of putting it, Sunset, but—" Twilight froze. She turned at a snail's pace. Intellectually, she knew the end result would be the same no matter how quickly she went. That didn't make it any less terrifying.

Sunset just frowned at her, arms crossed. "Throwing wild magic around? What were you thinking? Were you thinking?"

"Of course I was! The experiment—"

"Could've waited until after school, in the NAHTI, where we have recording devices with millithaum accuracy. This?" Sunset gestured at Fluttershy, who now had several birds hovering about her, possibly considering her branches as nesting sites. "This was just you playing with something that is not a toy."

Twilight wilted. "You're right." She ducked her head. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to." Sunset hugged her. "But this is how our little partnership works. You keep me from thinking I'm a god."

Twilight managed a small smile. "You keep me from showing those fools at the institute."

"Girls," said Rarity, "this is all very sweet, but the fact remains that Fluttershy is still a tree. Feel free to fix that at any time."

Sunset laid a hand on the tree's trunk. Her headgem and palm shone, but nothing else seemed to happen. She nodded to herself and doused the glow.

"Sunset?" Rarity gulped. "You, er, can undo this, can you not?"

"Oh, definitely." Sunset patted Fluttershy's trunk. "I was just making sure that Fluttershy's okay with staying like this until lunch."

"Why?"

"To teach Twilight a lesson about responsible magic use."

Rarity's jaw dropped. "At Fluttershy's expense?"

Sunset shrugged. "Between the two of us, Twilight and I share all of her morning classes. We'll take notes." She gave Twilight a sidelong glance. "Though Twilight's going to be the one who will have to explain why Fluttershy will be missing those classes to the principals."

"But she's a tree!" cried Rarity.

"And she's okay with that." Sunset smirked. "She's actually enjoying herself, if you can believe it. Besides, this is what my magic teacher would do. If this were some massive hazard like, I don't know, an overpowered compulsion spell that affected anyone on sight, I'd have already dispelled it. But this? This is small-scope and relatively harmless. Come lunch time, Twilight can try to undo it."

Twilight blinked and looked around to see if any extradimensional analogues had entered the schoolyard without her noticing. "Me?"

Sunset nodded. "It's your mess. You should fix it if you can."

Twilight wrung her hands. "What if I can't?"

"Then I'll take care of it. But you shouldn't rely on me as a crutch." Sunset smiled as she put a hand on Twilight's shoulder. "Besides, if anyone can figure out how to fix this, it's you."

---

"So." Principal Celestia rubbed her temples. "You turned your friend into a tree."

Twilight nodded, gaze focused on her own lap. "Yes, ma'am."

"Which is why she'll be absent for today."

"Until after lunch."

"Of course." Celestia took a deep breath. "Twilight, I like to encourage my students to be true to themselves, to discover what makes them the greatest they can be. But please, in the future, wait until after school for this sort of thing. Better yet, wait a month. You'll have the whole summer to turn your friends into whatever you want."

Twilight winced. "I don't exactly plan on making a habit of it."

"Good."

---

By some miracle—or possibly social wizardry on Rarity's part that Twilight might never even comprehend, much less match—her other friends didn't hear about the transformation until lunch.

"What are you waiting for? Fix her already!" In Rainbow Dash's case, that just meant her indignation had to make up for lost time.

"Cool yer jets," said Applejack, one hand gripping Dash's collar. "She's gotta concentrate."

"Yeah! Just don't think about how you could—" Sunset covered Pinkie's mouth before Twilight heard what not to think about. That just meant her imagination was free to fill the gap.

Twilight shook her head. Her experiments had shown that mental state definitely had an impact on spellcasting. If she believed she'd mess it up, that would drastically raise the odds that she did. She shut her eyes, laid her hands on Fluttershy's trunk, and thought. She'd found it easy to think of magic in numerical terms, mostly through made-up measurements in invented units, but that wasn't how she'd done this one. Sunset was right; this had been wild magic. Uncontrolled magic. Chaotic magic, left to the whims of probability, too many different dispersal patterns to get a sense of how it might execute its incomplete instructions.

I'm sorry, Fluttershy.

You don't need to apologize, Twilight. I enjoyed this.

Twilight clamped down on her surprise, willing herself to stay calm. I'm glad to hear it. But now we need to change you back.

Okay.

"Fluttershy!" The shouted chorus made Twilight's eyes snap open. At some point, she'd gone from palms flat on a trunk to holding hands with Fluttershy. Her friends gathered around, fighting to be heard over one another.

"Are you okay?"

"Can you stand?"

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Give her some air, darn it!" Rainbow Dash cried, hauling people back a ways. "Seriously, Shy, you okay?"

Fluttershy blinked, slowly looking back and forth. She looked at her hands, slowly releasing Twilight's and bringing hers up to her eyes, flexing her fingers in a daze.

Dash cleared her throat. "Uh, Fluttershy?"

"Sorry, it's just..." Fluttershy shook her head. "I'm not really sure how to describe it. I don't think there are words for it."

"I understand," said Sunset. "It was weird enough going from pony to human the first time. I can only imagine what you went through."

"Well, it wasn't exactly bad."

"Not bad?" said Rarity. "Fluttershy, you turned into a tree!"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "You're never letting that go, are you?"

Rarity turned her nose up. "I think my reaction is entirely merited."

"It's okay, Rarity. It was... nice." Fluttershy smiled. "Do you think you can do that again, Twilight?"

Twilight's mouth moved silently as she thought. "Um, hypothetically? I mean, I'm not sure how it happened, but I could try to replicate the same conditions. Still, magic has a mind of its own—I would know—and there's no guarantee the energy would... well, twist in the right way, for lack of a better term."

Fluttershy wilted, the first hints of tears in her eyes. "Oh."

Sunset sighed. "I'm pretty sure I could do something similar without cutting off all your senses."

Fluttershy lit back up, the sun after a cloud had passed over it. "Could you?"

Sunset shrugged. "Sure. I don't see the harm in it."

Author's Note:

This chapter is based on content originally written by Tophe in the Group Precipitation story "Mana Points."

Comments

[Masterweaver]

Something something social mammal...

...are you going to be including alllllll the snips in this particular plotline? I wouldn't mind.

[The Wind King]

I'm not sure why, but that cover art really reminds me of the Spriggans from Skyrim.

[QueenMoriarty]

...

I really need to catch up on this 'verse.

[hawthornbunny]

I'll read this later, but honestly I might as well just favorite it now.

[TitaniumTao]

Interestingly, I could see in the future of Twilight's family helping keep Sunny grounded. After all the Tree has lived a very long time. And Sunny doesn't have a Luna to be a long time companion.

[Daedalus Aegle]

A sweet little opener. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

(I like trees)

[EonAon]

7569315 that's assuming that Sunset doesn't bestow immortality/agelessness on some or all of them. Maybe not while they are in High school, but later on in life. Heck on Sci Twi magic itself may just do it just cause it wants a avatar that lasts.

[FanOfMostEverything]

7569246
Chapter three will be entitled "Rarity." You will be credited appropriately.

7569249
I can see why. Same basic "humanoid wood elemental" concept.

7569254
I look forward to you doing so.

7569315
It will become one of the greatest riddles of Shimmerism; why the goddess so favors one family who has a long-held tradition of not acknowledging her as divine.

Sunset won't be surprised by the thick-headedness inherent in this confusion. Saddened, yes, but not surprised.

Alternately...
7569466
Definitely a possibility, and a topic that will need to be addressed in a later story.

7569339
So does Fluttershy.

[Belligerent Bindlestiff]

I sense a treefolk (card) coming.

[EonAon]

7569585 nah nah Shyad Is way more likely

[Moosetasm]

Fluttershy enjoys being a tree in both worlds.

[Speckle]

I'm in love already The opening bit with SciTwi, Rarity, and Sunset was especially funny :D Like it was right out of an episode, actually.

[Pretentious Narwhal]

I sometimes wish I was a tree. On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to read this fic if I was.

[Condray]

All I know about this one is it ends in a throat-punch.

Ahh the joys of reading stories it of order!

[Revan]

...if Fluttershy becomes an Ent, I'll laugh.

[Book_Wyrm]

7859566
I think it would be more similar to a huorn.

[GMBlackjack]

Time to dive into another entry in the oversaturated world. Also time to see how wanting to be a tree can go wrong. I'm expecting that's how this goes.

((GM, why are you here? This isn't on the LSB suggested list!))

Well, true, but it's listed as a prequel to Masterweaver's 'Fey Breeze', which IS, so I figured why not.

-GM, master of Enchanting Libraries.

[ScisetShimmerEvan]

"So sorry to keep interrupting, dear, but I was being rhetorical because what you did is self-evident. Namely, you turned Fluttershy into a tree! " Rarity thrust a finger at said tree, which gave off a gentle crackle of residual magic. Much of the trunk was birch-white, but it shaded to mossy green at the exposed roots and an odd yellow hue along the branches. Angel Bunny glanced down from among those branches, baffled but unharmed.

Well, this sure explains how Fluttershy is tree all of a sudden. Thx a lot Twilight.

"Could've waited until after school, in the NAHTI, where we have recording devices with millithaum accuracy. This?" Sunset gestured at Fluttershy, who now had several birds hovering about her, possibly considering her branches as nesting sites. "This was just you playing with something that is not a toy."

Which of course leads us yo now, with Fluttershy as a tree.