It was kind of warm.
Now it was a bit warmer.
Now it was pretty warm.
It couldn't be this warm unless....
Twilight awoke with a start at her desk, sunlight flooding her personal library/observatory/dormitory high it the towers of Canterlot. Princess Celestia had chosen this room for Twilight specifically so that she could wake up her faithful student with the sun. All it took was a sunbeam in the right place to jolt Twilight awake into a frenzy.
Mumbling, Twilight glanced at the clock, whose intricately carved and molded hands pointed at an ominous time: 6:45. She glanced sleepily at the maelstrom of notes and paper and books that surrounded her, the mess came alive, rearranging itself into something presentable. Twilight kept up the effort for a few more seconds before collapsing again onto her desk, and the swirl of paper surrounding fluttered to the floor like a swarm of Breezies without a wind.
It was really warm.
Now it was too warm.
Okay, now this is just uncomfortable.
Ouch, now its hot.
Toaster hot.
Concrete Texas marching band field in August hot.
What's a Texas?
Twilight yelped as a prick of pain bit her back, jumping up out of her chair and looking at the time. She grumbled, "Okay, so fifteen minutes of night sleep is not conducive to early learning." She made a note on her to-do checklist to record the effects of differing amounts of sleep on the ability to wake up in the morning, her horn flickering as she struggled to concentrate enough to write. Surveying her horribly mangled hornwriting, her eye caught the time, 7:30.
"Oh no." whispered Twilight as her ears flattened against her head in fear, "I'm late for breakfast!"
She leapt out of her seat at her desk, dashing into the kitchen. A cabinet door flew open at her telekinetic command, and a steady stream of oats began to make their way into Twilight's mouth, perfectly spaced to allow her to properly chew her food for at least five seconds before swallowing and allowing the next oat into her mouth.
With breakfast currently being handled, Twilight ran over to Spike, her...brother? Son? #1 Assistant? She shook him, messing up his spines in the process.
Spike, like the young dragon he was, mumbled, "It's too early" and turned around, drawing his blanket further around himself. Twilight was forced to pick up the grumpy dragon and dump him in front a bowl of sapphires, which instantly caused him to perk up.
With that, Twilight set a brush to her mane and tail to comb it into her preferred style and another to straighten out her coat. It was easy to see why Twilight was a prodigy. Oats floated into her mouth while she brushed herself and packed her bags for the day at school. Any unicorn could get to Twilight's level, but only after a whole lot of practice. Twilight did it all instinctually, as everything magicwise just came easy to her.
With her bags packed, her belly satisfied, and her appearance satisfactory, Twilight drew Spike into a quick hug, nuzzling him as he tried to escape her firm grasp. She then flew out of the library-observatory-dormitory and down the stairs to the school.
PERIOD 1: MATH
Just because she was Princess Celestia's personal student didn't exclude her from the classes that everypony else had to suffer through, or in Twilight's case, waltz through effortlessly whilst freaking out like everypony else. Math in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns took place in a squat, round tower. The inside was organized like a regular class, with the teacher at one end and rows of students at the other. The rows towards the rear were slightly elevated to allow the students in the back to view the massive blackboard that Professor Point Slope explained and wrote theorems and equations on.
Arriving five minutes early, a record late for Twilight, she tossed her now empty bag of oats into the trash at the entrance before continuing to her usual seat in the front. She reached her seat, her calculus textbook, scrap paper, and quill and ink floating to their designated areas on her desk. The five minutes passed quickly, the class' few students filtering in slowly.
The bell rang, and Point Slope immediately rose with a class roster and quill floating in a steely gray aura beside him, calling out roll with a precision and snappiness that would have impressed Dented Cuirass, Shining Armor's drill sergeant.
"Corkboard, Pokey"
"Here"
"Ledger, Marigold"
"Here"
"Segmentata, Lorica"
"Here"
Roll continued and ended with Point Slope placing the scroll on his desk and ambling over to the chalkboard. He intoned, "Today we will be discussing the Second Derivative Test and its applications."
Twilight groaned inwardly. She had learned this already last week when she had been reading ahead. Honestly, how long did it take to explain that if the second derivative of c was greater than zero and if the first derivative of c equaled zero, then c, when plugged into the original, underived equation, would give the relative minimum of an equation? How hard was it to say that the opposite of the aforementioned statement was also true?
Point Slope's voice was not particularly exciting, but it wasn't downright monotone either. He was very exact and snappy with everything, but when it came to lecturing, the snappiness was lost in a almost neverending deluge of precise information. Thus, as he worked examples on the blackboard, a piece of chalk held enthralled in his magic, Twilight managed to keep herself in a state of half awareness, floating in and out of reality.
Her baggy eyelids drooped, creeping down like an unstoppable vine. Her bloodshot eyes struggled to focus as her consciousness waned. Her head tilted forward ever so slightly as her lack of sleep conquered her mind, submitting it to its will.
To any outside observer, Twilight's head plopped down onto her open calculus book muzzle first, but no outside observers noticed, as they were all too busy being enraptured by the thrilling explanation of second derivatives.
Twilight awoke in her room. Not her pseudo-library room in a tower that she currently occupied in Canterlot, but her room, her fillyhood room. She sat up in her bed, a little thing tucked in the corner of the room next to her desk. Every other inch of wallspace was swamped with books: biology books, silly books, books for colts and fillies, algebra books, books with magic, and even theoretical books on the efficiency of tiled floors. Twilight smiled as she dimly remembered the categorization method she used to sort these stacks of books, in which each book was sorted by subject into each stack and ordered in alphabetical order by name from A's at the bottom and Z's at the top. If a stack overflowed, or in other words, hit the ceiling, a new substack for that subject was created. However, more pressing matters forced these fond childhood memories of sorting books from her mind.
Oh no, Twilight thought, why am I here? Did I hurt myself somehow? Pushing her covers off of herself, she groggily rolled off of the bed and trotted to the door. Something felt off about this place, but she couldn't quite place her hoof on it.
Reaching the door seemed to take forever, as if her room and been cheerfully elongating itself just to mess with her. The door swung open at her magical command and she moved down the hallway and down the stairs, calling out, "Hello? Is anypony home?"
Making her way into the kitchen, she was greeted by the sight of an unkempt Shining Armor nonchalantly eating cereal. Snapped out of her funk a little, Twilight beamed, "Shining!"
Shining looked over at his little sister and said, "Twily!" Twilight bounded up to him and wrapped him in a hug, though something felt off about him. Something was missing.
Twilight smiled at her brother, bombarding him with a salvo of questions that she reserved just for him, "How did you get here? Why are you here? I thought you were embroiled with your fancy protecting Equestria duties?"
Shining took another mouthful of cereal before replying, "I'm on leave Twily."
Twilight was puzzled, "But you're not due for a leave until summer, when Princess Celestia kicks me out for a bit to spend time here."
"It is summer Twily", Shining stated, looking concerned, "Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? You're awfully off today."
Dumbstruck and utterly confused, Twilight knew that her mind positively insisted that it was February, and that winter was going to be removed soon. She said, "No, I'm pretty sure its still February."
A sudden shock shook her, "You weren't kicked out were you?"
Shining snorted and rebuked her, "Of course not Twily. You know that your BBBFF wouldn't disappoint your high expectations just like that." He looked away and out the window, as if contemplating something.
"Well ok, but that still doesn't expl-" Twilight spluttered. He could have at least written that he would be home to spend time with his family.
Shining suddenly spoke, butting in, "I am, however, disappointed by you."
"Wha-?" Twilight choked out, u comprehending.
"I never expecting my personal student would drop to such levels."
"What-"
Suddenly, Shining's head swiveled back to glare at Twilight, but Shining's face was replaced by a rather irate Princess Celestia, disappointment and anger prominently displayed.
"I expected better from my student. I thought I had made the right choice that day when you mangled your entrance exam. But it appears I was wrong." Princess Shi-lestia spoke in tones of unbridled fury.
Twilight cowered at brother/mentor, "But wha-"
"No buts from my former student. You have disappointed me, your brother, and your family. You have shamed us all Twilight Sparkle."
"What did-"
"My decision is final. We hereby sentence you magic kindergarten to all eternity so that you will learn how to NOT. BE. TARDY."
"But I was nev-" Twilight started, but she never finished. She was now in a classroom, a grown-up amongst throngs of fillies and colts, all of them laughing at her for being demoted so far, for being such a failure of a unicorn, for being tard-
Twilight awoke with a start, a scream of horrified terror catching in her throat as she realized that she was in fact, still Princess Celestia's personal student and that she was, in fact, not in the horrible hell of magic kindergarten. Point Slope's voice droned on the background, "And if you carry the fifteen, you will see that at x equals zero..."
Lifting her head off of her book, she glanced around. Nopony seemed to have noticed her little traipse through nightmare land, and most importantly, Point Slope hadn't seemed to notice her little nap.
Inspiration hit Twilight, and she magicked out a piece of spare paper and a pencil. She began to scribble furiously, jotting down complicated equations and theorems and things that she made up on the spot. There, Twilight thought, self satisfied, A theorem to accurately predict the next time I collapse from exhaustion. Twilight glanced at the clock, seventeen minutes had passed in the period, thirteen from her nap and two in the moments after she had woken up.
Let's see, carry the two, square the v, and I have exactly forty minutes and forty six seconds before I collapse of exhaustion. Twilight rechecked her calculations, and they were, as usual, correct. Forty minutes before she potentially made a fool of herself and got kicked out of one of the highest crimes in Twilight's book: sleeping in class.
I was lucky this time, I wasn't caught. But I still have a whole day ahead of me before I can get back to my room and catch up on my sleep. And with that, Twilight's horn lit, and a flurry of paper flew up to meet her waiting quill as she began to create all manner of plots and plans and contingency plans and summer contingency plans to achieve her singleminded goal. If she couldn't stay awake during the day, a little tactical planning was in order.
Ten minutes later, with three quills working nonstop (Twilight was actually very good at fine magical control over multiple objects, despite what she believed) her plan was complete.
Taking deep breaths, Twilight steadied herself, both internally and externally, as she almost fell off her seat with most of her mind capacity taken with sleepiness and outlining the entirety of an operation that she considered as serious and heart-clenchingly dangerous as any operation undertaken by the Royal Guard.
She crossed a threshold in her own mind. She was now willingly taking actions against the state itself. Operation Tactical Nap had begun.
AFTERSCHOOL: CELESTIA'S QUARTERS
Half stumbling, Twilight headed Celestia's quarters with Spike riding on her back - Spike was often a test subject for spell practice. The Heavens Wing contained Princess Celestia's and Princess Luna's bedrooms as well as their personal studies and libraries and such. It branched off from the throne room, though its grandeur was lesser. It contained no stained glass windows of the heroes of ages past, only great gleaming windows of either gold or white, each representing sunlight or moonlight, respectively. The hall was divided between Princess Celestia's quarters and offices and the absent Princess Luna's quarters and offices, and whilst Princess Luna's half lay abandoned and dusty, Princess Celestia's half was well kept and buzzing with life. The white windows were placed above Princess Luna's half, and vice versa, so that the light from each side shone on the other. All of this grandeur and architectural mastery was lost on Twilight as she squirmed her way through the crowd, nudging aside important ministers and dukes that other ponies would have treated with utmost care and respect.
Twilight had made it through the day without notice, napping when the teachers weren't looking and during passing periods and lunch. There was one incident in Chemistry when she had nearly fallen asleep whist holding a test tube of something potentially explosive. She had luckily kept a dead unicorn's grip on it as she nearly lost consciousness until she mixed it into something much less explody.
Operation Tactical Nap has been a success so far, Shining would be proud of this covert op, Twilight thought as she ambled through the hall, and now for the last, and most difficult part.
Upon reaching Celestia's quarters, Twilight gulped down her rising lunch ans knocked. This was the most important part of her day, and she had tried to save up enough sleep to make it through the two hour tutoring sessions that she got as a privilege of being Celestia's personal student. Soon after Twilight's hoof had rapped on the aged maple doors, the door glowed in a golden aura and was cracked open to allow Twilight in.
Inside, Celestia smiled brightly at Twilight from the middle of the circular room, "Welcome again, Twilight, to another day of learning."
Twilight, tired beyond belief, sank into a bow, almost crashing to the floor. Her voice was strained and dead as she replied, "Thank you Princess Celestia."
Celestia looked astonished at Twilight's state and seemed lost in thought for a minute before she replied with mischievous smile, "Today Twilight, we learn about sleeping and waking spells."
Inwardly, Twilight both perked up and groaned, If I can stay awake through the sleeping spells and learn how to do a waking spell, I can cast a waking spell on myself and the Princess will never know a thing. Perfect!
Twilight sat on a cushion and telekinetically moved a small desk that Princess Celestia kept for her over to herself. She brought out a quill and ink and some paper for notes before blearily gazing at Celestia with strained eyes to signal that she was ready to learn.
Celestia magicked up a blackboard and a piece of chalk, adopting her instructor voice, "Now, Twilight, lets review. What are the three stages of casting a spell?"
Twilight droned, struggling to focus, "The first stage is...primation. The...spell is formulated inside the user's mind and prepared for release through the horn. The horn lobe cells begin a buildup of ATP, drawing from the...ah...magippendix, where ATP stores are kept for this use."
Looking at Celestia for approval, she continued when Celestia nodded, "The second stage is...zzz...snort...charjamagation." Twilight's head nodded as she momentarily shut down, "The ADP...no...AQP...argh...ATP is funneled to the horn, where, by processes unknown to modern science, the ATP is converted to magic to be used, hence...the...ah...pre-spell glow that occurs before the third stage, de...no...un...no...in...release. The...spell is...zzz...shaped by the user through the wings...no...horn. The technical aspects of this are still unknown, and this has to be "felt through" as Starswirl the...Shave...Bearded put it."
When Twilight finished, Celestia stomped her hooves in approval, "Very good Twilight, and that knowledge is essential to understanding the basics of sleeping and waking spells. Now, sleeping spells are famous for being relatively easy to cast, and why would that be?"
Straining her mind, Twilight struggled to put two and two together, "Because they, ah...the spell matrix...the energy required...I'm sorry, I don't know."
Celestia smiled at her student. Twilight always tried so hard to please her, so hard to be perfect. Most students never learned the why of spells, only the how. Most wanted to see impressive bangs and tricks, but not Twilight. Twilight loved the why of everything. The why held some sort of mystical allure, the glamour of knowing why something worked, the appreciation of things that came with the knowledge of the intricacies of the world. Celestia took pity on her student, and said, "Perhaps a demonstration is in order." Turning to Spike, she said, "Spike, if you would."
Spike replied, "Okay", and came up to Celestia. Charging up her horn, Celestia commanded Twilight's faltering attention, "Are you watching, Twilight?"
Twilight managed a "Mhmm."
Celestia cast a sleeping spell on Twilight, and the mare instantly collapsed to the floor. Spike shifted nervously before Celestia noticed his discomfort and as she drew a blanket over Twilight, told him, "I would like you to run a message to Twilight's professors that she will receive tomorrow off for a field trip." Spike saluted and scurried off.
As Celestia lifted Twilight with her magic into a pile of soft, squishy, cushions, she finished to herself, "Into dreamland."
Author's Note
ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, is what human cells use to get energy to perform various cellular functions. Breaking a certain bond in this molecule results in ADP, or adenosine diphosphate, and a release of energy It fitted my need for something science-y in my headcanon.