Author's Note
HAS BEEN EDITED!
Special thanks to Mr Good Guy, DarkDMan, silvadel, and Swashbucklist for their helpful ideas on how to lengthen this and make it better!
Also, thanks to CaptainBron3y, who did a reading for his youtube audience! He's reading the unedited version, FYI. Here it is, if you're interested!
Yet another random one-shot that's nothing but silly. As much as I enjoy writing longer stories, it's the little ones that seem to come naturally to me. The original idea came in part from my sister, who on this site goes by Parasprite Polka, who gave several suggestions over my shoulder as I worked on this. Enjoy!
A Mile in His Shoes...
“Now, this spell should let your consciousness separate from your body and move around freely,” Twilight said uncertainly, mentally double-checking all of her calculations. “It’ll be fine… I think.”
“If you say so, Twilight,” Spike said reluctantly. Understandably, he wasn’t terribly thrilled with the idea of once again being a guinea pig for Twilight’s made-up spells, but he did trust her not to let anything too terrible happen to him. With a look of concentration on her face, Twilight powered up her horn, and Spike felt an odd weightless sensation as his conscious awareness slipped slowly out of his body, along what felt like a pre-determined path.
Since the way was already paved, it was a simple matter to speed down the track. He assumed that this was merely a part of Twilight’s spell, making it easier to exit his body. Considering he was just leaving his body, though, it seemed like an awfully long tunnel…
He met some resistance as he came to a stop, as if something was obstructing his way out. After a bit of pulling and shoving, whatever it was was removed and pushed behind him, beginning to follow the same path he’d just come down. As he emerged into the open, he expected to find himself drifting unattached somewhere in the library, since that had been Twilight’s goal, but he was surprised to find himself in Canterlot, in a very corporeal-feeling body, sitting on a throne.
“What the-” he said, and suddenly froze and spun around, looking down at himself in shock as he realized how much bigger he was than usual. Had he grown into a giant greed monster again!? His surprise doubled when he realized that Princess Celestia’s voice had been coming from his mouth when he spoke, and that the aforementioned wings- appendages that he didn’t normally possess in the first place- were white, feathered, and attached to a very tall alicorn body. He reacted the way any young boy would- he screamed.
Meanwhile, in Ponyville, Twilight watched disappointedly as Spike stirred and began to move again mere moments after she’d cast the spell.
“I guess it didn’t work, then,” Twilight sighed. “Did I not fully account for the strength of the connection between mind and body? Do I need to power up the spell more so it will last longer? I thought I’d triple-checked everything!”
“Twilight Sparkle? What is going on here?” Spike asked in an oddly regal voice, pushing himself up into a seated position. He got on all fours and tried drawing himself up to his full height, but seemed dissatisfied. “Why am I suddenly so much shorter?”
“Spike?” the dragon asked slowly, looking down over himself as dread settled in his stomach. “Oh, what have you done?”
Meanwhile, Spike was nervously trying to figure out exactly how he had ended up in Princess Celestia’s body. The spell was designed to take him out of his own body, not deposit him in somepony else’s.
“The path!” he gasped suddenly. “It must not have been from Twilight’s spell! That was the path of the magic that sends the letters straight to Celestia! I stole the princess’s body!” Spike began to hyperventilate slightly. “Oh no, what if I killed her!? What if I squashed her soul when I came in here!? WHO’S GOING TO RAISE THE SUN!?”
It took him a few minutes to calm down. He finally stopped to think that the obstacle at the end must have been Celestia’s own consciousness. After all, he would’ve had to get her out of the way before he could’ve taken control. And if his hunch was right, Celestia had been shoved back towards, and possibly into, his body, which would mean that she was with Twilight.
“I have to get back to Ponyville!” he decided. “We need to fix this! Oh, but it’ll take a long time to get there, and Celestia’s supposed to be in charge… Maybe I can leave it to Luna without raising too much suspicion? Or maybe…” He thought a bit harder. “If Celestia really is in my body, then I can send her a letter!”
Since he’d been raised in Canterlot Castle for the most part, he knew his way around fairly well, so it wasn’t too difficult to find his way to Celestia’s study, where he fumbled awkwardly with a quill and scroll for a while before he figured out the mechanics of writing with his mouth, since he wasn’t completely sure how levitation worked. The writing was slow work, since if he went any faster his mouth-writing would be completely illegible.
It was only after he’d written out the letter that he realized that if he had no idea how to levitate things, something most unicorns could do, then he certainly had no way of knowing how Celestia used her magic to send letters. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any better plan at the moment, so he crossed his fingers for luck. Or at least he would have, if he’d been currently in possession of hands.
Assuming that the feel of the magic must be at least somewhat similar to how he sent them to her, he focused on recreating that sensation. Obviously something happened, because his horn lit up and the letter disappeared in a flash of light. He could only hope that that meant that it was on its way to Ponyville, and not that he’d incinerated it.
Meanwhile in Ponyville…
“What do you mean, what have I done?” Twilight asked worriedly, putting a gentle hoof on Spike’s shoulder as he shakily stood on two legs. “I tried to separate you from your body, remember? Oh no! Did I get it wrong!? Did I give you amnesia!? SOMEPONY HELP!”
“Calm yourself, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia ordered. “I do not have amnesia.”
“Oh, phew,” Twilight sighed, relieved. “Wait, since when do you call me by my full name?”
“Since I took you on as a student,” Celestia sighed, feeling a headache coming on.
“What was that?” Twilight asked blankly, not comprehending in the slightest, or at least not wanting to comprehend. Celestia was about to explain in no uncertain terms just how badly Twilight’s magical experiments had gone this time when she felt the most unpleasant sensation in the pit of her stomach and the back of her throat, followed by an uncomfortably strong gag reflex.
*BELCH*
A scroll of parchment flew out of her mouth in the form of fire and solidified into a letter, which Twilight quickly grabbed with her magic.
“A letter from the princess!” Twilight exclaimed.
“Actually, Twilight Sparkle-” Celestia started to cut in, but Twilight had already started reading aloud.
“Dear Twilight- hmm, that’s a bit odd. She didn’t use my full name, and her hoofwriting is messier than I remember. Maybe she’s sick! Maybe the only cure is hundreds of miles away and my friends and I need to go save her! Maybe- oh, I’m getting a bit carried away, huh. The spell went wrong. I kinda got stuck in Celestia’s body. Wait a second…” She glanced worriedly at Celestia, who nodded gravely. “We should probably fix that before Equestria falls to ruins under my leadership, cuz’ I’m not exactly sure how to make the sun go down… Just saying. From, Spike.” She turned to the small dragon with a fearful look in her eyes. “Princess Celestia!?”
“I fear it is true, Twilight Sparkle. The path that connects the two of us in order to facilitate the transference of letters must also have been the conduit Spike used to exit his body, the end result of which you see before you. Luckily, that path still exists, as we have just seen. It should be a simple matter of recasting the spell to return us to our rightful forms.”
“I can’t!” Twilight said miserably. “Not right away, at least! That spell requires a lot of magic, and I won’t be able to cast it again until tonight, at least!” Celestia sighed resignedly.
“Then that is how it must be. We will wait until your magic has sufficiently recharged. We will simply have to ask Luna to stand in as regent until I can return to fulfill my duties. We can send a letter back to Spike with instructions to explain the situation and try to stay out of trouble.”
As Celestia was just as unaccustomed to writing with fingers as Spike was to writing with magic, Twilight drafted the letter, which Celestia dictated to her.
“Crazy role reversal,” Twilight chuckled to herself as she finished the letter and gave it back to Celestia, who focused the same way she normally would and blew flames across the paper, sending it off. Despite the fact that he’d been waiting impatiently in the study for the reply to come ever since he’d sent it off, he jumped when the scroll materialized in front of his face, since he was used to a few seconds of physical discomfort in warning.
“So that’s what it looks like from her end,” Spike said thoughtfully, grabbing the letter and unrolling it. “It’s not nearly as uncomfortable. I guess this proves that Celestia got put in my body, then. At least I didn’t kill her… Man, this is messed up.”
Dear Spike, the letter stated. It is possible to return us to our proper forms, but Twilight Sparkle requires time to gather her magical strength, and will be unable to perform the spell until sometime later this evening. As this is the case, I request that you waken Princess Luna and inform her of the situation so that she can act as regent until I return. Signed, Princess Celestia.
He sighed and nodded to himself, beginning to walk off to find Princess Luna’s room. He wasn’t as familiar with this room, since Luna hadn’t moved in until after he and Twilight were already living in Ponyville, so it took him a few wrong turns before he found the door that he was pretty sure concealed the nocturnal princess. During his time getting turned around, however, he was left to his thoughts, and found himself somewhat irritated at a bit of information that he’d just now obtained.
It wasn’t exactly fair, that Celestia went through no physical discomfort when receiving letters, when for him it only got worse every single time. Better yet, Celestia knew exactly what he went though, being the one who’d created the magical connection in the first place, and yet still sent letters through him even when they weren’t urgent and could just as well be sent through normal pony post. By the time he’d finally located Luna’s room, he was stewing a bit. He knocked his hoof against the door a few times, and after a few moments a somewhat grouchy Luna opened the door and squinted at him.
“What is it, Sister?” Luna asked, suddenly looking a bit worried. Celestia never woke her up unless it was for something important. Like, really important. Like, more important than the kingdom being invaded by changelings important. Not that she was irritated about that in the slightest. Heh heh.
“Um, yeah, about that…” Spike laughed self-consciously. After a few minutes of explanation, Luna found herself sitting back on the throne, yawning, and internally counting up just how much Celestia would owe her after this mess was resolved. She hated being awake at this time of day.
Spike, meanwhile, had returned to Celestia’s study so as to be out of the way and out of the public eye. He lounged around boredly, trying to figure out how levitation worked as he waited to be returned to his body. He sent another letter to Twilight and Celestia to let them know that Luna had taken charge without anypony being the wiser of the situation, and felt no small amount of pleasure when he imagined Celestia going through the stomach lurch he always had to whenever a letter came through him. Maybe now she’d be more considerate about the frequency of her letters, and the importance of the content. Now that she knew how it felt… Only she didn’t, not really. He smirked as he had a ‘brilliant’ idea.
“This is going to hurt,” he said with a chuckle, trotting over to the desk where all of Twilight’s previous letters were stacked in a neat pile. “But who cares? That’s Celestia-Spike’s problem! Besides, I’m obviously just trying to help. Friendship is magic, after all. Being reminded of all the fun times she’s had with her friends should help her recharge faster!” He picked up a blank scroll and wrote out his hastily thought up excuse before sending it off with an ever-growing sense of power. Without further ado, he began sending off the stack of letters one by one, laughing in ever-growing hysteria and, as usual, not stopping to think too much about his actions.
*BELCH*
Celestia grimaced as the uncomfortable feeling came again, but was pleased when Twilight caught the letter and read out that Luna had assumed authority and everything was under control. She was preparing to wait in relative peace for Twilight to recover sufficiently when the feeling bubbled up again.
*BELCH*
“What in Equestria?” Twilight said, confused. “He just sent us a letter, we haven’t even responded. Why would he write us another?” She lifted up the scroll with her magic. “Dear Princess Celestia and Twilight, I thought that I’d try and help Twilight recharge her magic. Since ‘friendship is magic’, I thought that revisiting old memories may help speed the process along. Best wishes, Spike.”
“What is he talking about, ‘old memo-’”
*BELCH*
Twilight grabbed the new letter with a frown.
“This is one of the first friendship letters I ever wrote you!” Twilight exclaimed, confused. “Why would he be sending-”
*BELCH*
Celestia’s diaphragm was beginning to ache, and she sat down in an attempt to lessen her discomfort, though that didn’t help much.
“It’s just another friendship letter! This really isn’t going to help me charge my magic at all… I’ll write him a letter telling him to stop, just a minute.”
*BELCH*
Twilight pulled out some parchment and began scratching out words furiously, the quill flying across the page in her eagerness to put a stop to the princess’s discomfort.
*BELCH*
Celestia moaned pitifully, the sound escaping her throat against her will as she curled in on herself slightly.
“Got it!” Twilight exclaimed, sounding somewhat pleased with herself. She trotted over with her completed letter. “Do you think you can manage sending this to Spike right now?” Celestia nodded, forced herself into a seated position, and once again sent off the letter, hoping that Spike would take the hint and stop sending letters.
*BELCH*
*BELCH*
*BELCH*
Evidently not. Celestia was knocked backwards from the force of the letters coming out in such quick succession, and she curled into the fetal position as the pain wracked her.
Twilight watched helplessly as Celestia regurgitated all of the friendship letters that she’d ever sent, much like Spike had the day that Discord had first come into their lives.
“Wait a minute… he couldn’t be-”
*BELCH*
This time, it wasn’t a friendship letter. Twilight knew, because she’d been counting, and he would’ve run out of letters by now. She opened it and looked down to see the words written across it- much neater than his first letters had been.
“Dear Princess Celestia, your complaint at the unhelpfulness of my letters has been noted, and duly ignored.”
“Why that little-” Twilight exclaimed, her eyes narrowing.
*BELCH*
Now that you’ve received the scrolls from my end, you have probably noticed that it’s an extremely uncomfortable experience.
Celestia would’ve responded by saying that was an understatement, but all that escaped her mouth was a moan.
*BELCH*
Of course, if you had any observational skills you would have figured that out earlier.
“Spike, you can’t insult the-”
*BELCH*
I have also noticed, through observational powers of my own, that you feel NOTHING WHATSOEVER.
“He’s losing it!” Twilight groaned, putting a hoof to her head.
*BELCH*
So…
“He needed an entire letter to write ‘so’!? What a waste of parchment!” Twilight gasped. Celestia almost glared at her, but was interrupted by another gag.
*BELCH*
I’m sure you remember the incident with Discord when you sent all of Twilight’s friendship letters to her. Through me. Even though less than half of them were necessary.
*BELCH*
I thought I’d give you a little taste of what that was like for me. Not just that day, but every day of my life!
*BELCH*
Guess what: there’s a great big pile of blank scrolls right in front of me.
*BELCH*
… And I think they’re taking up just a little too much space.
“Oh dear,” Twilight said, paling slightly.
The letters with actual content stopped then, but blank scrolls continued to fly out every few seconds. Celestia was practically immobile at this point, curled in a pathetic heap on the floor. Eventually he ran out of blank scrolls, too, and began sending random books and old tax reports through. Whatever he could find in Celestia’s office.
Twilight and Celestia waited long, torturous as the unbearable pain stretched on for a seeming eternity, crippling the once regal princess and leaving her as helpless and destitute as the lowest lifeform in Equestria. The agony was tearing her apart from the inside, and she felt as though a thousand fire ants were eating her alive from within, their sole mission to devour her and leave naught but an empty shell. As each moment dragged on and new tortures flew out of her mouth, she wished for the end of time, of sensation, and even of life, but no reprieve was in sight as more and more worthless paper came out and joined the steadily growing mountain on Twilight’s floor. Consciousness became a prison, a torture chamber from which there was no possible escape route. All her hope for the future was lost, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could remember who she was, her whole identity being consumed in the fiery rage of the books and scrolls. The parchment left paper cuts on the inside of her cheeks, each a fresh battle wound letting her lifeforce leak out at a slow but steady pace.
There was a temporary lull as Spike searched out more paper products to send through, and Celestia gained enough strength and clarity of mind to begin making sounds other than moaning.
“Twilight, kill me now,” Celestia ordered in a croak.
“I can’t do that!” Twilight gasped in horror, her face contorting in an expression of shock.
“You must! For the love of Equestria, euthanize me, I beg of you!” Tears ran down her face, all decorum lost as she reached out towards the one pony who might free her from this misery. Twilight backed into a corner, trying to avoid the pitiful pleas of the being before her, a being who’d fallen so far in so little time. Celestia had almost managed to reach her and renew her begging when Twilight felt her magic return.
Sighing in relief, she immediately cast the spell to return her monarch to her body again, and watched in satisfaction as Spike’s body fell, uninhabited, to the floor. Both Celestia and Spike felt themselves being torn out of their bodies and flying back out onto the path.
‘No!’ Spike exclaimed, fighting the extraction. ‘I just found more stuff to send!’
Celestia sped along the path as fast as she possibly could, only to find Spike still clinging to her body. With no mercy, she tore him out and shoved him forcefully back to himself, reinhabiting her own body with a sob of relief. As Spike came back to himself, he curled up in pain on the floor.
“Uuuughhhhhhh…” he moaned pitifully. “This was a bad idea.”
“You think!?” Twilight exclaimed.
“I thought it would be Celestia-Spike’s problem!” he moaned. “But now it’s SPIKE-Spike’s problem!”
“You already learned that lesson,” Twilight huffed. “And what the hay were you thinking!?”
Spike just groaned.
Meanwhile, Celestia found herself resting peacefully, free from any pain, on the floor of her study, papers strewn around her prone form. When she realized that she really was herself again, tears of unadulterated joy ran down her face, the likes of which she hadn’t experienced since Luna’s return. The pain was over. She’d lived to create- or end- another day. She galloped as fast as she could into the throne room, where Luna was fighting the urge to nod odd. The young princess lost all semblance of fatigue when she saw her sister.
“Sister? Hast thou returned to thyself?” Luna asked. Celestia didn’t respond, simply glomping her sister and dissolving into a puddle of royal tears.
“I survived!” she sobbed, going limp in a stunned Luna’s hooves. “I made it!”
“So you have returned,” Luna said slowly. “What troubles you?”
“Never again!” Celestia sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Spike!” She suddenly stood up straight. “I must send a letter to Twilight at once.”
“Alright?” Luna said hesitantly. “But we are going to sleep. We are not meant to be up at this time of day.”
Celestia galloped to her study and wrote out a letter, trying to summarize everything that she was feeling into one succinct letter. In a careful burst of magic, the scroll dissolved into magic and sped out the window, this time to a lightly different destination than normal.
Although she was extremely displeased with Spike’s lack of self-control and his need for petty revenge, Twilight was also smart enough to realize that Spike was in pain, and cut him some slack. She even lowered her standards enough to allow him to wallow in self-pity and eat all the ice-cream he wanted as he worked towards recovery. All of a sudden a flash appeared in her peripheral vision, and a scroll appeared, falling softly to the ground. Intrigued, Twilight picked it up with her magic.
“It’s a letter from the princess!” Twilight exclaimed.
“WHAT!?” Spike bellowed, dropping the spoon that was halfway to his mouth. “You mean she could have just been sending them straight to you this whole time!? Why did I ever have to suffer!?”
“Um… Dramatic effect?” Twilight laughed self-consciously, trying not to let on that it had been her idea, when she was a filly. Celestia had been hesitant to alter Spike’s natural magic in such a way, but Twilight was insistent. She coughed slightly, unrolled the letter, and read it out loud.
“Dear Twilight Sparkle, I thank you most humbly for returning me to my body. Give my utmost sympathy and regard to Spike for his current state of discomfort, and please inform him that in light of my recent experiences I will no longer be sending letters through him, no matter how much cooler a delivery system you think it is. Please inform Spike that he is to be awarded a knighthood for putting up with such trauma for so many long years without complaint. Your princess, Celestia.”
“A knighthood? Because I delivered letters?” Spike asked, perking up a bit. Old daydreams of an older, more heroic version of himself saving his beautiful damsel in distress, Rarity, from danger entered his mind, and he grinned. “Man, so worth it! Maybe I’ll finally have a chance with Rarity, now! I should switch places with other ponies more often, if this is how it turns out! Hey, do you think if I switched places with Pinkie I could learn how to summon the party cannon? Or maybe if I was Rainbow I could do a Sonic Rainboom! Let’s do it again!”
Twilight sighed, inwardly bemoaning the fact that Spike couldn’t seem to learn from past mistakes, when another letter appeared. Spike, in a good mood, picked it up for her and read it.
“P.S. While I applaud his patience thus far, his actions during this particular incident cannot be overlooked, and I feel he must also be disciplined. Therefore, I expect him to come to Canterlot and put my office back in order before the week is out. Some of those old documents are important for our diplomatic relations with Saddle Arabia, and I would prefer to avoid conflict. I will send guards to escort him here tomorrow, and he may return when he is finished,” Spike finished, growing less enthusiastic throughout the whole recitation. “Ah, man!” He turned to look at the mountain of haphazardly-stacked scrolls and papers with dread.
“Well, it’s your own fault,” Twilight said, shaking her head. Spike sighed, but nodded.
“I guess I’ll get a head start by separating the actually important stuff from the blank scrolls and dumb one-sentence letters,” he decided, beginning by picking up the last few letters that Celestia had sent. One particular sentence caught his eye. “Hey, Twilight?”
“Yes, Spike?” Twilight asked.
“What did Celestia mean by ‘no matter how much cooler a delivery system you think it is’?” Twilight winced.
“Well, it may have kinda sorta been my idea…” Twilight said nervously. “I was just a filly, and I thought it was more interesting to watch than having it appear out of nowhere above my head…”
“...”
“Sorry about that.”
“I got revenge on the wrong pony,” Spike said flatly.
“But hey, you got knighted!” Twilight siad hurriedly, backing up as an aura of irritation seemed to build up around Spike. “And I’m sure Rarity will be really impressed! Only thing better than a knight is a prince, as far as she’s concerned, and she’s already decided that Blueblood’s a jerk, so-”
“Relax, Twilight,” Spike said with a deceptively calm smile. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“Oh,” Twilight sighed in relief.
“You really think my fire breath is cool?” he asked.
“Yeah, well. It’s not something you see everyday,” Twilight laughed a little, still nervous.
“Well, if you think it’s so cool…” Spike said darkly, and promptly trotted through the open doorway into the main room of the library. Twilight followed him slowly.
“Uh, Spike, what are you- NO NOT THE BOOKS!” Twilight shrieked as he inhaled and prepared to blast an entire shelf of books to ash. She hurriedly grabbed all the books in the library with her magic and transported them into neat stacks in the basement, which was then locked. “SPIKE!”
“Um… yes?” Spike said, suddenly realizing that ticking Twilight off when she was in charge of him really wasn’t the best plan.
“As soon as you get back from Canterlot, you’re grounded for three weeks. No ice cream.”
“Aw, come on, Twilight-”
“No gems.”
“Hey, that’s not fair!”
“No going to see Rarity.”
“NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Spike yelled, screaming his misfortune to the heavens.
“Maybe this time you’ll actually learn your lesson,” Twilight huffed.
Well, she could dream, couldn’t she?
