Cutie Mark Crusadicorn
CUTIE MARK CRUSADICORN
“Okay. I can now report with ninety-seven percent confidence that nothing can possibly go wrong.”
Spike just sighed. He’d heard that phrase and plenty just like it far too many times before to believe it for even for a moment. Yet hope sprang eternal in the heart of the alicorn making last minute adjustments to the runes on the other side of the basement. It didn’t help that she was on the tail end of an all-nighter. “Of course not, Twilight.” He took a ginger step over the leylines and edged a little bit closer to the stairs. All he’d wanted was to see if she needed breakfast, but instead he’d walked down into one of the manic fits she liked to call experiments. And of course he’d been immediately commandeered. “Just like nothing went wrong the last time you tried this, that one time at the shore.”
Twilight scoffed. “That was completely different. This spell should be much more limited in scope, and just think of everything we could learn!” She gestured at the three crystal figurines spaced evenly around the circle. “I learned my lesson after last time, and these should make perfect vessels. No cross-species contamination today. One each for unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony magic, the three facets of alicorn magic. Just think about the possibilities once I’ve figured out how to transfer and rebalance my own magic. I could... I could...” she trailed off. “Well, it’ll be really neat to know how. A successful experiment is really its own reward.”
“Sure it is,” said Spike. “I just don’t want a repeat of what happened last time with the whales.” Why was he even bothering? There was no reasoning with Twilight when she got like this, but he felt like he had to at least try.
Still, the memory of the last time she’d tried this was at least enough to shake her unassailable confidence just a bit. “That was a coincidence. Sure, I was experimenting with transferring unicorn magic at the time. And yes, it’s a bit odd that we’d discover a new type of whale with horn-like protrusions. But those ‘narwhales’ were just an undiscovered species we happened to stumble upon.” She paused. “And anypony who says any different is just repeating libelous slander. So stick to the official story.”
“Whatever you say, Twilight. Should I get out of here before you start? What’s the blast radius?”
“Oh ye of little faith. You’ll be fine. The spell can only transfer magic between ponies of compatible types, or these specially treated vessels. No pony princess powers for you.”
“Thank goodness for small favors,” muttered Spike. Not that he wanted it to be otherwise. He was a dragon, purple and proud. Who would want a magic horn or namby-pamby wings, or the crown that went with them, or the title of Prince Spike the Amazing? He definitely hadn’t been considering borrowing Twilight’s power, not even for very long, and sweeping a certain seamstress off her hooves for a royal whirlwind of romance. Not even a little bit. “I’m gonna take cover anyway, though.”
“That’s completely unnecessary, but whatever makes you feel better,” said Twilight, her attention turned back to a last-second check of all the components of the spellwork. “Like I said a second ago, there is nothing about this spell that could possibly go wrong.”
----------------
Meanwhile, upstairs, things were going wrong.
“Hello? Spike? Twilight?” called out Sweetie Belle as she and two other little fillies made their entrance with an odd contraption in tow. “Anypony home?”
“That’s weird, the sign said they’re open,” said Scootaloo, looking around for any signs of life.
“Ah guess maybe they just stepped out?” suggested Apple Bloom.
“That’s perfect! We can get set up before they come back. Just think how impressed they’ll be when we show them what we made,” said Scootaloo. She grabbed the sheet covering their cargo in her mouth and yanked, sending it fluttering to the ground. Beneath it was their latest accomplishment; an amalgamation of turning gears, twisting glass tubes, and even a steam whistle (Sweetie Belle had insisted it wasn’t complete without one). “They aren’t going to believe we designed and built a magic-powered potion brewing machine all on our own. Best invention ever!”
“Uh, just one problem, though,” said Sweetie Belle. She screwed up her focus and poured all her will through her horn. A green field of energy wrapped around one loose bit, and with a gentle tug came off entirely. Their invention trembled dangerously, dark blue liquid sloshing around the inside of one of the clear tanks. “Oh no! Not the thingamabobber. Now it’s not gonna work.”
“Well, why’d you have to go pulling at it?” asked Apple Bloom, shooting her friend an accusing look. “We better fix it, and quick. Twilight wouldn’t mind if we borrowed a spare part, right?”
“There’s probably a spare down in the basement. Cutie Mark Crusader Magic-Powered Potion Brewing Machine Repairponies! Yay!” The three shared a cheer. “Bet I’ll find it first.”
Without warning, Scootaloo shoved past and started running for the basement door. “Race ya! Onetwothreego!”
“That’s cheatin’!” said Apple Bloom, but all three fillies were making top speed for the basement door and the precarious stairs just beyond.
-----------------
The ensuing explosion rated a solid seven out of ten on Spike’s personal ‘Twilight’s experiments go wrong somehow and blow up in her face’ scale. A scale he had need of all too regularly for how ludicrously specialized it purported to be. He patted away some dust that had cascaded down over him and wiped away a singe mark from his elbow. The table he’d taken cover under hadn’t fared so well. “Hey there, Apple Bloom. Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle. You three alright?”
The three fillies looked to be unconscious, but Twilight had recovered more quickly. She shook her head trying to clear the ringing from her ears. “Hi Spike ow my head I’m okay.”
Spike paused. “You’re not making a lot of sense. I think maybe you hit your head? Do you want me to grab you an ice pack upstairs?”
Twilight shook her head, but then it worked its way into becoming a nod instead. “No thanks, I’ll take one though make it two.”
“O...kay...” said Spike, inching his way towards the stairs. “Two ice packs. Just don’t go anywhere until I get back.” He scampered up the staircase heading for the kitchen as quickly as his little legs would carry him.
In the meantime, Twilight took stock of her surroundings as the headache slowly faded away. Then her eyes landed on the passed-out Crusaders where they’d fallen in the corner and she screamed. “Ow, not so loud, Twilight what’s the matter with oh sweet Luna why am I not in my own body? How should I know? Probably the same reason you’re in mine no I’m not you’re in mine both y’all are wrong you’re both in mine.” The torrent of words slammed to a stop and a thoughtful look crossed Twilight’s face. “Okay, ah know ah’m in here. Sweetie Belle is that you? Present! And ah’m guessing you’re in here too Scootaloo yep you know it okay and how about you Twilight?”
No answer.
“Twilight? Twilight? Twilight? Wait your turn to talk why should I have to wait maybe it is my turn girls, this ain’t helpful oh yeah? I’ll show you not helpful.” Twilight’s foreleg lashed upwards and she smacked herself in the face. “Ow, what was that for? I don’t think I really thought that all the way through gee, y’think? Girls, focus, we gotta find Twilight and have her fix this find Twilight? We are Twilight oh no did we just kill Twilight? I don’t think so Apple Bloom we’re just... borrowing her body for a little bit so we didn’t kill her but we’re fillynapping her? What’s the punishment for fillynapping a Princess? I don’t know but it’s probably really bad only if we get caught so if we pretend to be Princess Twilight they won’t punish us. You know anything about bein’ a Princess? Nope me neither okay this is getting confusing. Let’s just focus on the basics. We should be able to walk, right?”
Both of Twilight’s forelegs tried to take a step forward at the same moment. Without support she face planted against the hard wooden floor. “Ow... that smarts. How about I take the left legs and Sweetie Belle takes the right ones? Ooh! Ooh! Dibs on her wings!” With a powerful flap Twilight took off from the ground, forelegs hanging uselessly beneath her. “This is so awesome! Put us down! No way, I’ve always wanted to try this. Back on the ground! Back on the ground! Hey, who’s the pegasus here? Right now, none of us. Put us down or I’ll...” Twilight’s right wing snapped closed against her side, sending her falling once again. “What was that for? Look, if we’re stuck like this we have to work together, right? Hey, I wonder if I can use her magic. No, Sweetie Belle, don’t...” And in a burst of purple magic Twilight disappeared into thin air just as Spike returned with the ice.
“Twilight? Were you talking to someone down here? I heard voices.” He heard them again as the three fillies in the corner groaned in unison.
“What...”
“...just...”
“...happened?”
Spike looked between the three of them as they seamlessly transitioned between words, finishing sentences for one another. “Twilight’s spell blew up in her face. I told her it was a bad idea.”
Apple Bloom crossed her forelegs over her chest and glared at him. “It was not...”
“...a bad idea,” finished Scootaloo, copying the same gesture. Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle was holding a hoof up to her horn and trying to get a spark going.
“Looks like when you girls fell down the stairs you started a thaumic resonance event,” she said. Then she tried to stand up, but couldn’t make it to her hooves without toppling over again. “Wow, that’s really weird. It’s almost like...”
“...some sort of disconnect between my field of vision and my inner ear, and...”
“Wait, why are there two of each of you and three Spikes?” asked Apple Bloom. The three of them sat in a circle, looking inwards. Slowly, in perfect unison, each of them raised their front right hoof.
“I think...”
“...I’m gonna...”
“..be sick.”
The three of them began to dry heave, squeezing eyes and ears closed against the onslaught of sensations. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle got themselves under control, but Scootaloo wasn’t as lucky and her half-digested breakfast of oatcakes made a reappearance all over the floor.
“Eww! I’ll get the mop,” said Spike with a sigh.
“Sorry, Spike,” moaned Scootaloo. “My brain doesn’t quite know what to do with six eyes and twelve legs, I think.” The trio turned their heads, taking stock of the damaged equipment and faded remains of the magic spell they’d disrupted. “Okay, I think I can fix this. I just need some time to work at it. Spike? Go write a letter to Princess Celestia and let her know what’s happened, okay? And hurry.”
“You’ve got it, Twilight. Twilights? Whatever,” he said offering up a crisp salute before hurrying away again. The mind behind the three filly bodies began to assess its options. Moving in multiple different directions at once quickly brought on a wave of vertigo, so she decided that her best bet would be for the three of them to stay close to one another and try to overlap their field of view as much as possible. Scootaloo grabbed a quill in her mouth and started to jot down notes on parchment while Sweetie Belle scanned the shelves for any texts that might prove useful.
Experiment interrupted, with unintended and unexpected side effects, she wrote, my own body has gone missing, but my mind seems more or less intact. Currently I seem to have taken the form of some sort of psychic gestalt spread out over three different subjects. I haven’t yet noticed any intrusive thoughts from the previous owners, so to speak, and I can only hope they aren’t lost entirely. Perusing some old texts on changeling hive minds may be a fruitful avenue of inquiry. Spike is contacting Canterlot ASAP, so in the mean time I should be alright if I confine myself to the lab until I can
“Girls?” called a familiar voice from upstairs. Six ears perked up at the interruption. Was that Rarity? “Girls, you’re going to be late for school if we don’t get a move on. I know you wanted to show Twilight your invention, but it will simply have to wait until later.” The basement stairs creaked under her hooves as she joined them downstairs, her confused expression turning to disapproval. “Is Twilight even here? What have we told you about going through other ponies’ things without permission.”
“Wait! You don’t...”
“...understand! Twilight was working on...”
“...I mean, I was. We were. It’s very complicated...”
“...and then we... er... the Crusaders accidentally messed it up.”
“The whole place exploded and...”
“...I’m trying to find a way to reverse it and...”
“...put everything back to normal.”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Really, girls, I know you don’t want to take that history test today, but you’ll need to find an excuse that’s at least somewhat plausible. Now all of you, out right now.”
Fresh panic copied itself across all three faces. “A...”
“...test?”
“But...”
“I haven’t studied!” they all finished together.
“Well you should have thought of that sooner. Come now, time to pay the piper.” Rarity’s horn glowed and the three found themselves suspended up in the air, tilted at odd, nauseating angles. They flailed and groaned as she carried them up and out of the library, struggling to escape her field to no avail. “I’ll carry you the entire way if I have to. You’ll be tardy if you don’t stop struggling, though.” All three of them stopped to consider that, three left eyes twitching in unison. Then they relaxed and quit fighting.
This was going to be an interesting challenge.
------------------
On the edge of Ponyville, just by the border of the Everfree forest, Twilight reappeared. “Whoa, how did we do that? I don’t know, she’s got a ton of magic. We could do all kinds of neat things. Don’t you think we should be focusin’ on getting her back to normal? Well I guess, if you wanna be all boring about it besides do you know how we’re supposed to do that? We’ll just have to ask somepony, like... you were gonna say like Twilight weren’t you maybe.” Twilight gestured towards the forest. “Well I guess as long as we’re halfway here we can go ask Zecora instead, what do you think? Agreed agreed agreed you don’t have to agree it was your idea don’t tell me what I can agree with and what I can’t.” Twilight screwed up her muzzle and chomped down on the fleshy inside of her own cheek. “Ow! Stop it, that hurts.” But Twilight had no intention of stopping. Instead she took off over the forest on an updraft. “You have to warn us before you do that!”
After the initial surge of excitement, Twilight settled into a more casual glide. A contented grin spread over her face even as her eyes were wide with terror. The top of the heavy canopy below rushed by as she receded further and further away from Ponyville. Three different thoughts occurred to them at nearly the same moment. “Is this safe? How are we going to know when we’re over Zecora’s? Do either of you know how to land? Do we know how to land? Scoots, I thought you would know! Well I mean I know in theory, seen the other pegasi do it a billion times. Is there a difference between landin’ in theory and actually landin’? In theory, there isn’t. Uh... and what about not in theory?”
Before they could find out for themselves, a thick slimy tongue shot out of a space between two branches and wrapped around one of their rear legs. “Ahhhhhh! It’s got us flap harder I’m trying to flap harder!” Despite her redoubled efforts, the tongue began to retract and pull them downwards towards the dark heart of the forest. Through a gap in the leaves around where the tongue was protruding outward, a dull-yellow, vertically slitted eye tracked the descending alicorn. “This is just like what happened in that book I found well how’d they get out of it there? I don’t know Rarity caught me reading it and told me not to go through the box under her bed anymore!”
They were pulled down into the trees before much longer, and came face to face with their assailant as it spun them around, wrapping them up even further and pinning their wings. Held there upside down, the three of them had ample time to get a good look at their attacker. It wasn’t too different from any of the warty toads or bullfrogs they stumbled across while playing in the local creeks sometimes, except this one had been blown up to the size of a small house. As a trickle of its saliva ran down Twilight’s face, they got a good look at the mouth they were drawing ever closer towards; a pink fleshy expanse lined with three concentric rows of jagged, serrated teeth. As it pulled them in towards their collective fate, six eyes evenly spaced around the taut membrane that made of the thing’s lips tracked their progress with an excited, triumphant glint. “One of you do something I can’t move the wings well do something else then Sweetie can you magic it? I don’t know how well you magiced before back in the library I’m pretty sure ‘magiced’ isn’t a word is this really the time for that? I don’t even know how I did it back there it was an accident well do something, anything just make it big!” Twilight nodded and took a deep breath. Just as the frog monster’s mouth closed over them, her horn began to spark.
-----------------
Even from as far away as the Ponyville schoolhouse, the overpressure wave knocked Rarity off her hooves. The force of the impact sent the school bell jangling wildly above them as she righted herself and turned to the three little fillies she’d been escorting. As one, the three of them sat up and groaned. “Oh my, what do you suppose that was?” asked Rarity.
“A forty terajoule release of arcane energy from the...”
“...direction of the Everfree Forest, which means at least a class five...”
“...if not six ecological disaster. Which I’ll no doubt be cleaning up.”
Rarity looked back and forth as the three spoke in turn. She chuckled to herself a bit; it was a real mark of what a strong friendship the three shared that they could finish each other’s sentences like that. “Apple Bloom, as much as you may want to get your ‘Magical Explosion Cleanup Crew’ cutie mark, I suspect they’ll ask Twilight instead. She’s the expert in these things, even if she is a bit bossy.”
“Am...”
“...not!”
With a small shrug, Rarity brushed that off as she passed them their lunches. “It’s very impressive how much she’s taught you all in such a short time. But that’s no reason to be late for school. Now in you go.”
Scootaloo opened her mouth to protest, but when Rarity’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly she thought better of it. The three sighed. “Yes, Rarity.”
As the three fillies turned and walked into the schoolhouse, Rarity brushed the dust out of her coat and checked her mane. What she found there made her gasp aloud. It was completely disheveled, all the effort she'd put into curling it just right wasted. And the boutique was a ten minute gallop away! If she hurried she could just make herself presentable for her appointment with the mane stylist later that morning. She bolted off with what dignity she could preserve while making a mental note to look into that whole 'magical explosion' thing later, if there was time. Twilight likely had it well in hoof anyway.
Inside the schoolhouse, three fillies were in the process of regressing to, well, their actual physical ages. The desk, the blackboard, even Cheerilee herself all seemed so much bigger from this angle. Rarity hadn't believed the truth, would Cheerilee? She cleared Sweetie Belle's throat and focused all her attention on making sure she was the only one speaking. "Cheerilee?"
"That's 'Miss' Cheerilee, please," she corrected. Then she looked up at them from the paper she had been marking and smiled. "Good morning! You girls are right on time. Go ahead and take your seats."
"Of course. But before we do if we could just talk to you for one minute about—"
"Sweetie." Her voice had a bit more steel behind it now. "I'm sure whatever it is can wait. It's time for us to go over our math lesson for the day. Don't you think math is important?"
Sweetie hesitated. "Well... I mean obviously it's incredibly important, but—"
"Then it's settled. Sit down, girls."
Heads hung low, the trio headed back to their row of desks, the last three to take their seats. It was a little easier to keep track of everything she was seeing and hearing through the three of them with all of them facing in the same direction again, and while Cheerilee began her lesson on basic multiplication Twilight's mind began to cautiously experiment and familiarize itself with this new setup. Now that the initial disorientation had mostly passed, it was actually an intriguing arrangement. There could be all sorts of tests she could run on this phenomenon! Did the connection have a range limit? Could it be blocked or severed by obstacles? What would be the consequences of doing so? Would—
"Ahem."
Three fillies returned their attention to the front of the room, to see Cheerilee looking right at them. And she did not look amused. "Are you three paying attention?"
"Yes, Miss Cheerilee," they answered as a chorus.
"Then perhaps you could answer the question I just asked you, Apple Bloom."
Oops. Twilight had been so caught up in her own head... er... heads that she'd entirely missed what had just been asked. A deep-rooted panic from her original student days began to well up as Cheerilee gave a disappointed sigh. "What is the product of seven times eight?"
"Fifty-six!" To Twilight's shock and horror, Cheerilee's displeasure only deepened. "Um... assuming base ten?"
"Thank you, Scootaloo. That is the right answer, but I was asking Apple Bloom."
Twilight tried to slap Scootaloo's hoof over her mouth, but it was Sweetie Belle who made the motion instead. This was harder to get used to than she’d expected. “Sorry, Miss Cheerilee. Won’t happen again.”
“I would certainly hope not. Honestly, girls, what’s gotten into you today?”
Twilight, with supreme force of will, managed to keep her You have no idea internal, but it was a near thing. As Cheerilee went back to teaching, the three simmered in the aftereffects of being chastised. Twilight wondered if the real Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo would ever forgive her. She’d gotten them in trouble with a teacher! Splitting her attention between the blackboard and just keeping her fidgeting bodies in check, Twilight wasn’t able to make much progress at refining control before...
“Alright, class. Time for your history test.” A collective groan went up around the room. “Put away your books and take out paper, quills, and some ink.” The other students complied with varying degrees of grumbling.
Apple Bloom gulped extra-hard for all three of them. This test could be on anything! The past was a foreign country, though one she’d visited by proxy on many a late night of reading. But if she’d known there was going to be a test, she’d have made more of an effort to brush up on it. Her knowledge of prehistoric Griffonia was spotty at best. Did she remember the old mnemonic for the order the first seven frontier towns were settled in? It was ‘My Hungry Princess Always Loves Key Lime,” wasn’t it? Or was it ‘Always Loves Lava Kake?’ No, she’d have remembered if it there had been a misspelled word. It would defeat the entire purpose of the memory-enhancing device, after all. But...
“Now, class, you’ll have until lunch to finish this, so take your time.” Cheerilee’s instructions locked her back into reality once more. “You’ll need to write at least two pages as well, so pace yourselves. The question is ‘What were the conditions and circumstances that led to the founding of Cloudsdale?’ You may begin whenever you’re ready.”
What, was that it? Twilight’s earlier problem abruptly flipped on its head, and now she felt herself just as intimidated by an equal and opposite concern. Two pages? You couldn’t even scratch the surface of the geopolitical situation of that century in so little space. And that wasn’t even bringing in the Thunderbolt Scandal and how it shifted public opinion among unicorns and made the redistribution of wealth necessary to make centralization of weather production on that scale economically feasible. Or how the burgeoning Workers’ Rights party’s influence had upended the original plans to construct it piecemeal and subsequently necessitated the development of some of the same construction techniques for large-scale cloud shaping still in use today. “Miss Cheerilee?”
“Yes, Scootaloo?” asked Cheerilee as she pulled a dog-eared paperback from her desk drawer, one Twilight had to resist identifying out loud as a week overdue to be returned to the library.
“So, we can only use two pages?”
Cheerilee smiled. “Well, you can go over that if you’re feeling a bit ambitious. Remember, you only have a bit over an hour and a half, so make sure all your points are well developed.”
“Yes, ma’am!” said Apple Bloom, with Twilight too excited to notice she’d slipped between speakers again. All three dunked their quills into inkwells with such enthusiasm that little droplets stained the tops of the pages. Soon the room was full of the sound of quills scratching away committing knowledge to the page for evaluation, and Twilight felt a bit of familiarity settle over her for the first time since that morning. She could only hope things were working out alright for the others, wherever they were now.
-------------------
They were not.
Twilight’s wings were still tied up by the giant frog-monster’s tongue, which luckily was no longer attached to any frog-monster. The explosive release of energy had made such a persuasive case that the atoms in its body would really be better served going off in their own directions at a nigh-relativistic rate that a circle of trees a few hundred lengths in circumference had been similarly compelled, and the resulting crater still smoldered. Caught in the crock of a branch and smushed against the trunk. One of her eyes was shut and that side of her face hung slack while the other kept twitching and pulling at it.
“Twy uh wigs,” she slurred, “uh am er stuhk.”
Speaking had been difficult since the blast, and Sweetie Belle hadn’t been heard from at all. Judging by the stubborn inability of the other two to pry the closed eye open and the occasional snore that interrupted their conversations (such as they were, with half a mouth between them) mid-sentence, they had come to the conclusion that using that much magic all at once had been more draining on her than it had on them. They were sharing the physical exhaustion, though, and it wasn’t fun.
“Who is it I see, stuck up in that tree?”
Twilight’s good eye went wide at the appearance of the familiar voice below her. Looking down, they found a rather amused striped face staring back at them, her back laden with bulging packs and a few oddly shaped leaves poked out around the clasp. “Zuhcrra! Zuhcrra! ‘Elp ee dow yah gah elp us geh duhn!”
“I acquiesce to your demand, hard as it is to understand.” Before they could wonder just how she planned to do that there was a sharp jab in their rump and the closed eye snapped open “Ow! What’s—” but that was as far as she got before she went plunging to the forest floor, a rough landing cushioned by a wide bed of sickly orange moss at the tree’s base. “What was that Zecora found us are you alright I think so what happened you magiced the frog I still don’t think that’s a really a word well word or not you exploded it and totally saved us yeah it was awesome good going Sweetie.” They turned to where Zecora was watching them with curiosity.
“The blow to your head must have been bad, unless you’ve finally just gone mad.” She sighed and shook her head. “I was such a simple fool; I should have joined that betting pool.”
Twilight stamped her hoof, sending a cloud of spores skyward. “We’re not mad well actually I’m a little ticked off after everything that’s happened today that isn’t what she means! We’re not crazy. Twilight cast a spell more like exploded a spell would you stop talking and let me explain? Well then explain less lamely I’m trying but you’re not helping just shut up and let me talk!” Twilight cleared her throat. “As I was saying I’m a stupid head that is not what I was going to say alright I’m done now you better be. Ahem. As I was saying it’s Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom, but we’re all, like, inside of Twilight and moving her around and stuff, and the real Twilight’s gone and we don’t know what to do.”
Zecora regarded them for a long moment, then shrugged. “No lies are painted upon your face. I knew there’d be oddness in this place. Not many things would cause that blast.”
“Heh heh.” Twilight gave her a sheepish grin and rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, I might have gone a little overboard showoff oh like you’re one to talk miss ‘I’ll fly us out over the Everfree without knowing how to land’ I told you I know how to in theory.”
The sharp snap of Zecora’s staff striking a rock and splitting it cleanly in half silenced the argument. “All that now lays within the past. On our way to my home I’ll collect a few things, and we’ll see what the future brings.” They walked along the path accompanied by the squawks and hollers of the forest’s other denizens, unseen in the inky blackness that was never more than a few paces away in any direction. None of them found many words to contribute to the cacophony, and every once in awhile Zecora would stop and examine a stem or blossom with a critical eye. Most she passed by, but a few she took a small portion or cutting from with a quiet incantation muttered under her breath. When the carved tree she lived within came into sight, she pointed out one last purple fern she wanted to stop by. “Head inside of my home while I gather this plant’s sporange; Perhaps it can return you to fillies white, yellow, and orange.”
She stepped off the path and took the hilt of a small blade in her mouth while the others complied with her command to go into her home. Not that they especially wanted to stay out in the oppressive gloom of the forest, but for two-thirds of them the zebra’s hut had always held a foreboding sense of the occult. That may have been why Twilight’s rear hooves weren’t quite keeping up with the rest of her as she walked towards the front door. When she saw the many grotesque masks gaping down at her from the walls, two-thirds of her gulped. “Aww, why’s Zecora have to live somewhere so creepy? What’cha talkin’ about? Ain’t like they’re real well what they are is real creepy oh don’t be such a little baby, Zecora’s helpin’ us out. Do you think she really can fix us? Ah dunno but ah don’t have any other ideas. Let’s just relax until she gets back.” They settled down on the low bed to await Zecora’s return in quiet, with a passing thought spared for the real Twilight. Hopefully she was making some sort of progress back at the library.
-----------------------
“Girls? A moment?”
Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo stopped short as the rest of their classmates flowed past them and out the schoolhouse door to enjoy their well-earned recess. Several were whispering to one another and comparing notes on the test from earlier that morning, snippets of half-remembered arguments and questionable facts. When the three of them were at last alone with Cheerilee, their hopeful smiles disappeared as they registered the look on her face. “Is something wrong, Miss Cheerilee?” asked Sweetie Belle, trying her best to recreate the look of perfect innocence she seemed to pull off so easily for Rarity.
“I should say so,” said Cheerilee, “did you really think the three of you would get away with such blatant cheating?”
Scootaloo’s mouth fell open. “What? I didn’t cheat on the test. Did I forget something? Leave something out?”
Cheerilee’s annoyance turned into confusion. “Leave something... Scootaloo, I told you two pages.”
“But you said I could go over,” moaned Apple Bloom.
“I meant onto a third page if you really needed to.” She gestured her hoof towards three stacks of paper on her desk. “Not seventeen pages each! A lot of these are things I know we aren’t covering in class. Heaven knows where you read enough to write three pages apiece on the fallout from a decades old sex scandal, of all things.”
“I can explain—”
Cheerilee, it seemed, wasn’t finished yet. “You might have gotten away with copying all this from... wherever it is that you copied it from. But it’s a bit of a giveaway when entire paragraphs are word-for-word copies of one another. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice that?”
Apple Bloom gulped. Maybe she should have made more of an effort to change up her wording, but trying to write three different papers at the same time had been taking up all of her focus. “I’m sorry, Miss Cheerilee. But I promise it isn’t what it looks like. Would you just listen for five minutes?”
She pursed her lips and screwed up her nose, and finally let an exasperated puff of air. “Very well. Apple Bloom, you may stay here and explain. You other two go outside and play. With other ponies.”
The three of them looked at her in horror. “What?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“You heard me. It’s nice that you’re such good friends, but a little time branching out wouldn’t kill you.”
“We haven’t established that one way or the other! It might kill me,” said Scootaloo.
With a sigh, Cheerilee got up from her desk and began to gently herd Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo towards the door. “I’ll take my chances. Now go on, have fun while I talk to Apple Bloom.” With a tiny shove that was probably a bit harder than was strictly necessary, she sent the two struggling fillies off towards opposite ends of the playground before returning to her desk. “Now, what in Equestria is going on?” Apple Bloom didn’t answer right away, instead blankly staring at the wall with unfocused eyes. “Apple Bloom?”
“Huh? Right!” said Apple Bloom, her focus snapping back to Cheerilee. Cheerilee frowned as Apple Bloom began to fidget and twist on the spot, occasionally taking a step in apparently random directions or looking off to one side before returning her attention to the teacher. “So Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo all came to visit the oh hi Twist, hang on I can’t talk right now.”
“What?” asked Cheerilee, “You’re saying that the three of you stopped at the library with Twist? When was this?”
“No, Twist wasn’t there, she’s just trying to talk to Sweetie Belle right now.”
“I’m not sure what that has to do with the conversation we’re having.”
“Oh, nothing. I’m getting to that. Anyway, I was in the basement setting up a spell when they got there, one that would transfer the subject’s magic from when vessel into a ball!” Apple Bloom flung her hooves up in front of her face and spun away. She groaned and started holding her nose. “Oww...”
Cheerilee, both more concerned and more confused than before, brought Apple Bloom’s face around with a gentle hoof under her chin. “A ball? What’s wrong? Let me see.” She pulled Apple Bloom’s hooves away. “I don’t see anything wrong.”
Tears welled up in Apple Bloom’s eyes, and she wiped them away. “It’s fine. Anyway the spell went wrong and now I’m Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo and Apple Bloom when I’m supposed to be—”
There was a loud bang as the front door slammed open to reveal Featherweight and a rather nervous Snips standing at the threshold. “Teacher! Scootaloo got hit with a ball and her nose is bleeding.”
“I’m sorry!” cried Snips. “It was an accident! I threw the baseball and yelled at her to catch it, but she just stood there and let it hit her in face.”
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt her, Snips,” said Cheerilee, her conversation with Apple Bloom forgotten for the time being. She gathered up several tissues and cotton balls from the bottom drawer of her desk. “Apple Bloom, we’ll have to finish this conversation later. But I want to have a word with your brother or sister when they come to pick you up.”
“But... but...” stammered Apple Bloom, but to no avail. A few quick steps and Cheerilee had trotted out the door to care for Scootaloo. Apple Bloom sighed, and when she was sure she was alone let out a very un-Princessly curse.
“Sweetie Belle!” Cheerilee’s shocked voice carried through the open window of the room, clearly audible even in here, “where did you hear that kind of language? That’s it, you go inside and think about what you just said.”
As Apple Bloom was joined in the corner by Sweetie Belle, both of them wrinkled up their noses at the sensation of phantom cotton balls plugging up their nostrils. She’d failed three tests, nopony would hear her out, and now one of her noses was bleeding. Could things be any worse?
------------------------
Deep in the Everfree Forest, Twilight was screaming.
She hacked and coughed as an impassive Zecora looked on, taking the now-empty cup from her as she tried to fight back the waves of nausea and revulsion that were trying to convince her stomach to reject the concoction that was fizzing away in her stomach.
“That recipe was my final hope, but it seems the answer is still ‘nope,’” said Zecora.
Twilight’s tongue was too numb from the potion, as well as the four that had preceded it, to reply. She just moaned instead of trying to form words.
“I wish I had your remedy, but none of my potions seem to be. Into the cure I hoped we’d have lucked. But instead, it looks like you’re all f—” her sentence was cut off by a pounding on the door.
“Princess Twilight?” asked a stallion’s voice from outside.
Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Who do you think that is? Are they looking for us? No they’re looking for Twilight but do they know that we’re not Twilight? We’d better pretend we are if he asks or they might throw us in the dungeon for fillynapping her body.”
Zecora opened the door, and standing there with the low light of the forest gleaming off two sets of well-polished armor were a pair of Royal Guards, both of them pegasi. “We’re looking for Princess Twilight Sparkle. Princess Celestia dispatched us from Canterlot with strict orders to bring her back with us. With that explosion a little while ago, this seemed like a good place to check.”
“Here present that’s me!” said Twilight. “We’re Twilight Sparkle yep definitely her and not three fillies using her body right not that and even if we were it was totally an accident anyway and not something you should punish us for.”
The other guard stared at her for a long moment. “...Well, we have our orders. We have a chariot to bring you back with us whenever you’re ready.”
“Seeing the Princess would do you well,” agreed Zecora, “she may have the power to counter your spell.”
Twilight frowned. “I guess we should go then I don’t see why not I don’t know, you think she’ll be mad? Nah, Twilight says she’s really smart and nice, remember? Yeah but that was before we broke her favorite student still I guess she’d know some way to fix this.”
One of the guards leaned over towards his partner. “Sarge? Is it just me or is the Princess a bit...” not wanting to explicitly give voice to his potentially treasonous opinion, he raised a hoof to the side of his head and made a few little loops with it.
His sergeant, after checking that the Princess was distracted with the conversation she was having with herself, gave the slightest nod in return. “You should hear some of the stories Former Captain Shining Armor used to tell. Best not to mention it. There’s a betting pool on how long until she goes full headcase, actually.”
The other guard looked back to Twilight. “I might want to get in on that.”
“...right, so it’s decided,” concluded Twilight, oblivious to the side conversation that had been going on. “Lead the way.” After bidding goodbye to Zecora, Twilight climbed into the waiting chariot while her protectors snapped themselves into their harnesses.
“Not to brag, but we’re some of the Guard’s fastest fliers. The trip back shouldn’t take too long,” said the second guard as they lifted off.
“Oh that’s okay wow these cushions are super comfortable well of course they are she’s a Princess so she gets to have all the best stuff ah think you mean ah’m a Princess remember? Oh! Right, we’re a Princess that’s what I meant.”
“On second thought, this might be a long flight after all,” grumbled one of their pilots.
After another hour of listening to Twilight remind them over and over again that she really was Twilight Sparkle, they touched down in the courtyard of Canterlot Castle where a unicorn with black horn-rimmed glasses and her mane wrapped in a tight bun stood waiting for them.
“Good afternoon, Princess,” she said, “Princess Celestia is in a meeting, but I’m sure she’ll be finished before too much longer. She’ll meet you in your office.”
“Right. In... my office,” said Twilight with a nervous, uncertain smile.
“There’s a big stack of paperwork for you to sort through while you wait. It has been some time since your last visit and there are a great deal of petitions waiting for you.” The unicorn turned to the guards and gave them a nod. “Thank you for bringing her. You’re dismissed.”
“Wait!” cried out Twilight. “What? Why wait? Because what if the Princess needs our old bodies here and we were supposed to bring ‘em with us? Wouldn’t she have said something if she did? Not if she doesn’t realize what the spell did we gotta go get ‘em and you couldn’t have thought of this when we were in Ponyville? It just occured to me okay I didn’t hear you say anything about it.” She turned to the guards. “Excuse me, please, but would you mind going back to Ponyville and retrieving three fillies? Their names are Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. They’re probably either at school or unconscious in my basement oh gee ah’m sure they think that’s totally normal and not crazy at all to be honest I think the ship may have sailed on the ‘not crazy’ thing ooh so instead of telling them we’re Twilight we just pretend we’re crazy do you really think they’ll believe that?”
“Well, ma’am,” interrupted one of the guards, “speaking from experience I’m pretty sure we will. So just bring those three fillies back here with us?”
“Yep that’s all no wait there’s one other thing too.” Twilight leaned over and whispered something into one of their ears and the guard’s eyes went wide.”
“Really?”
“What did you tell him to do? Don’t worry nothing too bad and since I ordered it you have to do it, right? Make sure you remember the look on her face Scootaloo, seriously, what did you do? I told you! Nothing.”
The guard let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, back to Ponyville then. C’mon, Private, daylight’s wasting.” They double checked the straps binding them to the chariot, then lifted off the ground again and flew back the way they’d just come. That left just Twilight and the pony with the quill and clipboard standing there, other than a few bystanders milling around going about their day-to-day business.
“Princess, if you would just sign here saying you’ve arrived. Bureaucracy, you know how it is,” said the unicorn with a nervous smile.
“Oh, okay sure no problem,” said Twilight, taking the quill in her mouth and absentmindedly scratching out a signature at the bottom of the form. She placed the quill down again and began to walk away, trying to figure out where Twilight’s office would be until the mare loudly cleared her throat behind her.
“Uh... Princess? Far be it for me to question your decision, but we actually need you to sign your own name. Not...” she examined the name Twilight had written once more “...Sweetaloom? Am I pronouncing that right?”
“Sorry whoops my bad,” said Twilight. She lifted the quill again and re-signed, carefully scratching out letter after painstaking letter. “All done?”
“Thank you, Princess. I’ll contact you as soon as Princess Celestia gets out of her meeting. The palace is at your disposal until then.”
Twilight nodded and walked through the door into the great hall, where an empty pair of thrones sat beneath a stylized sun and moon design on the raised dais against the far wall. She stopped short to gape, so suddenly the pony behind her collided with her backside before muttering an apology and slinking past.
“Okay, so where do you think Twilight’s office is? How should ah know? Yeah, she doesn’t even like us going into her office back in the library, much less here well that’s where Princess Celestia’s gonna meet us so we’d better find it yeah it sounds like she must know what’s going on and how to fix it or she just wants to stick us in the dungeon stop saying that you’re givin’ me the heeby-jeebies every time you do well excuse me for not wanting to get thrown into a cell.”
She was so distracted by the architecture around her that she completely failed to notice the pony walking up to her until it was too late. “Twilight Sparkle. I was unaware that you were in Canterlot today. Well met.”
Twilight spun around and found herself face to face with Princess Luna, who was regarding her oncoming panic with idle interest. “Princess Luna! We’re just well we just got here right just arrived now and Princess Celestia wanted to there was this spell wait don’t tell her that we were just going to our office to wait for her and don’t forget the paperwork right lots of paperwork to do but nothing that’s in any way suspicious about us at all.” Twilight clamped her mouth shut as she finished her rambling, silently cursing her luck.
“I... see...” said Luna, a curious eyebrow slowly creeping upwards. “Isn’t your office back the way you just came, though? And is everything alright?”
Twilight gulped. “All right of course everything is alright why wouldn’t we be alright? Now we need to go... be alright back this way so it was great to see you goodbye now!” She turned a hundred and eighty degrees and despite a few nervous stumbles managed to make her way to the first staircase she saw, not daring to turn around and see if Luna was still watching her as she climbed to the second floor.
Luna was, a small frown on her face. Something about the way her fellow Princess was acting nagged at her. She closed her eyes and replayed the brief encounter in her mind’s eye, trying to place her hoof down on what, exactly, she’d found so odd.
Then she saw it. A single syllable out of place, but an all-too-telling one. One that would change everything.
“By the moon and stars!” she exclaimed as her eyes snapped open. “Why did nopony tell me the Royal We was fashionable once again?”
Fifteen minutes later, Twilight had finally found a door adorned with her own cutie mark. After confirming it with a friendly, if very confused, maid she stepped into her office and breathed a sigh of relief as the latch of the heavy door clicked shut behind her. The inside of Twilight’s office was peaceful, if more than a little messy. Evidence of a half-dozen simultaneous crash courses in every aspect of governance were strewn about the room. In one corner spreadsheets listing the budgets and expenditures of all the agencies within the Equestrian government were splayed over every available surface in a fiscal collage of facts and figures. Plastered onto the ceiling over a well-worn couch was a map of Baltimare, criss-crossing red and blue arrows laying out the troop movements of a battle long gone by. None of it meant anything to the ponies taking it all into the first time, beyond a vague sense that disturbing too much of it would lead to entirely new galaxies of trouble they’d never even dreamed of.
“Okay, that could have gone worse could have gone a lot better too yeah but the most important thing is that we’re here and soon Princess Celestia will fix everything somehow so what do we do until then? We should practice signing Twilight’s name so something like what happened last time doesn’t happen again that’s not a bad idea but what should we practice on?” Her eyes fell on the gigantic stack of papers on the surface of the nearby desk, easily twice as tall as she was and constantly threatening to tip over. That mare out in the courtyard had said that Twilight had a lot of paperwork to catch up on. It didn’t look like she’d been kidding. “Hey maybe Twilight won’t be as mad at us if we help her do her homework while we wait.” She took a form off the desk and skimmed over it. “See? It looks like we just have to sign it at the bottom what’s it say ah dunno it’s all big words like ‘requisition’ and ‘reallocate’ and stuff well if it’s here it must be official and important, right? I guess just signing a few couldn’t be too bad right plus we might be waitin’ for a while.” She grabbed a quill in her mouth, and after a quick dip in the nearby inkwell began signing papers as quickly as she could.
----------------------
The three fillies being controlled by the real Twilight Sparkle were not having a very good day.
Scootaloo kept breaking out in hacking coughs when she accidentally forgot not to try breathing through the bloody tissues wedged into her nostrils. Sweetie Belle occasionally smacked her lips and scraped the surface of her tongue trying to purge the taste of the bar of soap she’d had the inside of her mouth washed out with. And Apple Bloom sat staring into the corner on a hard and uncomfortable stool, pointed dunce cap adorning her head, after a polite discussion about whether their science lesson about electricity was ‘littered with oversimplifications and inaccuracies’ had grown a bit heated. In her defense, lighting Cheerilee’s mane on fire like that had been an accident. Mostly. The three of them were tired, irritable, and fighting the combined effects of three building migraines at the same time from the stresses of controlling three bodies.
So of course, that would be when two members of the Royal Guard showed up to arrest the three of them.
“No, ma’am,” the more patient of the two explained to a rather perturbed Cheerilee, “they aren’t being put in jail or charged with a crime, but the royal edict requiring the three of them to appear before Princess Sparkle is compulsory. We do need to bring them to Canterlot with us.”
“These three have made a complete hash out of this class today. Believe me, nopony understands better than Twilight Sparkle would that they need to serve their detentions before they’re going anywhere.”
“I’m sorry. We have our orders, and we’ve already been out here twice today. I’m sure you can take it up with the Princess when she gets back from her visit.”
“I’m sure Twilight has a good reason, Miss Cheerilee,” said Sweetie Belle. The glare she received in return sent shivers down her spine. Obviously Twilight would have to find some way to make this all up to her post haste, or the real Crusaders were going to be in for a rather unpleasant rest of the school year.
“...I suppose I don’t have much of a choice then,” said Cheerilee, albeit grudgingly, “but you let Twilight know she’ll be getting an earful from me as soon as she’s back.”
“I’m sure the Princess wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll get out of your mane and let you get back to teaching.” The three fillies obediently hopped out of their seats and trotted over to the pair of guards. “Load up into the chariot outside, girls. No need to keep the Princess waiting.”
The other guard frowned and nudged his companion in the side. “Sarge... there’s the other thing... I mean, orders are orders.”
The first guard sighed. “Right, I’d tried to forget. Which one of you is named Diamond Tiara?” Diamond Tiara raised a foreleg. “Also by royal edict of Princess Twilight Sparkle, your name for the rest of the day is...” he sighed and pressed a hoof to his forehead as he muttered a quick prayer for strength, “Dumb Jerk With A Stick Up Her Plot.”
“What?” cried out Apple Bloom, Sweetie Bloom, Diamond Tiara, and Scootaloo all in unison. It was hard to tell who was more shocked.
The guard didn’t dignify that with anything other than a sigh as he herded his three charges out the door. “I hate pulling Ponyville duty,” he muttered to himself as they boarded the chariot.
As they took off, Sweetie Belle breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the nightmare was coming to a close. “Okay, so I’m going to need a full report on the exact situation with the Princesses. Is Twilight safe? Somewhere contained? Did Celestia get my letter?”
“Sorry, kid. That stuff’s above your pay grade. All we can tell you is that we’re taking you to Princess Sparkle.”
“But... but...” stammered Apple Bloom, “but I can help! I’m the only one here who knows what’s going on.”
Instead of answering her directly, the older guard turned to his subordinate. “Heh. They’re so cute at that age when they think they know what they’re talking about. I remember when Sea Foam decided she was ‘in charge’ for a day, drove Misty up the wall.”
“I’m just happy when Geode sleeps through the night. Nothing worse than coming home after a double shift and getting woken up an hour later when he starts to cry.”
“No, seriously,” said Scootaloo, “I have potentially vital intelligence about what’s happening here that you really need to listen to.”
“That’s nice, hon, but the grown-up ponies are talking now. Yeah, I remember those nights. Sea Foam mostly stopped by the time she’d turned two. Speaking of, when’s your little guy’s birthday? It’s coming up soon, right?”
“Two weeks from Saturday. You free that afternoon for some BBQ? I grill a mean eggplant.”
“You know, I’m really starting to feel like the adults in this town have a major problem with not taking younger foals seriously when they try to tell them things.”
“I’m free that day. I’ll run it by Misty. Want me to bring a six-pack? I’ve got a cousin who microbrews his own stuff.”
“That’d be great, Sarge. Thanks.”
The wind whipping past the guards’ ears as they flew and their ongoing conversation meant that the three screams of frustration behind them went unremarked upon and mostly unnoticed.
-----------------------
The knock on her office door roused Twilight just as she was finishing up the last few papers. She’d mastered her name after a couple false starts, and Sweetie Belle had even gotten pretty good at signing things with her magic. Nopony would suspect she wasn’t really Twilight Sparkle. And it turned out that this whole ‘being the Princess’ thing was way easier than they’d ever thought!
Twilight walked over to the door and opened it to find the mare from earlier waiting for them there. “Princess, the guests you requested be brought to the palace have arrived. Oh, and I ran into Princess Celestia on my way over. It seems she’ll meet you there as well. Would you mind if I walked over with you? I have a new tax proposal I’d like to discuss.”
Not trusting themselves to keep their composure or disguise in a long discussion about taxes, Twilight just trotted along behind her occasionally nodding or making a ‘hmm’ noise with a thoughtful look on her face. Seriously; easiest job ever. The facade lasted long enough to get them to the courtyard, and at the sight of their three real bodies climbing out of the chariot they burst into a happy grin.
“We’re here we’re saved we’re not dead!” she shouted, rushing over to them. She leaned down and whispered into Sweetie Belle’s ear. “One of you is the real Twilight, right?”
“I am.”
“Me too.”
“We all are.”
Twilight blinked a few times. “So ah guess you’ve had a weird day too then?”
“Um, Princess? Not to be a pest, but did you have a final decision on those tariffs?”
Scootaloo sighed. “Just go ahead and leave it on my desk, Plumed Quill. I’ll... Twilight will give you an answer by this evening.”
Plumed Quill looked down at her, confused. “Have we met?”
“Oh, is that your name? Plumed Quill?” asked Twilight.
“You don’t... I’ve been your assistant for nearly six months and you... you don’t even...”
“You’ll have to forgive Princess Sparkle,” said a new and instantly welcome voice from the doorway. Princess Celestia smiled beatifically at the assembled ponies. “She’s not quite herself today. If the four of you would follow me, please? Luna is making a few last-minute preparations in the library now that I’ve explained things to her.”
Twilight and the three fillies couldn’t dash after her fast enough.
“Did you get Spike’s letter?”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Can you fix me?”
“Easy! Easy there, Twilight. At least I presume it’s Twilight I’m speaking to?” asked Celestia. Apple Bloom nodded. “Well, thank goodness you didn’t have three mouths when you were my student. I’d never have gotten a word in edgewise between all your questions,” she said with an amused twinkle in her eye, “still, I imagine you’d prefer your old body back.”
“So would we yeah I want four hooves of my own again ah don’t wanna be in a body Scootaloo can send into the air whenever she wants hey I was a great flier ya almost got us eaten by that frog-thing how is that my fault?” said Twilight.
“Calm down, girls,” said Sweetie Belle, “I’m sure the Princess has a spell to switch us right back.”
“Ah... it’s a bit more complicated than that, actually,” said Celestia with a small frown that sent a little shiver up Scootaloo’s spine.
“Complicated how?”
“Well, this isn’t an unheard of side effect of the sort of magic you were using,” Celestia began as she passed through an atrium. The door to the library was just ahead. “The complication sets in with some of the lingering ambient magical energies twisted between you. It makes a direct reversal of the swap between two subjects unacceptably dangerous until they dissipate.”
“So we’re stuck like this?” asked Twilight. “Ah don’t wanna be stuck bein’ a third of a Princess yeah Rarity will kill me if I get to be a Princess and she doesn’t how long until the energy thingies go away?”
“Quite a while,” said Celestia as she pushed open the door. Inside the library teams of ponies were pushing shelves to one side to leave a wide space in the center of the room, while Princess Luna was slowly inscribing the inner ring of a truly massive magical circle with four smaller ones divided around it, one lined up with each of the four cardinal directions. “If we wait for the energy to dissipate on its own, at least a decade.”
“Believe us,” said Luna, without looking up from her notes, “Tia and I found that out the hard way.”
“A decade?” asked Apple Bloom.
“A decade?” repeated Sweetie Belle.
“I can’t do this for a decade, Princess!” said Scootaloo. She leapt over to Celestia and hooked a foreleg through the torus of regalia around her neck, tiny wings buzzing as she tried to press her face as close to Celestia’s as possible. “You have to fix this before that. You have to! I did puberty once, I am not going through that three more times!”
“Relax, Twilight.” Celestia gently dislodged her grip with her magic and lowered Scootaloo, well on her way to hyperventilating, back down to the floor. “As I said no two bodies, and the three fillies you’re occupying right now can effectively be treated as one, can swap more than once. So you’ll simply need to swap with others.”
“But I can’t just swap with anypony. They’d have to be... an...” Sweetie Belle trailed off.
“An alicorn,” Luna finished for her. “How lucky for you that we happen to have two others on hoof. But let me warn you, Twilight, such boons are not granted lightly even to those we count as a dear friend such as yourself. The favor you ask of us, from one Princess to another, carries with it a terrible debt. A price set long ago.”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “You’re such a drama queen, sister. But yes, Twilight, the general going rate is that you’d cover court for one day for each one of us. It’s always been how we repaid favors to one another.”
Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow. “So cover one session each of the Day and Night Court in exchange for not being split in three for the next decade? Yeah, I think I’ll take that deal.”
“Huzzah! Long weekend for us!” declared Luna with a wide grin. “I see no reason to delay any longer. May we have the room please?”
The other ponies who had been helping with the preparations filed out, leaving just the six of them. The three Crusaders squeezed into one of the smaller circles while the three alicorns each took their own. “So, uh, how are we going to do this if no two of us can switch twice and Twilight’s already switched with the three of us?” asked Twilight.
“You needn’t do anything. Simply remain where you are and my sister and I will handle the spellwork,” said Luna. Then she turned to the three fillies. “First, Twilight and I will exchange our current bodies. Prepare yourself.” Without waiting for an answer, Luna’s horn began to glow as she chanted an incantation from ancient times and power surged through the room. The others blinked until their vision cleared once more.
“Did it work?” asked Twilight.
Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo blinked and examined their hooves. “The us...”
“...has been...”
“...tripled!” they announced with three broad grins.
“What an odd...”
“...sensation. Twilight, how...”
“...do you feel?”
“Much better,” said Luna from her quarter of the circle. “Mostly just happy to be one pony again.”
“Yes, I can...”
“...see how this might...”
“...become disorienting in time.”
“My turn, then,” said Celestia. Much like her sister before her, Celestia began to call upon her own power. Luna smiled. While Luna’s incantation had been just a bit ominous and sinister, Celestia’s was a joyous hymn to the power of magic itself. It was almost a shame when it rose to its highest note and burst forth with the released power of the spell.
“Sister?” asked Apple Bloom, looking over at Twilight.
“Here,” replied Twilight.
“Ooh are we Princess Celestia now? Whoa we’re freakin’ huge do you think we could move the sun if we tried?” asked Celestia, turning around in a small circle examining the new body they were momentarily occupying.
“No!” said the other five.
“I think it would be best to put you three back to normal first,” said Twilight. “Twilight, would you mind my borrowing your magic for the next swap?”
“Of course not, Princess Celestia,” said Luna, “whenever you’re ready.”
Twilight had on occasion (though she’d never admit it if asked) practiced casting spells in front of a mirror just to see what it looked like. But to see Princess Celestia’s millennia of skill brought to bear on her own power, to see just what a true master of spellcraft could do with the same tool she wielded every day, was on another level entirely. The spell she’d cast earlier this morning had pushed to what she thought was the very limit of her ability, but here was her own body being guided by another who made it look almost effortless.
She had a long way to go, that much was certain. But just as certain was that she had both the time and the guidance to get there someday.
Once more the magic flowed, then ebbed. “A success, I think,” said Celestia. “Hmph. This body has definitely grown older since the last time I borrowed it. No wonder the Royal Physician insisted upon a healthier diet for you, sister.”
Whatever counter Twilight was planning was interrupted by the three voices talking over one another from the other circle. “We’re back! Wow, I never thought I’d appreciate being able to blink my own eyes this much,” said Scootaloo, wriggling and shifting as she tested her control.
“Ooh! Do yah think we mighta gotten Body Hopping cutie marks?” asked Apple Bloom. The others gasped and spun around to check, only to find their hindquarters just as blank as before. “Ah well. Maybe next time.”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” admonished Luna. She turned to Celestia and Twilight for support, only to see them both grinning at her with horns aglow. Then, for the third time that day, she was yanked out of her own body and promptly found herself across the circle from where she’d been a moment ago. But this time she felt right at home.
“Well, that’s the hard part over with then,” said Celestia. “Now just one last swap and... Tia? Where are you going?”
Twilight looked back and saw that Luna had left her circle and was trotting for the door. “All this casting’s made me a bit peckish, and the raspberry cheesecake Amuse Bouche made for this evening is one of my favorites. I thought I’d have a few pieces.”
“But sister, what of your diet?” asked Celestia.
“Well, Luna,” said Luna, “if you think about it, until we swap back it’s really your diet. I’m sure your figure can withstand a few indulgences.” She reached the door, turned her head back to the gaping Celestia, and smirked. “Be a dear and go get a bit of exercise for me, would you? My trainer feels I need a bit more physical exertion.”
The door closed before Celestia could say anything, leaving her fuming and muttering to herself while Twilight and the Crusaders looked on. A moment later it opened again to reveal Plumed Quill. “Princess Celestia? Princess Twilight? I saw Princess Luna leaving a moment ago, are you all finished?”
Twilight opened her mouth to correct her, but Celestia spoke first. “Yes. Yes we are. I was just exchanging a few pleasantries with Twilight Sparkle. Who as you know used to be my, Princess Celestia’s, student.” Her nose wrinkled up for a second, then she plastered on a slightly more manic version of Celestia’s usual smile.
“Well, uh, of course...” said Plumed Quill, glancing back and forth between Celestia and Twilight. Belatedly, Celestia scooted over and hung a casual foreleg over Twilight’s shoulder, still smiling. “Anyway, Princess Twilight, I left that tariff report on your desk and took the liberty of processing the forms in your out box. I think Top Spin would like to see you at your earliest convenience about the round of press reports she just dispatched, she’s just outside.”
“Oh, Plume, before you go,” said Celestia, “what’s my schedule for tomorrow look like?”
“Let’s see,” she replied, flipping through a few forms on her clipboard, “it looks like you’ll be attending the opening of a new water park in Baltimare. Should be a fun outing.”
“And what does my sister have planned?”
“Princess Luna? Let’s see... it looks like she’ll be in meetings with the Waste Treatment Workers Union about the new sewer layouts. Booked pretty solid straight through the evening. Why?”
“Hmm...” said Celestia, tapping her chin as she tried as hard as she could, without quite succeeding, to look like she was carefully considering some problem. “It’s just that, you see, I just had a doctor’s appointment.”
Plumed Quill nodded. “Yes, I’ve notified the kitchens about your dietary concerns.”
“Oh, but that wasn’t the only thing,” said Celestia with almost indecent haste. “The other thing was... it was... um...”
Twilight dearly hoped Plumed Quill wasn’t paying enough attention to spot the way she was rolling her eyes. “It isn’t serious, is it?”
“Potentially,” said Celestia. She frowned and drew herself up to her full height. “The doctor said that for the next few days I’m to, uh, avoid getting too much sun.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the ensuing silence.
“Too much sun.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“You. Get too much sun.”
“Apparently.”
“The same sun that you control on a daily basis?”
Celestia shifted rather uncomfortably. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Constant exposure. And it’s so awfully bright sometimes. I’m afraid a trip to the water park is right out.”
“Oh,” said Plumed Quill. She pulled out her namesake writing implement and started marking things down. “Well, the park owners and all the foals will be disappointed that they aren’t going to be meeting a Princess after all, but if it’s for your health...”
“Nonsense!” declared Celestia, stomping a hoof on the marble floor with a sharp crack. “Luna will go. See to it that the schedule is changed so that I’m covering the necessary meetings tomorrow while she’s out. Oh, and make sure the meals they serve us are extra-light.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind? Those meetings have a tendency to drag on for hours.”
Celestia smiled. “Plumed Quill, I can honestly say that I don’t mind taking my sister’s place tomorrow at all.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you.”
“Please don’t mention it,” said Celestia, standing to go. “Seriously, do not mention it. At all. At least not until it is too late to change things back. Now come, I think we should go over the next few days and see if there’s anything else I don’t want to do.”
Plumed Quill frowned. “You mean that you can’t do because of your health, right?”
Celestia blinked several times and stared down at the assistant, momentarily confused. Then she blinked a few times more before realization dawned. “Yes, that’s right. Doctor’s orders.” Then, with a glance back at Twilight and a look that quite clearly read never speak of this to anypony, they walked away together.
“Twilight? Can we go home now?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Soon. I just have to make sure I talk to Top Spin, but that shouldn’t take more than a minute. Then straight home for all three of you.” She winced. “Actually, we might have to stop by the schoolhouse and talk to Cheerilee. There are a couple of things I really need to explain before your school day starts tomorrow.” The door opened, and an earth pony slowly walked in. Her jaw hung slack, and vacant eyes stared straight through Twilight at some point off in the distance. Her tan coat was a few shades paler than usual, as well. “Top Spin? Are you alright? You look a bit ill.”
Top Spin’s right ear twitched, and it was a moment before she locked her focus on Twilight. “Yeah, I guess I am a bit ill. At least my soul is. I just wanted you to know I put out the announcement of all those ‘For Immediate Release’ proclamations Plumed Quill brought me. Celestia forgive me, I did it. For my Princess and my country I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Twilight was as much worried as she was puzzled by the way whatever had happened had so frazzled the normally cool and collected mare. “Top, if something’s wrong you can always—”
“I quit.” Twilight was too blindsided to reply immediately. “I can spin any story, Princess. It’s my special talent. At least that’s what I thought, but I think some things are just too big. Or maybe I could twist it to work, but I’m not sure I’d recognize the pony looking back at me in the mirror the next morning. Do you understand?”
“Not really,” said Twilight.
“Goodbye, Princess. Maybe we’ll meet again, in another life. I’ll pray for you.” And with that Top Spin backed away from her until she’d reached the threshold of the library door before spinning away and taking off through the halls at a full gallop.
“That was kinda weird,” said Scootaloo.
“Yeah, it was,” agreed Twilight as she watched her ex-Press Secretary retreat. “I have no idea what she was talking about. I haven’t issued any proclamations in weeks; I’ve been much too busy with research.
Sweetie Belle’s eyes went wide, and met Scootaloo and Apple Bloom’s equally terrified gazes. “That... might not be entirely true...”
“Huh? What do you mean?” asked Twilight. When she caught the look on their faces, she felt her own terror rising as well. “Girls? What. Did. You. Do?”
“We were practicing signing your name earlier, before you got here. On some of the papers in your office.”
“You... you did... okay.” Twilight sucked down a deep breath and then slowly exhaled it. “This might not be that bad. What did the papers you signed say on them?”
“Uh... we didn’t really read ‘em,” said Apple Bloom.
Twilight’s eye twitched. “You didn’t even... listen to me girls. It is vitally important that you remember where you got the papers that you signed. Were they in the filing cabinet?”
“No...”
“Bottom desk drawer?”
“No, not there either.”
“They weren’t...” Twilight gulped. “Just tell me they weren’t from the big stack on the corner of my desktop. Tell me they were from anywhere except there.”
“To be fair, they were the closest ones to the quill and ink,” said Scootaloo. The others glared at her. “What?”
“Pack your things. No, actually leave them. We have to go. We have to go right now.” Just then, a deep rumble shook the castle to its very foundation and Twilight’s face went pale. “We’re too late.” She threw open the doors and was greeted with pandemonium in the halls, guards desperately trying to barricade the windows in time and shouting over one another.
“They’ve breached the throne room!”
“I’ve lost contact with Gamma squad! They’re gone!”
“They’re coming outta the walls!”
Twilight slammed the door behind her, eyes darting around the room for something, anything, that might offer the faintest glimmer of hope. But there was nothing, not against this.
“Twilight! What are they? Minotaurs?”
“No.”
“Diamond Dogs?”
“Worse.”
“Changelings?”
“Much worse.” The was a loud pounding on the door. “Oh Celestia, they know I’m in here.”
“Princess Sparkle! Buried Lede with the Canterlot Times. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Princess! Column Inch with the Trottingham Herald. What made you decide to dissolve the entire judicial branch of the government?”
“Why did you declare lands that are part of the Griffon Empire to be part of Equestria? Aren’t you worried that might lead to hostilities between our countries?”
Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow. “Wait... are those ponies out there?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, Sweetie Belle. They’re reporters.”
Then a hoof burst through the three-inch thick mahogany door, holding a somehow-undamaged microphone. “Princess! Any comment on how you chose ‘Tyrant of Magic’ to be your new title?”
Another foreleg burst through the door and wrapped itself around Twilight’s neck. “Does this mean that the betting pool is finally going to pay out?”
"Who's Sweetaloom? Is she your long-rumored illegitimate daughter?"
Twilight couldn’t answer, and the ponies outside continued to pull until the door frame gave way and she was yanked into the mob. Now that they’d claimed their prize, the chattering mob receded away from the three dumbstruck fillies as Twilight’s screams of “No comment!” grew fainter and fainter.
“Huh,” said Scootaloo. “I guess maybe we should find out what the punishment for getting a Princess killed is after all.”