Because How Could Science Ever Go Wrong?
Twilight Sparkle let out a shuddering sigh. Delicately, she levitated a lone handkerchief, already stained yellow with dried sweat, and wiped her brow for the two hundred and sixty seventh time that night. Slightly more focused, she set it down, and carefully retrieved the thermal probe once more. She had to record every detail, down to at least four decimals, or all her work tonight would be for naught. Sinking the probe in, she carefully watched the depth, praying she didn’t overpenetrate. It was now or never. She watched as the alcohol within rose, and rose, marking it down at every interval. When at last it fell off, she extracted the probe and allowed a smile to play across her features. Her magic seized the recorder beside her, and activated it with a click.
“Twilight Sparkle, experimental log, 01:23 hours, Monday morning. I’ve done it, I’ve achieved the impossible. They told me it was an art, that somepony as literal minded as I could never accomplish such a feat of finesse and—I am loathe to even say it—instinct. But I’ve shown them! I’ve finally shown them all! Er, that is, once I actually show them the cake. I haven’t actually—” Whatever else she was about to say was cut short by a crack like a million rolling pins descending upon a single skull.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Thundered the presence before her, the light from its arrival burning with the fluorescent glow of a million kitchens. “You know not what you do!”
“Wait, please, I can…” Twilight stopped, and squinted into the light. “Pinkie?”
“You may know my mortal vessel as such, yes.” The apparently former party pony descended from on high, the room filling with the scent of fresh bread and fine flour. “But make no mistake, you stand in the presence of Serah’lee, Guardian of all that is touched by the oven’s flame!”
“So, like, baked goods?” Twilight rubbed her chin. “Or everything burned in an oven? Would an oven mitt count? And would it count before or after you burned it?”
“Be silent!” Twilight yelped and covered her mouth, the great deity of all things wholesome and warm glowering at her with the fury of ten thousand ovens. “We are not here to debate semantics, though oven mitts are ostensibly within our domain. No! We come here tonight for you have transgressed against all laws of the culinary arts! You have taken what was once an expression of the pony soul, and turned it into… a formula.” She spat the words out as one might a stale muffin.
“B-but, I don’t understand!” Twilight glanced around frantically, hoping to spot some wires or perhaps a giggling Rainbow Dash. “Everypony uses recipes!”
“Just as you were given a recipe to use, Twilight Sparkle, but that wasn’t good enough for you. You did not trust your own heart to shape the dough, and so you turned to cold, dispassionate science.” She shook her head slowly, her bouncy curls waving with the melancholy sadness of an undercooked baguette. “Tonight, you have created an abomination, Twilight Sparkle. A cake that appeals without heart or soul. You have created the perfect cake, and thus made no cake at all.” In one hoof, she produced a rolling pin, pointing it at the offending confection. “Heed my words, Twilight Sparkle, damner of goods. If you do but one thing with that cake, let it be to destroy it. Destroy it, Twilight Sparkle, before it destroys you.” Then, as suddenly as an apple pie left unattended upon the windowsill, she was gone.
Instantly, Twilight seized the spray hose for her new sink, leveling it at the cake. As she held it there, however, her magic began to tremble. All month, her mind whispered, all month I’ve worked on this. It could revolutionize the world of cooking. Finally, there would be no more bad bakeries, no more bad cakes. There would be a perfect, repeatable formula for the precise blend of flavors every pony desires. I’ve captured happiness. Tears began to fill her eyes, and slowly, she lowered the hose. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”
Her eyes flicked to the side, where the glint of a lone carving knife caught her eye. Her research had almost been completed, but there was one last test to perform. Her tongue flicked out across her lips, even as Serah’lee’s words echoed in her head. Slowly, she set down the sprayer hose, and lifted the blade. Just one taste, and maybe then she could destroy it. Maybe it would even turn out foul, like they all said it would, and she could just toss it out the window with a sigh and a laugh.
All it would take is just one taste.
BUUUUUUURRRRRRRRP!
Twilight lay back on the floor, panting slightly. The last few—minutes, or was it hours—were a blur. A delicious, mind numbing, hoof curling blur of chocolate flavored heaven. It felt as though her tongue had walked the fields of elysium, or at least tasted of the sweet flour of its wheat. She licked along her lips, shuddering as her tongue swept up what little of the smeared frosting it could reach, and tried in vain to still her racing heart.
If this was the price of defying a god, she’d have to give Celestia a wedgie next chance she got.
“Oh sweet Celes” —she let out a delicate urp— “tia.” Delicately, she tried to roll over, her packed stomach sloshing dangerously. Were it not for the impossible deliciousness of its load, she might have considered heading to the bathroom for a good bit of soothing emesis. Instead, she staggered to her hooves, and carefully pressed a hoof to her mouth. “Oooohh,” she moaned, stifling a heavier uuuurrrp, “ohhhhh, I guess that takes care of breakfast.”
Still unsteady, she started to make her way to the bathroom. As content as she was to hang on to her gut busting meal, she still had to shower and make herself presentable for the day. She was a princess, after all, even if she felt more like a parade float. For a moment, that thought troubled her, until she remembered just why she’d been making the cake.
“Oh sta” —she stifled another demure burp— “stars. The arts and crafts festival.” The thought of wandering around all those stalls, more than a few packed with deep fried whatever-counts-as-food, set her stomach churning unpleasantly. Waddling a little faster, she finally made it to her shower, making a double take as she was reflected in all the shining walls.
“Ohhh, this is—” She couldn’t even finish before another urp slipped past her lips. Twilight looked pregnant, aside from the generous supply of frosting slathered into her fur. Of course, binging on an entire cake all at once was hardly dignified to begin with, but the tabloids would have a field day beneath sunlit skies and rainbows the moment they could pair the words “Illicit” and “heir” on their headlines. It wouldn’t even matter how fast she debunked it, it would be the talk of Equestria for months to come, and with the Ponyville budget proposal coming up, she couldn’t afford this kind of scandal.
“Okay, just” —her mouth opened wide in a particularly unladylike brrrraaaaaap— “just think Twilight.” She took slow, calming breaths, wincing as the act placed increased pressure on her stomach. She couldn’t go out like this, but she couldn’t call in sick or dodge the fair. That would wind up looking just as bad as an illicit pregnancy. If only she had more time to let it all digest.
The realization struck her so suddenly, she had to laugh, the gesture again interrupted by a belch. Blushing brightly, she shook her head and closed her eyes, focusing inward. She felt her magic rise to her command, and turned it back around towards herself. Transformation was one of the more rigorous schools of magic, but it hardly compared to temporal or spatial magic, and she usually blew through both of those at least once a week.
She felt a steady warmth suffuse her body, a side effect of the increased metabolism. Normally, she would have an image of whatever form she ought to change to already in mind, but trying to transform on a full stomach was rarely recommended. That was how accidents happened. Instead, she pictured herself, essentially running the spell in idle as she kept constantly transforming into exactly the same thing she already was.
After a few minutes, she felt the pressure in her gut lessen, and soon disappear, her tail flicking in luxurious satisfaction. She opened her eyes, and instantly gasped. “What on—” A gargantuan BRRRAAAAP echoed out, and she clapped both hooves over her mouth, prompting her entire body to jiggle in liquid waves. Technically, she had transformed into herself, just herself plus Celestia knows how many calories of cake and frosting. With the chocolate still smeared across her body, she looked like she’d gone after a bakery hard enough to make a parasprite blush. Carefully, she tried to turn and get a look at herself, whining softly as she watched her belly and rump wobble with each step. She was massive, easily twice her former weight and then a little more, all of it a lavender ocean of fat.
To make matters worse, she felt her stomach rumble, hungry again now that it had been so unceremoniously emptied. Already flushing like a beet, she stepped into the shower, and almost turned the handle. Almost. In the tiny space, the scent of the chocolate upon her hit her like a fist of pure decadence, delivering a vicious haymaker to her self control. Before her willpower had even hit the ground, she bent over and pressed her tongue to her own fur. With a groan that belonged in the depths of some tawdry romance, Twilight started lapping her fur clean like some massively overgrown cat.
This went on for a while.
When she finally stepped out of the shower, Twilight was theoretically clean. Which is to say, she was clean, but she felt dirtier than she ever had in her life. Part of her prayed that Spike had slept in today, lest he overhear the lurid sounds she’d been indulging in. Deep down, she suspected that this wasn’t the first time she’d disgraced herself, but she’d be damned if she didn’t protect his innocence as long as she could.
“Enjoying yourself?” She jumped nearly a foot in the air, her whole body jiggling like a turbo powered lava lamp. Landing with an embarrassingly heavy thump, she scrambled around, blushing like a maniac. In response Spike merely shook his head and sighed. “And you complain about my bubble baths.” Without further comment, he strolled into the bathroom and shut the door.
Twilight simply sat there for a moment, completely dumbstruck. Had their lives really gotten so odd that doubling her mass overnight didn’t even merit comment? As she dwelled on it, she had to sigh: Yes, yes they had.
As she strolled into the kitchen, her belly let out another complaint, prompting her to cradle its flabby curve with a hoof. “No! No more! I won’t even fit in my dress as it is!” She let out a huff and sagged against the table, yelping as it lurched to the side with a sound like crackling frost. Leaping away, she landed only to have more crystal crack beneath her hooves, prompting her to snap at the floor. “Come on! I’m not that heavy!”
As she said the words, however, she had to wonder. With a flash of her horn, she summoned a scale to her side, and gingerly stepped on it. She found her face growing hot as the dial swung just past a hundred, and quickly dismissed the scale with another flash of magic. As she stepped back on the crystal however, it let out an ominous creak.
“Okay, Twilight, why would the crystal think I’m heavier than I am?” She sat down, wincing as more of the crystal cracked. “It doesn’t seem to be actually shifting, more just… acting like I’m heavy.” Her eyes went wide and she squirmed uncomfortably. “Maybe it’s reacting to how heavy I think I am?”
It was a reasonable hypothesis, given the magical nature of her new castle, and its connection to herself. It also explained why it started cracking only after she’d become hyper aware of just how heavy she was. Taking a deep breath, she tried to center herself, seeking the stillness within. That was when her stomach all but snarled at her, and she became aware of just how hungry she really was.
“No means no!” She grunted down at her belly, but the rumbling persisted. Bit by bit, her will eroded as the hunger gnawed at her resolve. Soon, she found the formula dancing through her head, the specifications writing themselves into a simple conjuration. She knew all the details, she could magic one up on the spot if she wanted too, and that fact alone was like the largest, reddest button she’d ever seen in her life.
Like any good button, she pressed it without even realizing it.
Suddenly, there was cake, and she was eating. A part of her wanted to protest, but whatever its complaints, they were washed away by the first tide of succulent frosting. Moaning fit to make a smutty magazine blush, she inhaled the cake with abandon. Sweet, smooth calories rolled down her throat by the hundreds, each swallow taking her to new heights of pleasure. The moment she finished, she simply conjured up another, still sensing some empty space for her to fill with divine decadence. By the time she finished that one, she felt fit to burst, and yet she conjured up another, overwhelmed with the desire to feast.
Little did she know she was being watched.
Several minutes earlier.
Sunset Shimmer sighed, eyeing the crystal library before her with blatant irritation.
“I swear, that girl rubs it in without even trying.” Sunset almost turned around on the spot, but settled for squeezing the royal missive a little harder in her grasp. For a few seconds it simply crinkled noisily in her grip, until she’d finally vented enough anger to continue. “Just get it over with, Sunset. If she’s a jerk you can turn it against her later.”
Entering the library, Sunset didn’t even bother knocking, simply pushing in through the door. It was a public library after all, and she was well within her rights to enter. It certainly wasn’t a petty show of spite made in an effort to soften the blow to her pride. It was just common, non-anger-driven sense.
Once inside, the first thing that struck her was the silence. The halls were almost unnervingly empty, the new library apparently understaffed at its new size. She started to proceed deeper, her hooves chiming on the delicate crystal all too loudly for her taste. Even so, the musical tones of her steps weren’t enough to drown out the first sound she heard: a heavy, moist slurping.
Instinctively, Sunset readied her horn. She’d never liked the thought of being so close to the Everfree for precisely this reason. Who knew what strange, unholy creatures could just wander in your front door? Didn’t this town know there were Ursa Majors less than a league away?
As she neared the sound of unbridled gorging, she found her nerve wavering. It was such a liquid sound, the kind reserved for horrible, massive gastropods and annelids more than a thing of flesh and fur. Or stars and aether for that matter. Still, she pressed on, firm in the belief that driving a monster from Twilight’s home ought to be worth at least a million brownie points with Celestia.
And Celestia loved her brownies.
Sunset rounded the corner in one smooth, silent motion, and stopped dead in her tracks. It took her a moment to recognize Twilight Sparkle, her lavender fur caked in frosting, and her body bloated to truly significant proportions. Sunset had seen her share of pony body types, but at the moment, Twilight Sparkle was well and truly fat.
As Sunset watched, Twilight conjured a slice of cake, merely holding her mouth open and scarfing it down with gravity’s aid. Her hooves upon her titanic belly, she rubbed it slowly as she packed those few extra ounces of sugar and lard into her already straining gut, polishing it off with a noisy smack of her lips.
Sunset found herself in a state of shock. Here was her arch rival/nemesis, bloated up like an overfed cow, greedily stuffing herself on more and more cake. She found the entire sight enthralling in a way she couldn’t really explain. She’d always secretly loved fatter ponies, relishing the way they jiggled and wobbled against her own lithe flawless curves. It gave her such a thrill of superiority it made her mane stand on end.
“Having a little snack?” she teased, the words slipping out of their own accord. Inwardly, she was mortified, but outwardly she knew the key to controlling a situation was bravado. You might well be an idiot, but so long as you didn’t show it, it was rare you’d be called on it. There was no way now but forward.
“S-sun—” Whatever else she planned to say was lost in an indulgent buuuurrruuuurrrp! Twilight put a hoof to her frosting smeared mouth, trying to stifle the little show of gluttony, and Sunset’s heart skipped a beat. Everything was so surreal, it was like she’d walked into a dream. Somehow, she knew she had to go for it, here and now, simply because such a thing would never happen again.
“Easy there, looks like you’ve had quite a bit to eat.” Slowly, she sauntered up, her hourglass hips on full display as teased Twilight with a half-lidded gaze. As Twilight blushed her way from lavender to rose, Sunset reached out a hoof and traced it along her massive belly. “Really, I’ve heard of stress eating, but you must be a wreck.”
“Sunset, I” —again she succumbed to the gurgling pressure in her stomach, letting fly with an embarrasing uuuurrrp— “need your help.” Twilight squirmed a bit, her gut sloshing audibly as she did so. “I made the perfect cake, and now I can’t stop eating it” As if on cue, she flashed her horn and let another slice plop into her mouth, grunting and moaning around the sweet load of frosting as she forced it down.
“Oh, really now?” Sunset smirked softly, pressing her hooves into that massive gut. Almost lovingly, she began to caress it, feeling the packed weight beneath the flabby lard of Twilight’s new padding. This time, she’d been watching the spell, feeling the weave of magic through her own horn as it worked. It was a rare skill, magic reading, but she’d worked to perfect it ever since Celestia starting holding back her studies in the hopes of picking up a trick or two just by watching her teacher. Quickly, she tried casting the spell herself, Twilight’s eyes going wide as another slice of cake appeared. “Like this?”
“How,” —again she let off a rumbling buuuuuurrrp that made her blush to her eartips— “how did you do that?” Twilight asked, her eyes already fixed to the cake. Without the slightest protest, she opened wide as Sunset drifted it close, munching it down to join the several cakes already packed within her. “Ohhh, I’m gonna burst.”
“Sunset, wait, I—” She gave in to her roiling digestion with a titanic BUUURRAAAP that rattled the chairs and silverware through the room. As the echos faded, Twilight could only lay there and watch as all that food was forcibly processed into more fat, her body expanding prodigiously past what had already been a gross excess. What had before qualified as ‘reasonably obese’ quickly swelled to the level of ‘record setting’ as her gut sagged and her rump swelled with fat. By the time she was done, she no longer had a neck to speak of, or ground clearance for that matter, her hooves just barely reaching past her gut as it smooshed upon the floor. “Oh, stars, I’m a whale.” As if to punctuate the point, she unleashed a deep uuuurrraaaaaaaap.
“Mmmm, it’s a good look for you,” Sunset purred, her eyes glittering with a distinctly different kind of hunger. Her horn flashed, and there was another cake waiting for Twilight. For a moment, the already overweight unicorn tried to resist, but after only a single whiff opened wide.
“Why are you” —she stopped to swallow another slice— “doing this?” Twilight felt like she could burn up on the spot she was so embarrassed. A part of her had even transcended to proper panic, and might have succeeded in getting her to flee if she simply wasn’t so hungry. Filling an empty belly with an already impossibly delicious treat was simply the greatest feeling she’d ever experienced. Better even than when she’d finally finished the Encyclopedia Equestria. On top of it, there was something in Sunset’s gaze that held her pinned as surely as gravity, a wanting, a needing she’d never seen before, yet knew by heart.
“Mmm, I can’t help myself,” Sunset moaned, producing yet another slice to push into Twilight’s rapidly re-expanding belly. “Watching you grow and grow, stuffing down each forbidden treat without a single thought. It feels so deliciously bad.” Sunset shivered as she spoke the last word, her fur standing visibly on end.
“That’s…” Twilight felt herself growing hot, and it had nothing to do with her recent transformation. Eating, sitting, and giving in to her feral indulgences had awakened something within her. All her life, she’d reined herself in. In magic, in class. But now, she was cutting loose to the point of destroying herself, and she loved it. “More.” She said, the words feeling wrong but yet so right.
“Oh, there’s plenty more,” Sunset cooed, Twilight’s sentiments reflected in her eyes. She conjured more cake, and more, packing Twilight’s stomach to capacity, then helping her turn it all to fat again. The two quickly slipped into a rhythm, stuff and digest, over and over. Twilight’s weight exploded upwards, passing minotaur and manticore weight classes, sailing through elephant, to race towards whale and dragon with reckless abandon.
Every bite became another point weighing down Twilight’s frame, and other inch swelling out her middle. Her gut pressed into the floor, then swelled to either side, eventually lifting her hooves off the ground as her weight pushed well into the hundreds. Her neck disappeared into rolling stacks of chins, and her flabby cheeks came to dominate her face. It was only as her flanks swelled larger than whole ponies, and the whole of the castle began to groan and list, that Sunset finally brought her binge to a close.
“Oh, Twilight,” Sunset murmured, her hooves gently testing that impossibly massive middle that lifted her high. She could probably have passed for a wrecking ball, were it not for the generous plushness that lingered underneath every inch of her fur. Each breath came in a slow wheeze like the working of a bellows, her every labored pant scented with sugar and icing. With a playful grin, Sunset leaned up and licked a little frosting from her lips. “Has a big hungry princess had enough cake?”
“Sun—” Twilight simply belched hard enough to jiggle her entire body like a gigantic waterbed, and almost died of embarrassment as a direct result. Just as she felt ready to ignite, Sunset’s lips pressed to her own, the massive belch proving far more alluring than any words. Instead, Twilight relaxed, and embraced the gesture as readily as she’d embraced her appetite.
And then she remembered the art fair.
“Oh ponyfeathers.”