Discord's School for Padded Princesses

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Ember looked grumpy, though her attempt to look dignified was completely spoiled by almost everything about the entire situation in general and her part in particular.

Discord looked across at the class, humming a jaunty little tune to himself, then drew a clock on the chalkboard and looked at it.

Apparently not liking what he saw, he pushed the little hand around in a circle before nodding in approval. “Now, it's nearly time for the next lesson…”

He clicked his claws together. “I know! We'll do a re-enactment, to see how good your general knowledge of history is!”

Twilight, Starlight and Trixie all found themselves abruptly on a stage, still padded up and all of them with pacifiers in their mouths to prevent them from speaking out of turn.

Discord made a film screen appear, and indicated it with a flourish. “We will be discussing the rein of Tirek!”

“That foalish-” Nightmare began, then broke off as a ball of fluff shaped like a sun bounced off her ear. “Hey!”

Day Breaker laughed, and her counterpart retaliated with a plushy moon-shaped projectile. That made the other crinkle-suit react with a larger sun, and Discord blithely ignored the fight taking place.

“Tirek trapped three ponies in Tartarus,” Discord said, in a lecturing tone. “And each of our students here will be playing as one of them!”

Twilight and Trixie exchanged glances, not liking the sound of that, as the screen lit up.

An image of Tirek appeared behind the three ponies, glancing down as if staring through the screen at them. “Ahahaha, at last I have you three right where I want you!” He said, his voicework and pose just a little stilted. Trixie wondered when exactly Discord found the time to record this with Tirek, and if he was just as insufferable a director as he was a teacher. “But, you don’t appear to have any magic left! I suppose I’ll have to keep you locked up while I find where you’ve stored it all!” He snapped his fingers, a blue swirling vortex appearing behind him. Suddenly, Twilight, Trixie, and Starlight all began to float up in the air, their hooves kicking as they found gravity refusing to keep them safely on the ground. The vortex grew larger, Tirek stepping back as the ponies floated up, and with a flash, vanished into the portal.

The scene cut to show the three laying on a stone floor, a vast cave around them. They all looked about confused, only to notice the screen. Twilight rushed up to it, mumbling several demands at Discord as she pushed up against it. Discord simply yawned, clicking on a remote to fast forward through Twilight’s angry shouting. Eventually he hit play, allowing the scene to continue as normal. The three ponies were gathered around, Starlight’s Pocket Padding rustling as it twinkled and the pattern shifted about on it. With a puff of smoke, a mare popped up in front of them. She stood tall, her wings leathery and bat-like, flicking a tail that was thin and ended in a spade, rather than the normal fluffy pony tail. Two horns protruded from her mane, and short fangs could be seen as she smirked down at the group.

“Well, well, well, it appears we have some new visitors! Is that my dear princess Celestia, I see? Seems all those creatures you sent here finally got back at you, eh? And who are these joining you?” She asked, staring at the group.

Starlight, Trixie, and Twilight all looked back and forth between each other, unsure of who was meant to respond.

After a long moment, Twilight spoke up. “Um… they're…”

She stopped. “No, sorry, this feels too weird… I can't call you two my sister and niece...”

“So, your sister and her niece!” the Tarterian pony chuckled. “Well, I can see it runs in the family!”

Twilight worked through what the other pony had said, then noticed a logical problem. “Wait, did you just say I was Luna? But-”

“You'll love seeing what we have in store for you!” the monstrous pony laughed. “We've all spent so long thinking them up, to humiliate you as much as you humiliated all of us! And with three victims, we can even use more of them at once...”

Discord hit the pause button. The monster pony stopped, but none of the three 'students' did.

As soon as Trixie noticed, she cantered for freedom – only to bump into the side of the screen.

“Now, what was Princess Celestia punished with first?” Discord asked. “Better be quick!”

To rub it in, he began playing some music with a ticking clock sound included in it.

“Aren't you going to give us some kind of clue?” Starlight asked.

“This is a test,” Discord replied severely. “You'd better think fast, Princess Celestia.”

Between one word and the next, Starlight was dressed in a Princess Celestia costume. It was thickly padded all over, except that her Pocket Padding was the only diaper she was wearing, and the wings were little plush things which stood up by themselves.

Twilight made a little whimpering sound, then blushed when Trixie gave her a confused look.

“Uh… was it… padding fluff?” Twilight asked, looking over to Starlight apologetically.

Discord nodded enthusiastically, hitting play once again.

“So, Celestia, I hear you just looove your thick diapers, don’t you?” The demonic mare grinned down at Starlight. “Well, we’ll have you in the thickest padding you’ve ever seen!” She laughed manically as Starlight was suddenly hoisted into the air by magic and vanished in a flash of light. The scene cut away to show Starlight falling through the air, only to land in something thick and fluffy. The thing distended, only to bounce her back up into the air. Flailing her hooves around, Starlight was bounced up and down a few more times before the crinkly tarp came to a stop. Once Starlight’s bouncing ceased, it was easy to tell she was sitting in an overly thick padding mattress. The demon pony dropped down, hanging by her tail from a stalactite as she grinned down at the suited up unicorn. “My, my, but your padding is so thick already! Don’t you worry, we’ll get it nice and pumped up soon!” She snickered, poking at the starry black diaper. With a hiss of air, Starlight’s diaper began to balloon outwards, stretching in spurts, squeezing in each time it swelled with a hiss and a cartoony creeaaak! “That should be a good start! Don’t go anywhere, we’ve still got the others to serve!” She puffed away, Starlight struggling to right herself. The diaper hammock began to bounce her again, throwing her around in the air as her diaper stretched and grew larger and larger and larger!

“Now, how about our dear princess of the night?” The mare said, puffing up so her muzzle pressed into Twilight’s. The alicorn stumbled backwards, landing with a flump on her padded rear as a deep blue suit surrounded her, dressing her up in Luna’s colors.

“That doesn't look very impressive!” Nightmare Moon complained. “She's not nearly dark enough to be a proper Night Mare!”

“More like bed wetter,” Day Breaker replied, sticking her tongue out, and Nightmare Moon shoved at her – able to reach without Twilight in the way.

Back on the screen, Twilight-as-Luna squirmed a little – trying to think of something that wouldn't be too humiliating.

“Trixie knows!” Trixie said.

Twilight glanced back, looking suspicious.

“Princess Luna was stuck inside a giant plush copy of her own moon!” Trixie answered.

“Wait – no!” Twilight protested.

Discord's claw hovered over the unpause button. “I think you'll find that should be… yes.”

“No!” Twilight reiterated. “That's not my answer!”

“Are you saying you'd fail a test?” Discord asked. “Even knowing the right answer?”

Twilight went silent for a moment, and Discord unpaused the presentation before she could react. “Besides, that was Trixie's turn.”

“You spent so much time locked inside your moon,” the devilish mare laughed. “But I think you got to like it, didn't you?”

Before Twilight could answer, the spade-tipped tail of the monster pony wrapped around her waist. It barely made it, because of the thick puff of the suit, but it was still more than enough to haul her into the sky.

The screen followed them upwards, to the bare rock sky of Tartarus. Or perhaps it would be better to say the mostly bare rock, because there was a huge crinkly-plush moon hanging from the ceiling with a large zip on it.

On seeing the moon and the zip, Twilight began to struggle in her Luna-costume, though any attempt at fighting was made much harder by the way it covered her horn and wings.

The demon pony unzipped the moon, pulling apart the sides of the overstuffed celestial body before flicking her tail upwards. Twilight was tossed into the moon, sinking into the crinkly fluff and given only a moment to see the pony wink and blow her a kiss before pulling the zipper back up into place. Twilight struggled inside the fluffy moon, each wriggle and squirm accompanied by several loud crinkles from all around. The monster laughed, bouncing her butt into the moon and sending it rocking about on the string from which it hung. With a faint floomph, the moon grew just a bit puffier, the fluff obscuring the zipper.

“Twily! Come on, you can get out of that!” Shining yelled up at the screen, only to shrink down in his chair as Discord leaned over, shushing him loudly.

Twilight continued to struggle, but as she did, she found the moon to be shaking just a bit more than it should have been. A moment later and her face began to burn a bright red, her padding quivering and rumbling to massage her tenderly. Twilight whined, suckling on her pacifier as the moon squeezed in from all sides, the crinkly fluff cradling her gently as the bat pony hummed happily, sitting atop the orb.

“Just one pony left, and we have just the thing for a princess of love~” The pony snickered.

Once again, Discord paused the movie, but rather than turn to Trixie, he looked back at the classroom. “Cadence, I almost forgot you were still here! I suppose you wouldn’t be against sharing the experience with us? After all, I wouldn’t want to forget anything for our little reenactment!”

Cadence shook her head, not really expecting Discord to actually pay attention to her preference but not wanting to seem like she was agreeing with him either.

A moment later, she realized that the way he'd asked the question either yes or no could be agreement.

“Excellent!” the draconequus said, opening a nearby cupboard to reveal a single large button. He pressed it, and Cadence's seat launched her into the air with a spring-like boioioioiiiing sound.

A second or two later, she landed inside the re-enactment video next to Trixie, just as the Tarterian pony landed next to them. A puffy Cadence-suit formed around Trixie – and, just to rub it in, around Cadence herself as well, leaving her like a plus-sized puffy version of herself.

Discord hit pause again. “You've been doing very well so far – excellent performances! So, for the final question of the quiz, what punishment did Cadence receive?”

There was silence, apart from the quiet groans of both Gilda and Ember and the low bickering of Day Breaker and Nightmare Moon.

“Is it… something to do with love?” Cadence asked tentatively.

“Exactly!” Discord said, his tone obviously condescending. “It's just that!”

He unpaused, and the devilish pony's eyes began to glow.

“You're the alicorn of love,” she said, her voice taking on an odd echo effect. “And the thing you love more than anything else is soft, huggable, cute, adorable plushies!”

Cadence blinked, the words resonating in her mind.

She… now she thought about it, that was true. She did love cute plushies, from the little ones you gave to tiny fillies all the way up to great big ones bigger than even an adult pony.

And the idea of having lots of plushies to play with didn't seem like a punishment at all…

Next to her, Trixie's eyes glazed over a little and she began to wobble on her suited hooves.

The two ponies stumbled around a little, their eyes swirling with different colors as the bat-winged pony chuckled. “You just want to squeeze and snuggle with big fat plushies all day. Big and… bigger.” The pony grinned wider, stomping her hoof. A hole appeared below the ponies, sending them falling down into a separate room. All around them stood plushies, some just a bit bigger than their head, others already towering over them. Trixie waddled over to a fat giraffe, picking it up in her hooves and snuggling into it. Giggling, she squeezed it as it puffed up a bit, filling itself with more stuffing as she snuggled and cuddled it.

Cadence waddled over to a large plushie of Shining Armor, curling up to it as her eyes shimmered. She squeezed and snuggled it, flopping into its belly. Wiggling her padded rump, she grinned even wider as its gut began to swell up. A few other plushies began to grow, swelling up around the two ponies as plush hearts appeared above them, growing a bit bigger as well. Hearts began to fill the room as the plushies inflated, Cadence pushing her diaper into Shining a bit as she relaxed. Trixie looked over as she hugged her giraffe, whining as she saw just how big and fat Cadence’s plushie was. That was when something tapped her on the shoulder, causing her to glance over. An overstuffed plushie of the demon pony grinned down at her, patting her fat belly and grinning widely. Trixie squeed with delight, climbing up onto the plushie, snuggling and burying her muzzle into its gut as it began to swell outwards along with the others.

The screen zoomed out, showing all four 'Princesses' – Twilight-as-Luna squirming in her puffy, vibrating moon-prison as it moved overhead, Starlight-as-Celestia bouncing up and down with her padding now far outsized for the rest of her and her costume, and both Trixie-as-Cadence and Cadence-as-Cadence hugging and giggling as they enjoyed their wonderful plushies.

“Excellent work!” Discord pronounced, making check marks on the sheet. “Full marks!”

He left the screen running for the moment, turning back to the rest of the class. “Remember, you have to understand history to be a good princess – because otherwise you wouldn't know how you became one in the first place!”

The screen closed off, and suddenly the four re-enactors were back in their seats.

Starlight's diaper was smaller than the enormous scale it had taken on at one point, but it was still quite big and pushed her chair back. Twilight was no longer trapped inside the moon, but her Luna-suit – still on, except for the head – had inflated to squeeze her almost as tightly. And both Trixie and Cadence were snuggling plush toys as big as they were.

“Now, since we've covered that, we'll move on!” Discord told them all, the sound getting the attention of both Trixie and Cadence.

He produced a neatly organized timetable, and began pushing words and days around on it with a frown. “Now, was it sciences or arts next...”

“Do we get anything remotely resembling a choice?” Twilight asked a little bitterly, shifting to try and find the limits of the movement her giant Luna plush suit would permit.

Discord frowned, then brightened. “Oh, silly me!”

He snapped his claws, and a pacifier appeared in Twilight's mouth again to stop her from speaking. “That's better… and, to answer your question, no you don't. But someone else does.”

The 'pupils' exchanged glances, not sure how to take that.

“Of course, it is Us!” Nightmare Moon announced, smirking. “For who else could make such a consequential decision?”

Ember groaned, resting her elbows on her puffed-up belly and her head in her hands. “Mmm-mmf,” she mumbled, around her own muting pacifier.

“Not you either!” Discord took some glee in informing them. “No, this is a decision that can only be taken by someone who isn't either a Princess or a terribly good looking Draconequus!”

He cleared his throat, then spoke up. “For Science class, turn to page seven. For Arts class, turn to page nine.”

That just resulted in another exchange of baffled looks, as none of them had a book.

Spike stared down at the comic book he was holding, which had just frozen in place with a classroom scene. Discord's last few sentences hung in the air as speech bubbles, and he examined them for some kind of clue – then noticed he was currently on page six.

“Seriously?” he asked, out loud.

Another line of dialogue appeared. But of course. It's a choose-your-own-academy.

The young dragon thought about just closing the book, but realized that would probably leave them all trapped – he wouldn't put it past Discord. So he carefully used his claws to find what would be pages nine and ten, then opened them at once – and, true to form, there was another double-page spread of comic relating to Discord's 'Princess School'.

He had a moment to read the same speech bubbles from the previous pages, then the scene started moving again.

“You have chosen page 9.” Discord said, the digit sounding oddly disconnected from the rest of his sentence. “If you did not mean to select the arts, please go back to page 6 and try again. Alternatively, go to page 26 to speak with a representative. Of course, that will spoil the story, so you really shouldn’t do that.” The students all continued to look confused, but Discord simply snapped his claws as a remote plopped down into it, a slide projector clicking to show a few paintings.

“Now, as some of you may already know, Canterlot is host to some of the most influential and ground-breaking artists in all of Equestria! Music, theater, paintings, there really is everything! Some of the most iconic works belong to the stain-glass gallery in Canterlot Castle.” He clicked forward, showing a photo of one of Canterlot’s halls, light streaming down through the large windows. “Depicting famous events in Equestrian history, you’ll find masterpieces such as me, and er… well, the others aren’t nearly as interesting!”

Daybreak scoffed, crossing her puffy forelegs, and squeeze in on her belly a bit. “Not as interesting! I’d have you know there’s nothing finer than the stain-glass works of my regal puffy butt! Especially when it’s showing me crushing my wimpy sister, Nightmare.” She smirked over, wiggling her rump a bit. Nightmare rolled her eyes, sticking her tongue out at her sister as Discord chuckled.

“Oh, of course, how could I forget! The defeat of Nightmare Moon, the elements, Sombra’s defeat, there really are too many to list!”

The slideshow displayed stained-glass-window after stained-glass-window, going from Daybreak sitting on Nightmare Moon to half a dozen mares gathering together specially themed diapers to Sombra being forced to consume all his own dark smoke and swell up into a balloon, then cut back to a battle involving hundreds of inflatable griffins and forwards to show ponies being taken over by black Changeling-themed diapersuits that spread like an infection.

Twilight mumbled something, then raised her hoof to ask a question. Discord blatantly ignored her, instead pointing at Trixie and taking out the pacifier in her mouth.

“Huh?” Trixie asked, still hugging her soft toy from earlier. “Um, Trixie wonders what you want!”

“Oh, it's simple...” Discord said, smirking. “If you could give the class another example of the arts of Canterlot?”

“Trixie certainly can!” Trixie agreed. “For Trixie IS an example of the arts of Canterlot, as she is a performer on stage!”

“Wonderful!” Discord said, and the slide show clicked ahead again to show Trixie on a stage. The unicorn yelped in surprise to discover herself suddenly on the stage – diapered up and clutching a plush – then looked around nervously at the somewhat indistinct audience.

Trixie gulped, looking out of the screen at Discord, who simply tapped his hoof impatiently. Trixie attempted to stand up straighter, though there was only so dignified one could look when clutching a large plush and wearing thick pampers. “Uh, Ladies and Gentlecolts, be prepared to be amazed, astounded, and be-wild… be-willia… bewildered! Then, behold!” She posed dramatically, her horn lighting up as she lifted her hat off of her head and flipped it upside down. “Trixie shall now pull-“

“Of course, theater doesn’t always mean magic! There’s Canterlot musicals, comedians, historical dramas, and of course, classics like Shake Spear!” Discord clicked the remote as if flipping through channels, each button press causing the screen to flicker and for Trixie’s costume and the set of the stage to shift to what Discord was describing. She was left in an overly puffy petticoat, clutching a rubber skull in her hoof where her hat had been.

“But, Neigh, say I! For a skull by any other name would be just as grizzly, and-“ Trixie cut herself off, shaking her head to try and regain her senses. “Why is Trixie in such outlandish attire! Remove these from Trixie at once!” She demanded. As she continued to berate the draconequus, a hook appeared from the side of the stage, snagging around Trixie’s throat and yanking her off stage. The unicorn fell out of the side of the screen, her puffy dress rustling as she tried to rock back onto her frilled fluffy diaper.

Discord ignored her, instead moving on with his lesson. “One of my favorites of Canterlot has to be the operas and the concerts! Has anypony seen any good ones lately? Shining Armor?”

Put on the spot, Shining Armor shuffled a little – blushing as his diaper squished slightly. “Well, um… I suppose there was one I saw recently called the Ring Cycle?”

“Ah, the Ring Cycle,” Discord agreed. “A famously long opera, which has as a major moment in the story a battle between a silly foal and a great big puffy dragon!”

“That's… not how-” Shining began, but then found himself standing on a stage. His outfit had turned into a plastic set of armour, and he had a foam sword in his mouth.

Opposite him was a big dragon, clearly a costume being worn by a much smaller dragon, which was composed of layers of crinkly diaper material.

“This is outrageous!” Ember announced, crossing the puffy arms of her suit. “It's undignified and not properly reflective of the dignity of dragons!”

Shining was about to concur, but then the music started – and the singing, several voices singing over one another about the battle between Shining and the dragon Ember.

It sounded strange, not at all how the real opera went, and at the same time oddly compelling… Shining caught sight of two dozen Discords sitting in rows to the side of the stage, reading music and singing in harmony, but then his vision fogged a little as he looked up at the dragon.

It seemed much more real now, and so did the sword he was holding. He was still padded up, puffy and slightly damp, and his outfit was still a foal's costume of armour, but it felt like the middle of a really solid session of make-believe – it was easier to just go along with it, caught up in the excitement, as the opera flowed over him...

Shining lowered his stance, bracing himself for any incoming attack of the dragon. Ember rolled her eyes, the flop of her head causing the suit’s to bounce and snap its jaws a bit. Shining began to circle the dragon, Ember looking around for some way out. As she was distracted, Shining jumped in and jabbed the rear of her suit with the sword. Despite the puffiness of both her suit and the prop, Ember let out a yelp at the poke, and whirled around to face the stallion. “Oh, so that’s how you want it, huh? Alright, come try that again, tough guy!” Shining and Ember began to slowly circle each other, the music dropping down to provide a simmer of anticipation beneath the scene. Occasionally the dragon suit’s jaws would snap again, or Shining would take a few swipes and lunges with his padded sword, and the music would give a clash or a ring, though often with unfittingly bizarre instruments. The whole thing was rather comical, Trixie and Gilda couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at Shining’s ridiculous movements.

Despite the absurdity of it all, Shining was lost in fighting off what was, in his mind, a fierce and dangerous beast. He poked and slashed with his sword wildly, his attacks looking more like a foal swinging around wildly than any sort of trained guardspony. One jab managed to poke into the dragon’s belly, causing Ember to let out another yelp, the music building again. She glared at Shining through her costume, and suddenly began to charge towards Shining, who attempted to back up. Unfortunately, Shining lost his hoofing and was sent flopping onto his padded rump, plastic armor clacking about. Ember jumped into the air, Shining having just enough time to squeak with fright before the fat crinkly butt of Ember’s suit came flopping down on top of him.

Satisfied, Ember pat her belly reaching down to pick up the sword and pick at the suits teeth as she eyed the surprisingly tasty looking knight. Shining whimpered as the suit’s jaws reached down and clamped around him, only to slip down into its gut a moment later with a cartoony gulp!

Ember giggled slightly as Shining squirmed around inside the plushy faux-gut of the costume, tickling her, then she stood up and bowed to the audience.

The music came to a triumphant crescendo, then ended suddenly – sending both Shining and Ember back to their seats, looking very woozy and distant from the whole experience, with Ember still in her dragon costume – though it had been reduced in size somewhat, so she could actually fit in the desk.

Discord marked off a point in each of their columns on his sheet, then applauded. “Bravo! Wonderful example of an operatic performance!”

He shrugged. “Of course, we can't show the whole opera because it's far too long to fit into a single lesson… so that means we'll have to leave the princess and the sea monster for another day.”

Shining frowned slightly, then shook his head – the distant look in his eyes fading. “Huh? Wha-”

A pacifier interrupted him as Discord judged that he'd said enough. “Raise your hoof if you want to talk,” he reminded the unicorn, then addressed Gilda. “And can you think of a form of art?”

Gilda shook her head, then paused. “Uh… I… isn't there just, you know, actual art? The kind that goes in an art gallery, paintings and stuff?”

“That sounds like a wonderful example!” Discord agreed. His tail flicked across, changing the slideshow for a giant sketchbook, and he went through several dozen drawings fast enough to produce a kind of flickbook animation – showing Twilight, dressed in a very frilly dress, sitting down on a whoopee cushion.

“Now, let's all see how painting works,” he added.

With a flash of light, everypony found their desks in front of them to vanish and become replaced by an easel, along with a large white canvas sitting on it and several small cans of paint laying along its lower shelf. “And the best way to experience painting is first hoof! Now, before we begin, I want to remind you all that painting takes much practice, so don’t expect to be recreating the greats. Of course, if you do, I hope you don’t forget where you came from after you become unimaginably rich and famous! We do need the funding!” Discord joked before turning back to the board.

“Mmmppphh!” Starlight said, raising her hoof. Discord looked back over his shoulder as he continued to sketch out himself sketching himself sketching himself. Starlight’s pacifier vanished, allowing her to speak. “Uh, we don’t have any brushes, Discord.” She said, trying not to let her annoyance creep into her voice. Discord simply waved his paw dismissively and turned back to his drawing once again.

“Oh, you needn’t worry about brushes, Starlight! Just draw what you like! I’m sure it will come out wonderfully!” Starlight looked down at the tins of paint in front of her. Hoofpainting? Seriously? She hadn’t done this since she was a foal! She wasn’t about to get herself and her padding stained! Looking around, she noticed nearly everypony else looking just as displeased with the lesson as she was. All except for Nightmare and Daybreak, of course, who were busy rubbing their paint covered hooves over their canvases, occasionally flicking paint at each other, only to splatter it onto Twilight instead.

“No way am I going to be painting with my claws!” Gilda said. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that would be?”

“Of course he does!” Starlight groaned.

“I have to inform you that hoof-painting, or claw-painting in your case, is on the lesson plan,” Discord said simply. “So you're going to have to make marks to get marks.”

Gilda snorted. “That's all?”

“And those who don't want to paint on a canvas will instead be used as a canvas,” Discord continued, without missing a beat, as Daybreak carefully arranged her paint into a wobbly drawing of Nightmare pulling a silly face.

Nightmare glared at the canvas, then flicked some dark black and blue paint over Daybreaker, who retaliated with some white and gold paint.

“Used as a canvas?” Starlight said, blinking.

“That's right,” Discord confirmed. “All those prissy Princesses who don't want to hoofpaint will be put in a ball-pit full of paintballs, as remedial painting!”

With that threat delivered, Starlight hesitated only a moment more before reluctantly starting to put blobs of green paint on the canvas. She adjusted her posture unconsciously, sticking her rump out and wiggling it a little as she worked.

Meanwhile Trixie and Twilight had begun to paint as well, neither wanting their coats to end up as chaotically mismatched as Discord was. Shining and Cadence were coloring as well, though they had pushed their canvases together to try and draw one large picture. The only one still not partaking in the activity was Gilda, who simply sat with her front claws crossed grumpily. “Heck. No.” She grumbled. Discord shrugged, Gilda’s canvas and chair vanishing as she suddenly fell into an inflatable pit full of oversized balls. The gryphon struggled to stay above the surface, the colorful paintballs rubbing against her feathers and dyeing them all manner of colors.

Twilight ducked down as yet more paint flew over her head, the two sisters sitting on opposite sides of her having completely abandoned their attempts to humiliate the other through their pictures and instead beginning to toss paint about at an absurd rate. Discord didn’t seem to mind, instead licking his thumb and holding it up to his eye to gauge how his own sketch was coming out. Starlight continued to color as well, trying her best to keep the canvas as clean as possible despite the messiness of their coloring method. Unfortunately, her hoof bumped into one of her paint cans and knocked it off, spilling out onto her padding. She eeped, but before she could pick it up, the can sank into the fluff of her pocket padding. Suddenly Starlight her diaper shift and bulge, seeming to soak up more and more of the paint. The black padding began to shift colors, a bright red star appearing on its expanse as it ballooned bigger. She blushed, squeezing down on her diaper to stop its growth, only to knock the can of white paint onto it. Several galaxies now appeared on her diaper, the padding continuing to drink up the paint as Starlight tried to hide her growing rear.

“Well, well!” Discord chuckled, his arm reaching out from Starlight's canvas and pulling her through so she popped out of his own. “It looks like Starlight here has decided to do something avant-garde with her own display of painting!”

Starlight blushed as her diaper swelled out and took on more and more colours, whole constellations developing on it in a whirling nebula across the 'night sky', and then Nightmare threw a whole can of paint at it and made the whole effect much stronger as a dusting of purple stars added themselves to her butt.

Nightmare laughed enough that it was momentarily possible to see Luna, trapped inside the plush suit, then her crinkly maw closed and she contemplated Twilight's Luna-suit.

“I wonder if that works the same way...” she mused.

As she pondered, Ember blinked – yawning, then shaking her head as the fog she'd been dealing with started to clear.

She quickly realized she was in some kind of suit, like a pudgy version of herself, then saw that she'd been getting paint all over a canvas by using her own mitten-paws and plush-covered-tail as the medium.

Not quite sure what was going on, she looked around to see that everyone else was in pretty much the same situation – except for Gilda, whose padding, fur and feathers was now covered in all kinds of colours.

Strangely, her coat was mostly blue, but the feathers on top of her head – and the tuft of fur on her tail – were striped like a rainbow.

Gilda grumbled, trying to pull herself out of the pit, but every time she pushed her claws down into the sides of the inflatable pool, it simply sank under her weight, only to rebound a moment later and send her flopping back into the pit. Cadence and Shining continued to paint together, having created a mosaic of the crystal empire, albeit one that was rather sloppy and droopy as paint dripped down the canvas from their clumsy attempts at coloring. Cadence poked about at the canvas a bit, drawing out a rather silly looking Shining armor in puffy padding. Shining blushed, giving Cadence an embarrassed scowl. He drew out Cadence, in even puffier padding, along with a rather expansive dress. Cadence put Shining in some armor, and the two continued to pile on embarrassing articles of clothing, not noticing as their own diaper changed colors, swelling up slightly as a dress and armor puffed into existence around them.

Nightmare smirked over at Twilight, swirling around a can of black paint. She tossed it towards the alicorn, splattering her suit in the paint. Twilight let out a yelp, trying to stand up, but her puffy suit making her movements clumsy and wobbly. The black began to spread across Twilight’s suit, the Luna design becoming steadily more Nightmare-ish as it did. “Nighma- er, Luna, stop that!” Twilight said, turning to face the snickering crinkly princess. As she looked away, Daybreak watched as Twilight’s suit grew darker and puffier, becoming another Nightmare! Well, she couldn’t have this stand! Not in the slightest! She picked up pearl and orange paint, tossing it to Twilight. The paint splattered across her suit, now shifting it to look like another Daybreak. Twilight turned to face the offending alicorn, only to receive another splotch of black paint on her.

As the sisters fought over the purple pony, Starlight whined and wriggled in her thick padding as it reached the floor, lifting her up on its puffy expanse. Stars, galaxies, comets, and planets formed and swirled around on her diaper, becoming a magnificent display of the heavens upon a particularly helpless pony’s padded butt.

Trixie's painting was becoming more and more chaotic as she kept trying to work on it, with her attempts to add layering and shading just resulting in smearing what had originally been a fairly reasonable self portrait. The smears kept adding layers of padding as well, making the Trixie on the canvas resemble the Trixie doing the drawing more and more closely.

Up at the front, Discord made a few final strokes of his paintbrush-tail across the paper, then nodded to himself and put it up on the board – showing that it was a portrayal of the whole classroom, sitting obediently and paying attention to their handsome-looking draconequus teacher. And yet, something was odd about the painting, drawing the eye in and making the viewer inclined to stare rather than do whatever they'd been doing before.

Pleased with the result, Discord went around the whole group inspecting the results and checking them off on his score-sheet. Trixie's padded-pony got a check next to her cutie mark, as did the costume-contest-canvas of the two Crystal Empire rulers, and Discord gave Gilda full marks for having painted herself as Rainbow Dash.

Moving on to the two alicorn diapercritters fighting over Twilight's now-mismatched sleeper, he gave all three of them credit for the result – especially appreciating how Twilight's outfit was swelling up as it turned into a blotchy mix of Daybreak and Nightmare – then judged Ember's own drawing of a blobby gold-and-silver hoard as deserving of credit as well.

Finally he reached Starlight, and patted her on the rump before confirming on his paperwork that her diaper-display was just as worthy as the rest.

“Alright, settle down everypony! It’s time we move on to science!” Discord proclaimed, clapping his hands. Everypony’s canvases and paints vanished, as well as getting a rather swift clean up. That is, everypony beyond Twilight and her half and half suit, which still squeezed and snuggled her tightly, shifting colors between Nightmare and Daybreak. Starlight’s diaper was also left relatively unchanged, though it had been shrunken down juuuust enough so she wasn’t blocking the view of anypony sitting behind her as she sat upon her massive, crinkly, starry throne. Gilda rubbed at her still stained feathers, grumbling all the while as she watched as Cadence and Shining’s armor and dress were wiped clean.

Discord pulled a massive textbook out of nowhere, letting it fall onto his desk with a wham!, falling open as he ran a finger down a page. “Let’s see, we have Aeronautics, Agronomy, Amateur Witchcraft… Ah, this seems good!” Discord looked up from the textbook, grinning widely. “Our dear friend Starlight has shown some interest in Astronomy, so I say that seems a good place to start! It is in the “A” category of science, after all.”

Starlight gave a surprised look, shaking her head. “What? No I didn’t!”

“Your diaper doesn’t lie, Starlight! Nor does your name!” Discord chuckled, beginning to write on the chalkboard.

“But I didn't actually do astronomy,” Starlight protested. “I never bothered to-”

“That just means it's a chance to make up for lost time!” Discord informed her. “That's what the Discord Academy for Princess Students specializes in, making up for lost time! Time as a foal, time missing lessons, time not wearing diapers...”

He indicated Daybreak. “Time for an astronomy question!”

“The night is my domain!” Nightmare protested. “Ask not such night related questions to the boring day pony!”

Daybreaker stuck out her fabric-y tongue.

“What happens to a star when it gets older?” Discord asked Daybreak. “Answer quickly, now~”

“Why, 'tis simple!” Daybreak replied. “It becomes hotter, and swells up – the outer layer expanding to be far greater in size than it was before!”

As she spoke, the crinkly material of her surface began to grow – and to become redder, swelling up with every word and losing the harsh colours to a uniform dim orange-red colouring.

Suddenly, she was on Discord's projection screen instead of in the classroom, and clearly swelling up more and more with every second – the plush becoming thicker and thicker, until the real Celestia was probably just completely lost in an ocean of uniform, toasty warm red plush.

“It grows so much that it engulfs entire planets,” Daybreaker said, her voice drifting out of the screen. “Becoming less dense as it becomes larger, until it fills the sky...”

Daybreaker continued to inflate, her bloated, spherical form spinning slowly about in the sky. Every few seconds her head or tail would pass by, engulfed by her growing form as she continued to lecture the classroom. “The star swells, expands, becomes absolutely enormous compared to its original size!” Daybreak wriggled her hooves, her plush body beginning to creak, the seams running along her straining to hold in all the warm fluff inside. Twilight watched eagerly, finding Daybreak’s growth utterly mesmerizing. Some part of her tried to excuse it. She was hoping Celestia would be free, that Daybreaker would burst and reveal her mentor safe again! But Twilight knew what happened to massive stars… “Bigger… and bigger… until it… oh dear…” Daybreaker’s growth began to slow, now happening in sudden spurts, completely immobile, her plush skin now a shining crimson.

In a moment, less than a second, Daybreaker shrank, collapsing in on herself, though retaining her orb-like figure. A sudden flash blinded the classroom for a moment, only for mischievous laughter to fill their ears an instant later. Blinking, Trixie looked up at the screen as her vision came back to her. Instead of an overstuffed alicorn of the day floating through the night sky, a jet black spherical Nightmare could be seen laughing as she lazily drifted and spun about, squeezing her gut. “Ooohohoho! Until it collapses! Leaving nothing behind but a black hole! Bodies so heavy and dense, absolutely nothing can escape it!” Nightmare laughed, licking her lips as she gazed about at the skies around her. She began to inhale, grinning widely as a stream of starlight began to flow into her, bloating her up and up and up just as Daybreaker had!

The starlight and space-dust swirling into Nightmare's maw produced a spiralling disc, one which glittered like stars, and all the pupils watching found themselves unable to look away – mesmerized both by the swelling, crinkly Nightmare and by the spirals drawing their eyes in towards her maw.

“Anything that comes too close is drawn in,” her voice said, floating into the air and sinking into their minds. “Unable to resist the inexorable pull, tugging them down… down… deeper and deeper into the gravity of the black hole, so it becomes harder and harder to move away, until it enters the black hole itself.”

The spiral flickered and shimmered as it sucked up stars of several different colours, adding to the hypnotic effect which fixed them all to the screen.

“In the black hole, surrounded on all sides by the hole, so deep nothing can escape,” Nightmare said, her voice lulling them down into a trance. “So even moving away from the core is just moving closer… and deeper… unable to fight, unable to resist… until the end is inevitable...”

Twilight yawned, her mind associating the black hole with Nightmare with the crinkly critter's body with diapers with her own diaper, and forming the connection that diapers were irresistible and inevitable.

The swirling colors of the galaxy moved a bit faster as the camera seemed to become drawn into it as well, spinning and flowing along with the stars down towards the bottom of the whirlpool, where Nightmare hung, greedily guzzling away at the expanse. The night sky all around her seemed to melt away, becoming nothing but a swirling vortex to bloat the black hole bigger, which only made Nightmare all the more giddy. “Once inside, nothing can escape. Not that much of it would want to. Settling down into the black hole, feeling it squeeze all around as it grows and grows, swallowing everything it comes across…

The colors were now just a strange wobbly array, not even following a spiral as everything swirled and shifted around in a nonsensical, alluring manner. Starlight gazed up at the screen, leaning forward on her thick diaper, wishing she could be sucked down into it. Lost in its fluff, in its puffy embrace, with nothing but diaper poof all around…

Starlight was yanked out of her daydreams as the light to the classroom flicked on once again, the class groaning and complaining as the video ended. Twilight rubbed her eyes, blinking several times as she looked to either side of her. There were Nightmare and Daybreak, each sitting proudly as they had at the start of the video and yet… were they pudgier than they had been before? Trixie looked around as well, noticing Starlight seemed to be sitting much lower in her thick diaper than she was before the lights had turned off. She was sure of it…

“Excellent practical example of the main sequence stars,” Discord said, putting down some gold stars against several different symbols on his attendance sheet. “Now, let's move on to something a bit more down-to-Equestria – basic physics.”

There were a few rustles, and at least one squish, as the ponies, dragon and griffon shifted in their seats and made their padding respond.

“Firstly, we will look at an example of simple harmonic motion,” the 'teacher' continued, and reached into his own ear. He rummaged around, making a few slightly odd sounds, then produced a fine long chain with a flourish.

“There we go!” he said. “Can anyprincess tell me what this is? Hooves or other appendages up!”

Twilight raised her hoof promptly, though it was a little hard in her half-and-half suit. “Mmm!”

Discord removed her pacifier, and she spoke up. “It's a pendulum,” she said. “But you're using a pacifier as the weight.”

“Quite right!” Discord agreed, giving Twilight another approving check mark with a pen held in his tail. “Now, let's watch how the pendulum moves. First, when it's given just a little bit of a push.”

He blew on the pacifier, which began swinging back and forth on the chain.

“It's not moving very fast,” he pointed out. “So it's taking a long time to go back and forth. But if you speed it up, just a little, you'll see that it goes further – going back more, and forth more, so it takes just the same amount of time...”

Discord gave the pacifier a bit of a flick, causing it to swing higher on one side before falling back and swinging up on the opposite end. It continued to move back and forth. Back and forth. Gilda found her gaze to be following the pacifier as it swung about. She gave her head a bit of a shake, but she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the pacifier. “Now, eventually the pendulum would come to a stop if it were simply hanging here. But all one needs to do is give it that bit of extra energy and it can go practically forever!” Discord explained, his wrist flicking ever so slightly to keep the pendulum at its current rate.

Cadence watched as the pacifier moved back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. She felt like there was something… off about this. That she shouldn’t be so entranced by such a simple trick, and yet she found it far too easy to think about the pacifier and nothing else. She gave a few suckles on her own, shifting in her padding as her mind went a bit blank as she began to daydream…

“Of course, a pendulum can be made from anything so long as it’s got a good weight at the end of a rope! A pacifier, a coin, even a princess!” He chuckled, snapping his fingers. Ember found herself sitting in a foal bouncer at the front of the class, her padding pressed snugly into her by the seat. Discord gave her a push, sending her rocking back and forth slowly.

“M-mff,” Ember protested, trying to get out, but her minor struggles didn't do more than slightly alter the trajectory of her bouncer.

“The thing about a pendulum,” Discord went on, as Ember swung back and forth, “is that the same pendulum will always take the same amount of time to go back and forth. It's simple, reliable, and trustworthy, so you can trust it to do the same thing over and over.”

His voice took on an echoing quality. “Back and forth, always the same… always consistent… always reliable...”

Shining's eyes tracked the diapered-up dragon as she rocked back and forth, and he snuggled a little into his padding – adjusting his seating to be more comfortable, feeling a little drowsy as the regular motion absorbed any resistance Ember could throw at it.

“And it's just as relaxing to be the pendulum as to watch the pendulum,” Discord said. “So relaxing, so easy to just let your mind drift...”

Ember's struggles died down gradually, until she was just sitting there – watching a pendulum Discord had set up going in the other direction, so to her it was as if it was swinging very slowly indeed.

“That's why a pendulum is often used in psychological studies,” Discord told them. “Because the simple, harmonic movement of the pendulum can take over a mind… making it so that the one watching it can be told things… things they'll find it so easy to understand...”

...Trixie blinked, suddenly starting to wake up.

It was hard to do, as if her mind was wrapped in something cottony that made her thoughts slower, and she noticed – in a far-away way – that her diaper was wet.

“Now, who wants to volunteer for a demonstration of the water cycle?” Discord asked.

Trixie's hoof went up, and she looked at it in surprise – not sure why she'd just volunteered, and noticing that the other pupils had all reacted as quickly as she had.

“Oh, marvelous! It’s good to finally see some enthusiasm in the class!” Discord said, looking out at all the raised hooves. He scanned the room, trying to pick out the best candidate. “Gilda, why don’t you come up to the front!” Discord finally said. Gilda lowered her claw, blushing as she wondered why she had been raising her hand so eagerly. Still, she slipped out from her chair and waddled towards the front of the class room, trying to avoid eye contact with everypony she passed.

“Gilda, you should know a little about the cycle, you did live in Equestria’s weather capital for quite some time. What is it that clouds are made of?” Discord asked, smiling sweetly.

Gilda snorted, trying to keep her cool demeanor despite the overly puffy padding around her haunches. “Water, obviously.”

“And where does all that water come from?” Discord continued, undeterred by Gilda’s snide attitude.

“Lakes, ponds, pools, rivers, basically anywhere water is. We get pegasi to create cyclones by flying in circles to pull the water up to the tanks.”

“And how much would you expect those tanks to hold? 5 gallons? 10?”

Gilda snorted again, starting to become annoyed by the questions, not to mention Discord’s perpetually cheerful attitude. “50, and that’s the very smallest tanks!” She said.

“So, about… this large?” Discord asked, producing a 50 gallon jar of water hovering dangerously low above Gilda.

“Well, uh… yeah?” Gilda said, sounding a little more nervous now.

“And what do they do with older clouds?” Discord said, the water still hovering there.

“Fill them up with water, obviously-” Gilda began, then noticed she was now stuffed inside a giant cloud suit. “Wait, wha-”

Discord upended the jug, pouring the whole thing into her plush suit. “That's just right! They take the clouds which have already rained away, and then they fill them up with more water!”

He snapped his claws together to get Gilda's attention as her cloud-suit began to swell up. “How do the weather workers tell when a cloud's all full up?”

“Stop ittttt...” Gilda whined.

Discord shook his head. “No, that's not how they tell at all! I'll ask you again, in case you weren't paying attention. How do weather workers tell when a cloud is full?”

“Because it changes colour!” Gilda answered, hoping that would satisfy Discord. “It turns dark when it's full!”

“That's right again!” Discord nodded. “But your cloud's still white, which must mean it needs more water…”

Despite the weight of the water, Gilda felt herself starting to rise off the floor from some unknown lifting force. A string tied itself around her tail to keep her from flying all the way to the ceiling, but she found herself unable to get any traction on the floor – and with her wings wrapped uselessly in swelling cloud-plush.

Gilda squirmed about in the plush, but with how swollen it had already become, her mobility was rather limited. “Does anypony know how much clouds can normally hold?” Discord asked, turning back to the classroom. Shining raised his hoof, waving it about a bit.

“I think the average cloud holds about 200 gallons.” He replied. Discord nodded, making Shining grin and Gilda groan as another jug of water appeared above her and begin to pour itself over her. The plush cloud suit began to swell further, and Gilda could feel it squeeze in on her, somehow growing heavier despite her not dropping an inch from where she floated. Bigger and bigger she swelled, the jug never seeming to empty as it poured more and more water over her.

Eventually, though, the cloud suit began to darken, shifting from the pristine white to a grey, then a jet black. “Oh goodness, I think it’s going to storm here!” Discord proclaimed as Gilda wriggled about the little bit she could. Her suit suddenly quivered and rumbled, the sound of thunder filling the room as more and more water filled her up. “Now, would anypony like to tell me what happens when a storm comes?” Discord asked, splashing a bit of water onto Gilda’s head to stop her whining momentarily.

“It rains!” Trixie shouted out. Discord nodded, and Gilda blushed, suddenly feeling a bit of pressure growing as the suit swelled up and up and up.

“Ngh!” she groaned, trying to squeeze her legs together, but the sheer volume of her plushy outfit made it nearly impossible – and just resulted in a drip-drip-driiip of water falling out of the squeezed cloud.

The sound of the water worked through the last of her control, and Gilda flushed in embarrassment as she soaked her diaper – and, in sympathy, her cloud-suit unleashed a cloudburst.

The water fell all over the room, most of it drumming on an umbrella Discord raised over himself but some of the droplets falling on everypony in the audience – and on Ember – and more than one of the 'students' also found the raindrop sound provoking them to wet their diapers.

After at least thirty seconds, the cloud-suit was finally exhausted of water, and Gilda dropped back towards the floor.

“Now, once a cloud's all rained out, of course,” Discord went on, smirking. “What happens then?”

“It goes right back into the cycle again!” Trixie called, and Gilda – still blushing, and with a pacifier back in her beak – shot Trixie a venomous look.

“That's exactly right,” Discord agreed. “But you've got the idea, I'm sure.”

He produced a pocket fan and blew Gilda over to her seat, then gave approving marks to the students who'd done well.

“Let's see...” he added, opening a large book described on the cover as the Big Book Of Science. “What topic should we do next?”

Chapter 3

“Radiation? No, that’s too grim. Quantum mechanics? Even I don’t understand that!” Discord pondered, tapping his chin as he flipped through more of the book. “Oh, I know! How about home economics?” He said. Twilight bit down on her pacifier, trying her best to bite back a retort. How in Equestria was that science?

Discord put the book down, snapping his claws as a small kitchen appeared at the front of the classroom and a frilly pink apron was draped over Discord as well. “Something simple, I think. Everypony knows princesses love cake, if Celestia is anything to go by,” Nightmare Moon snickered at Discord’s jab “So knowing how to make some for yourselves should be something every princess knows.” Discord walked over to the fridge, pulling out several ingredients, while his tail flipped open a cupboard to pull out a bowl and mixer. “Now, please watch carefully, as I’m only going to do this once.” Discord said. “Firstyou’llwanttograbthebutterandtheflourmixingthemuplikeso…” Discord began to spout off words at break-neck pace, zipping back and forth around the kitchen as he prepared the cake.

Trixie tried to follow Discord’s instructions, but he was moving far, far too fast for anypony to be able to follow what he was doing. He began to whip up the batter, humming a song that Twilight thought she heard Pinkie singing at one point or another.

After less than twenty seconds, Discord put the cake in the fridge. It hummed to itself, and then the draconequus opened the toaster and took the cake out again.

“And voila!” he said, placing a perfectly cooked wedding cake four stories high – though the third layer appeared to be made out of solid chocolate, and the figures on the top consisted of a familiar group of diapered-up ponies (and one griffon and one dragon).

“Easy as cake, and a piece of pie,” he declared. “Now, who thinks they can do the same?”

Twilight's hoof went up, as did all the others, and she did a double-take.

“Everyone, wonderful!” Discord applauded, and his tail cracked down on the floor. All of their desks walked over to the side of the room, and then a collection of kitchens appeared out of the ground around each student.

“It's important for a Princess to understand every aspect of her staff's work!” Discord explained. “And to be able to tell a great cake from a good one by the taste alone – so, get to work!”

Twilight looked around for a recipe, and saw nothing. There was a fridge with nothing in, but the oven appeared to be full of ingredients so that at least wasn't a problem – but she had no idea where to start with baking a cake, let alone how to do a good one.

That didn't seem to be stopping some of the others, though, and Cadence was already starting to put eggs and flour in a bowl. Twilight thought about copying her – she was sure Cadence wouldn't mind – but then an egg hit her in the flank, bouncing off her plush suit.

Looking to either side of herself, Twilight groaned. Nightmare and Day Breaker were either side of her, and were already starting to use the ingredients as weapons rather than as actual ingredients.

Twilight began to get to work, trying her best to ignore Daybreak and Nightmare’s squabbling as she cooked. If Twilight thought she was having trouble, though, it was nothing compared to what Starlight was trying to deal with. Her massively overinflated padding kept her hind hooves well off of the floor, meaning she had to lean down against her diaper to try and pull one of the cupboards open in search of a bowl. The door could only open so far, however, before it encountered the wall of fluff that was Starlight’s cosmic padding.

Shining was attempting to follow Cadence’s actions as well, though Discord didn’t seem to care how he was blatantly cheating. Stirring in the sugar just like Cadence, she eventually spotted him watching her and stuck out her tongue playfully before poking his diaper with the end of her spoon. “Come on, Shiny, you can do this by yourself! You’re a big pony!” She teased. Shining blushed, returning to his own cake.

Meanwhile, Ember was continuing to search the cupboards, confused as to why she was missing so many key ingredients. “Where the heck are the emeralds? The rubies? There’s gotta at least be some cheap quartz in here!” She grumbled, bending over and exposing her thickly padded rear as she struggled to locate her favorite gems.

“Do I hear a princess in need of some shiny jewels?” Discord asked, leaning out of the cutlery drawer to inspect how Ember was doing.

“I'm not a princess,” Ember retaliated. “And yeah, how am I supposed to bake a cake without any crystals at all?”

“But you do have crystals,” Discord told her, reaching into his sleeve and producing a bag of sugar. “Sugar crystals, look!”

“Those aren't proper gemstones,” Ember said, sitting down on a stool and making her padding shift – forcing it out until it overhung the edges of the stool. “You know, rocks.”

Discord simply produced a salt-shaker.

“Oh, whatever,” Ember muttered. “I'm not making a cake unless I've got the right ingredients to make a cake for a dragon.”

“My, my!” Discord chuckled. “It seems we have a proper, princessly, prissy tantrum! Now that deserves rewarding!”

Ember blinked. “Wait, what?”

Before she could react, a sack of assorted gemstones landed next to her. Some of them bounced out, revealing they were made of plush, but the one which landed in Ember's mouth still tasted just like a real topaz.

Whatever their texture, Ember didn’t care much as she began to stir in the gemstones. Discord walked along, watching as the others continued to mix their cakes. Trixie was finishing pouring the mixture into a baking tin, popping open the oven to stick the batter in, only to remember who she was dealing with and go to the fridge instead. Twilight was attempting to pour out her cake batter, letting out a yelp and ducking as an entire cupcake tin went whizzing past her. Nightmare retaliated by tossing a few globs of batter towards Daybreak with her magic. The sweet batter flew into her mouth and down Celestia’s throat, making her belly bulge out just a bit in the plush suit’s fluff.

Starlight was still struggling to mix her ingredients as she sat atop her thick diaper. She mumbled to herself, trying to hold the bowl in one hoof and mix with the other as Discord walked by. “Ooops!” He said, smacking his tail into Starlight. Starlight squeaked, dropping the bowl onto her padding, which it quickly sank down into. “Oh Starlight, I didn’t know you were planning on making Paddy-Cakes! Well, let me help you, then.” Discord picked up Starlight, who kicked as her padding seemed much softer and doughier. Discord opened the door to the oven, positioning Starlight in front of it. He shoved forward, Starlight squishing into the oven, her padding bulging out of the front. With a few struggles, Discord pushed and pressed on Starlight’s diaper, closing the oven door with a grunt of effort. “Phew! Now, let’s get things nice and toasty…” He clicked one of the knobs on the oven as it began to grow warm and cozy…

“Hey, let me out!” Starlight protested, struggling, but the oven's heat built up around her. Never getting too warm, oddly enough, and always staying so it was comfy instead of painful, but it seemed as though every second made it more cozy and soporific and difficult to resist.

Starlight kicked at the door as best she could, then tried to cast a spell, but her horn just fizzed and made her padding begin to rise – and rise in the sense of baking a cake, swelling up with every second.

She yawned, feeling sleepy all of a sudden, and fought to stay awake…

Gilda pushed her own mixture of dough into the oven, twisting the dial at random, then yelped and jumped back as a burst of flame erupted from the hob on top.

Blushing – both over her squawk and the fact her diaper had now developed a tell-tale sag – Gilda tried the other controls, to see if there was at least one combination which looked right. She quickly discovered that none of the controls was anything like normal, with one of them firing toast out of the extractor fan at high speed and another causing the fridge to dispense a stream of melted butter.

Finally, she hit the top of the oven in irritation – and, much to her surprise, a perfectly-baked and iced cake slid popped out of the toaster.

The sight of it made Gilda sigh, rolling her eyes as she took in the shape (a griffin almost hidden inside her enormous padded diaper) but she decided it was probably the best she was going to get.

As she took it up to the front desk, however, her actual cake stayed in the oven – hissing away under the effect of magical energies, some of them only very distantly related to cooking...

Shining Armor pulled his cake out of the oven, placing it on the counter. Cadence was doing the same, finding some icing to try and add a few decorations to her own cake, that of half of a fat plush couple smooching. Shining tried to mimic Cadence’s work at least partially, to keep his half of the cake symmetrical to hers. It wasn’t long before they and Trixie, whose cake showed a rather fat pony with a cork on her horn, carried their confections to the front of the class as well.

Twilight dodged as more pastry ingredients flew past her, filling the two crinkly sisters across from her. Daybreak had taken to drawing a rather crude representation of Nightmare squished under the white alicorn’s rear on Nightmare’s belly, while Nightmare was attempting to depict her gobbling up Daybreak on the other. Twilight gave a small sigh of relief upon hearing her cake finish, and she hurried to the front of the room along with Ember to place their cakes on the desk.

Meanwhile, Starlight was snoozing happily, suckling on her pacifier as her padding ballooned further, the starry expanse starting to shift to look more like a decorated cake. The oven door strained to hold in her thick diaper, pushing out as her padding grew and grew. Gilda’s oven began to spark and smoke as the magic continued to work, drawing everypony’s attention to it.

“Um… is that bad?” Twilight asked. “Whose is that?”

“Not mine,” Gilda said unconvincingly. “Hey, don't ask me, ask the dweeb who made these ovens!”

With a loud ping, Starlight's oven finished the cooking process. A hatch opened in the ceiling, and Starlight fell out – the impact with the desk waking her up and bouncing the other cakes into the air, but not damaging any of them.

“Starlight?” Twilight asked, seeing what her diaper looked like. “What just happened?”

“I have no idea,” Starlight replied, yawning.

There was a final fizzle from Gilda's oven, and then it exploded in a cloud of icing sugar.

Twilight managed to get one of her wings in place to shield her from the wave of sugar, despite the difficulty of moving her plush-coated appendage, then lowered it to look through the sugary mist to see what had happened.

Something stepped forwards.

“And it looks like Gilda's produced one of the most feared outcomes of a baking session!” Discord exposited, as the silhouette became clearer. “A Tirek-cake!”

He leaned closer to Twilight. “It's full of raisins. Now that's evil.”

Straightening up, he cleared his throat. “Ahem. Now, extra credit for whoever finishes off the confectionary centaur!”

There was a general lack of movement, except for all the padded-up students taking nervous steps backwards – some of them bumping into desks with their diapers.

Trixie and Gilda looked between each other, Starlight rolling back on her padding to try and scoot away from the large Tirek cake. Twilight, on the other hand, licked her lips as she looked up at the cake. Extra credit? For eating cake? With raisins? This was too good to be true! She stepped up to the pastry beast, staring up at it. She gulped a little. As delicious as it sounded, even she wasn’t sure she could eat the cake in its entirety. “Uuh…” She began, wondering if she should say something. Just as she opened her mouth, though, the Tirek Cake jumped up into the air and dove downwards.

Twilight’s mouth was filled with cake, her cheeks ballooning out as the cake forced itself into her. She gave a strong guuuuulp!, her belly distending. The waistband of her diaper stretched to accommodate her bulging gut. Twilight stumbled back, standing on her high hooves to hold her gut with her forehooves in an attempt to stop the growth. It did nothing, however, as the Tirek cake slipped the rest of the way down, causing Twilight to land with a flump! on her now much wider rump. Her diaper crinkled as she let out a loud belch, blushing brightly and covering her mouth. “Excuse me…” She said as she tried to get back to her hooves.

“You're excused!” Discord replied easily. “Now then, let's see who produced the best cake!”

He produced a plate and cake-slicer from nowhere in particular and went down the row, taking a slice apiece from each cake. Then he arranged them together into a single cake, which just so happened to be in the shape of a large, thick diaper.

“...how did that work?” Trixie asked, tilting her head. “That doesn't seem to-”

“Discord, remember?” Starlight reminded her.

“Right, of course,” Trixie sighed. “Trixie supposes – I mean, I suppose I should have expected nothing less.”

“Now, you'd all better try your own cakes, to see whether you think you achieved what you were trying to do,” Discord advised. “Remember, a good cake is one which is tasty, tasteful, well-decorated and ideally healthy as well.”

After a pause, he sniggered. “No, I'm joking about that last one. Why bother?”

Ember shrugged, then cut a slice of her own cake.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” Gilda said. “I mean, not that I care!”

“We have been here for, uh… ages,” Ember said. “I for one am hungry, and this might be our only chance for a while to get some non-infant food.”

“Better eat up!” Discord added, already on his third slice. “After this there's a psychology lesson!”

Everypony gathered around, each taking a slice of cake. Sighs of contentment filled the room, everypony finding the cake to be absolutely delectable. Ember reached for another gem covered portion of the cake, gulping it down as she rubbed her belly. Trixie chewed on her slice, looking down at the cake. “Wait… where’s Starlight’s cake?” She asked. Starlight blushed, stammering as she glanced between her thick diaper and Trixie.

“I… uh… that may not be-eeep!” Starlight yelped, feeling Nightmare bite down on the rump of her padding, giving a few testing chews. She eventually spit out the fluff, spluttering a bit. “Well, it certainly is tasty, but I don’t think I can eat all of this! Perhaps you could fit it in your fat belly, Daybreak.” Nightmare laughed. Daybreak simply stuffed her fifth slice of cake into her, glaring at Nightmare.

Twilight gave a soft “oooff” as she waddled back to her seat, too stuffed with Tirek cake to try and eat anymore of the sweets. It wasn’t long before everypony made their way back to their seats, each sporting a heftier gut than they had at the start of the lesson. Discord puffed the cake tray away, looking down at his textbook once again.

“Now let’s see, where to start… the pony mind is quite a fascinating place you know!”

“Hey!” Gilda protested, then blushed as she realized she'd drawn attention to herself.

“And so is the griffin mind, and the dragon mind,” Discord continued, giving her a smirk. “There are several ways the various races differ in their reactions to stimuli, but there are also areas where they react in very similar ways – so let's look at an example. Can I get a volunteer?”

Gilda's clawed hand went up straight away, and she blinked – surprised that she'd volunteered, as she hadn't been planning on it. Moving a little awkwardly, her diaper seeming larger than ever, she waddled up to the front as Discord snapped on a slide projector.

Leaving it blank, just showing a bright light, he produced a bit on a string.

“All the races have some kind of reaction to shiny objects,” he said, holding it in the light so it sparkled. “Ponies have a subconscious association between sparkles and magic, while dragons want it for their hoards, and griffins just have it as a result of their good eyesight. And because a princess has her regalia, she's surrounded by shiny things as well – that's how others know she's important.”

He moved his paw a little, making it start to swing back and forth. “And, because of that, when something's moving, it's easy to just follow it – to keep watching it as it moves, because it's doing something and it doesn't become boring. You want to follow it, as it swings back and forth...”

Gilda had to admit, the freaky draco-whatever did seem to know his stuff on this topic. Her eyes followed the glittering golden bit, back and forth, and it was just easier to keep looking.

“It's so relaxing, to just watch it move,” Discord went on. “You don't need to think about the stresses of your job, or your situation, because the bit moving back and forth is taking all your attention...”

Gilda’s eyes followed the swinging bit, and as they did, she found herself paying less and less attention to Discord’s lecture. Whatever he was talking about now, it didn’t seem nearly as important as watching the bit swing back and forth. She leaned back, settling herself down a little more in her thick diapers and ruffling her feathers as she forgot about what exactly she had been doing before this anyway. She gave a half-hearted attempt to think back to what she had been doing a few minutes ago, but she could barely remember. Not to mention she had no clue what had happened before she had been in Discord’s school for princesses. Gilda didn’t really care, though, as all she cared about was the bit swaying around and how comfy her padding was.

“And with how alluring these shiny prizes are, you should know how far somepony might be willing to go to get them! Gilda, what would you do for a nice, shiny bit?” Discord asked.

These words somehow managed to slip through the stupor Gilda was in, though not break her out of it. She thought a little, still watching the bit. “Oooh… flood pampers… puffy padding… be lost in fluff…~” She grinned, thinking of embarrassing things she might do for a bit.

“That's right,” Discord agreed, still swinging the bit. “When you want something enough… you'll do anything for it. It takes over your mind, so you can't think about anything else, so everything else you think about is about it as well...”

His voice washed over her. “And, as you think about what you'd do, you find yourself not just thinking about them but imagining them happening… imagining how embarrassed you'd feel...”

Gilda nodded softly, eyes glazed. As she did, her diaper puffed up – swelling visibly, making Gilda wiggle again and causing it to crinkle.

“You'll look more and more like a proper Princess,” he said, as Gilda's diaper reached a size it would be hard to walk with – not from the diaper pushing her legs apart, but from it nearly hitting the ground when she was standing on all fours. Then the material spread out, the outer layer becoming softer and more fluffy, engulfing her from neck to tail in a soft, plush Gryphon suit.

As it completed, a silly, skimpy pink-and-blue dress formed over it.

“That's better,” Discord said. “You can imagine yourself lost in fluff, properly Princess padded, and wearing the right clothes for a Princess… diapered and wearing a dress, of course.”

He paused, still swinging the glittering golden pendulum, then continued. “But there's one more thing you need to do before you earn your bit...”

Gilda slowly nodded, rocking a little in her swollen padding as she squeezed her legs together. With a hisss she began to flood her padding, feeling them grow warm and damp, starting to swell up once again. Gilda’s eyelids lowered as she grinned widely, still staring at the swinging bit as she tugged at her tutu gently. Her diaper puffed up, rolling Gilda forward onto all fours, though her hind legs could only just reach the ground around her diaper. Discord smiled, dropping the bit for Gilda to grab by the string. “There you are, I say you’ve earned this.”

Gilda let out a quiet chirp as she began to waddle back to her seat, her rear swinging widely from how swollen her diaper had become. Ember watched as Gilda slipped back into her seat, barely able to fit in it with all the poof around her rump. Rather than aversion, though, Ember found herself feeling… jealous. She wished she had such a thick diaper, and a lovely dress to go with it. She realized what she was thinking and shook her head as a blush crossed her face. N-no, she certainly didn’t want that! That’s embarrassing! Gilda looked so… stupid!

But still the gryphon rubbed her butt into the seat, chirping again as she sank into her diaper and relaxed.

“So, that's one way to affect the mind,” Discord said. “But that's just one of the many ways to do it – rather than using simple rhythmic motions, it's also possible to use more complex methods.”

He put a small pile of gold coins on the table. “Who would like to volunteer for a demonstration of one of those?”

Ember's gaze was already fixed on the gold coins, and her clawed hand went up without her really thinking about it.

“Excellent!” Discord said, gesturing towards the front, and Ember waddled a trifle awkwardly up to the front of the class.

“So, um, what's this one about?” Ember asked nervously, her gaze flicking to the coins every few seconds.

“About how you can overload the senses,” Discord explained. “To give them so much to deal with that the mind starts just accepting what it's told without thinking about it.”

He produced a pair of goggles, which had something other than glass in the windows, and the projector started up again by itself – showing a black screen, for now.

“So the rest of the class can follow along, the board will be showing what's on the lenses,” Discord explained, giving her the goggles, and Ember put them on after a little awkward fumbling.

For a few seconds, she could just see black. Then a complex pattern of colours began to appear in front of her eyes, shifting constantly.

The colors swirled and spun, creating a hypnotic dazzle of hues. Though Ember was the one wearing the glasses, everypony found themselves unable to pull their gaze away from the colors up on the screen. “Not unlike the shiny objects, ponies find themselves fascinated by swirling colors due to their association with magic and spells. When presented to them to such a degree, they find themselves fixated on it and will do just about anything that will let them keep staring at the colors.” Discord explained, making sure not to block anypony’s view of the screen as they watched.

“For example, if somepony said to relax,” There was a sigh from everypony in the room as they leaned back in their chairs and sank into their padding, smiling up at the screen. Discord chuckled. “Precisely~. Or, perhaps, puff” Everypony’s padding gave a bwoomp as they all imagined them thicker, warmer, plumper around their waists. Discord giggled again, unable to resist as he watched everypony enjoying their thick, cushy padding.

“Balloooon~” Discord chuckled. Twilight, Trixie, and Starlight’s padding all swelled again, but the others took a deeeeeep breath, their bellies stretching out just like blimps as they squeezed themselves.

“You see, the patterns work by overloading the mind of the pony looking at them,” Discord said, as the colours swirled and flickered. “They make it so that anything else they are told simply goes right through, becoming true.”

He slunk over to Ember. “But when the patterns are right up there next to your face… well, they're much harder to ignore, and much easier to focus on. Isn't that right?”

Ember shifted slightly, nodding slightly, then more enthusiastically as she realized it wouldn't interrupt her happy stare at the colours in their hypnotic dance.

“So if I said… poof,” Discord stressed, then continued. “Everypony reacts, but the Princess wearing the goggles reacts so much more...”

Indeed, Ember's padding was growing rapidly as she wiggled in her seat – happy to just stare at the pretty colours.

“But that's not all,” Discord went on. “Because sometimes, the patterns themselves can have a message – one that only the one wearing the goggles can properly see, one which tells them that they should be warmer, happier, pudgier – more of a hatchling than a sleek dragoness, because it's so much easier to perform your duties when your duties are just to look cute...”

Ember nodded again, her own diaper expanding rapidly and overtaking her body.

It took on almost exactly the same pattern as her own scales, forming a complete suit-like layer, and giving the impression that she was proportioned more like a particularly pudgy Spike than her real form – an impression strengthened a moment later when it formed a second diaper on the outside, as if that was what she was wearing.

Ember rolled around on her rear, kicking her seemingly stubby legs in the crinkly fluff of her diaper as she squeezed her belly. “And, of course, a dragon princess should be well fed at all times.” Discord said, Ember feeling a large plush something drop into her lap. She gave it a squeeze, and though she couldn’t see what it was due to the goggles, she grinned as she felt it was a giant gem. She bit down on it, chewing happily on the puffy fabric as her suit gained a bit more padding to make her appear even pudgier. “That’s not all hypnosis can do, though. Twilight, would you happen to know of anything you could do with a hypnosis spell?” He asked, turning to face her.

Twilight didn’t turn to look at Discord, still staring up at the screen. She was able to concentrate just enough to comprehend his question, however, and began to think. “Uh…. Well, with a want-it need-it spell, you can make somepony fall in love with something, and just have to have it… or more of it…” She shifted in her seat, remembering when she had cast the spell on her old plushie smarty-pants. She smiled a little, imagining having her plushie to snuggle. She’d make a good assistant to a princess such as herself.

“Hey!” Spike said, scrunching his muzzle a bit. He was Twilight’s number one assistant, not some raggedy old plush toy!

Unable to hear her draconic companion's words, Twilight continued to wonder about Smarty Pants. Of course, her old toy was too small now to really be good for a snuggle, so it would need to be larger… and it would only be right if it was puffier…

Her horn glowed as she thought about it, and then imagined casting the Want-It-Need-It spell. But the focus she had on the hypnotic screen before her twisted her magic, making her put together a combination of spells and get them all mixed up and swirled around, so by the time the magic left her horn it was anyone's guess what she'd done.

Then Twilight felt herself picked up, a pair of soft hooves around her barrel and squishing into her alicorn-suit, and turned around – breaking her line of sight with the screen, and making her able to focus again.

“Wha-huh?” she asked, blinking, then realized that what had picked her up was a giant plushy version of her old toy Smarty Pants!

Smarty Pants' button eyes had little pink hearts in them, and she gave Twilight a nuzzle before hugging her close with both soft, plushy forelegs. The faux-pony sat down in Twilight's desk, which grew in size to accommodate her, and began sitting as if she were the pony being given the lesson.

“Well, that's a good start!” Discord announced, turning off the shimmering screen and breaking the entrancing, hypnotic spell it had been casting. “Now, it's time for a field trip!”

He looked out of the book pages at Spike. “Turn to pages sixteen and seventeen. Do not look at pages fourteen to fifteen unless you're wearing a – well, never mind, look if you want.”

Spike frowned, not sure what that meant, then felt something soft around his waist.

A glance down confirmed his fears – he was wearing one of the same soft, thick diapers as all Discord's 'school students'!

As he tried to get it off, the comic book fell to the floor – flicking through several pages at once. One of the double-page spreads seemed to be a magic eye picture, but it was moving, and it drew Spike's attention like a magnet before the next page fell over it and cut off his sightline.

“...huh?” he asked, wondering faintly why he felt like sending off an application form to some school, then picked up the comic again and checked he was on pages sixteen and seventeen.

Discord had removed the goggles from Ember, and the show of swirling colors had come to an end. Now everypony was gathering near the door, all standing in an orderly line. All except for Daybreak and Nightmare, who were attempting to shove the other to the back of the line, only to end up squabbling at the rear together. Discord clapped his hands, everypony’s chatter coming to a stop as they looked up at Discord. “Now, does everypony have their lunches? A change of padding?” He asked. Everypony nodded, each carrying saddlebags stuffed full of overly thick diapers and snacks fit for a foal. “Wonderful!” Discord opened the door and everypony began to file out. Rather than stepping out into the hallway of a school, however, everypony suddenly found themselves at a small water park. Fountains sprayed water up in the air as slides spun around in all directions. At the peak of the wet playset stood a giant bucket. A bell rang and it began to sloooowly tip forward, letting out a torrent of water down into a shallow pool below.

“Alright, everypony, have fun!” Discord said, letting the ponies loose. At first, nopony was sure of what to do, but eventually Trixie took a tentative step forward, looking up at one of the large slides. She began to hurry towards it, and it wasn’t long before the others broke off to find their favorite thing to do. Nightmare wasted no time in flapping up to a small mounted gun that was squirting water. She took a hold of the handles and spun it about, trying to spray Daybreak down. The white alicorn dodged one of the jets of water, sticking her tongue out as she spotted a collection of water balloons nearby and making her way towards them.

Starlight had wandered over to a small pool where several holes lay in the bottom of the shallow water. She leaned over one, peaking into it, only to receive a spurt of water into her face. Spluttering, she stumbled backwards in her overly thick padding, only to flop down a moment later. She wiped her face dry, looking around to see where she hand landed, only to feel something spray up into her padding. She blushed at the sensation, trying to waddle away, but only succeeding in rolling forward as the water continued to spray her pampers.

The magically-enchanted diaper absorbed the water easily, swelling up only slightly by comparison to the amount of water going into it. It did become slick, though, so that whenever Starlight tried to get up the bulky diaper ended up being used as a support and promptly giving way again.

So much water was going into her thirsty padding, in fact, that the pool itself was starting to dry out. The sprayers were replenishing it every time they fired – unless they hit her diaper – but even despite that Starlight's magic diapers were becoming more and more saturated.

As Starlight struggled, Twilight was having her own odd experience. The giant plush carrying her around had put her in a set of floaties, and was going around in circles on a big tube-shaped float on the lazy river.

The rocking of the float was making her feel sleepy, and her alicorn sleeper seemed to be water-resistant – so she was just feeling wonderfully warm and peaceful, disconnected from what was going on as she slipped towards sleep in Smarty Pants' hooves.

“Race you to the bottom!” Shining called, waddling up to the top of one of the big water rides. This was one of the ones which was actually several little slides joined together by pools of water, and Cadence was coming up just behind him with her own diaper making her waddle as well.

“Ah ah ah...” Discord chided them, waving a claw as he materialized. “Remember, the rapids are for experienced swimmers! I think you'd better wear some proper flotation gear, if you're going to go down them...”

With a snap of his claw, Shining Armor and Cadence found themselves sporting bright orange padding, along with overly inflated water-wings on each of their legs, as well as a puffy life vest. And just for good measure, a life preserver had appeared around their waists like a skirt. “There we are, that should do it!” Discord said, looking proudly down at the two ponies. They looked at each other awkwardly, unsure if they wanted to go down the slides now they were this padded up. They weren’t given a choice, however, when Discord gave each of them a slap on the rump, sending them down their perspective slides.

As Cadence and Shining slid down, neither of them noticed that Discord still held two rings in his hands, a thin string running between them and the back of the padding belonging to the now slip-sliding ponies. He tapped his hoof, glancing down at a stopwatch clutched in his beard. Seeming satisfied, he let go of the strings as they began to whir back towards both ponies’ rumps.

Ember and Gilda had gathered near a large pool, each flopping down in an overly puffy inner tube to drift out into the water. Gilda buried her beak in her chest, sighing happily as Ember playfully splashed her. Gilda let out a giggle, splashing Ember in return. As the two tossed water back and forth, they suddenly found themselves bucked upwards, a large wave tossing their tubes about. They looked over their shoulders to see several more waves forming in the pool, coming quickly closer to the pair. Ember let out a yelp as her tube was lifted high up in the air, water splashing onto her padding and making it puff up just a bit. Gilda attempted to flap her wings and carry herself out of the pool, but her own padding had become so water logged she could barely lift herself off the tube. The two were stuck as the waves grew stronger and higher…

The bit Gilda had earned earlier – on a string around her neck – bounced up as she was tossed by the water, and it caught her eye all of a sudden.

Her mind fogged a little, and she remembered soaking her diaper to earn the bit – so she wet them again, making the padding puff up and expand and lift her a bit higher in the water.

Seeing what had happened, Ember wet herself as well, and her own diaper swelled up – then her padded suit did as well, both of them getting larger and larger as they kept using their diapers over and over.

The swelling of their suits managed to outpace the waterlogging from all the waves, and left them high and not-too-wet – but also almost completely immobile, too large for their tails or wings or paws to do more than splash a little water about relative to the sizes of their huge, trapping plush suits.

Day Breaker hurled a water balloon over the edge of a railing, and it exploded around Nightmare Moon. Water ran down in all directions, and Day Breaker giggled at the sight of her sisterly adversary so suddenly damp.

“You will regret that!” Nightmare Moon swore, and hurled half-a-dozen slightly smaller balloons back up at the other plushy alicorn. Most of them missed, but Day Breaker yelped as one hit her between her wings.

Nightmare laughed, and inside the plush suit Luna laughed as well – the continual exposure to the Nightmare-suit's actions and behaviour rapidly eroding her resistance to just acting like Nightmare had been anyway.

Daybreak glared down at her sister as her plush form bloated up a bit from the water. Nightmare went back to manning the water gun, attempting to spin it around to keep the jet of water aimed at Daybreak. Daybreak spun about in the air, deftly dodging the jets as she dropped down more water balloons. One managed to land directly on top of Nightmare, causing Celestia to let out a laugh of triumph as Daybreak cackled herself.

Trixie, after having gone down one of the shorter slides, found herself sitting near a collection of beach toys. Beachballs, inflatable gators, dragons, ursas, and several more puffy tubes all lay around her. She waddled up to a particularly large beach ball, flopping down onto it and giggling at the soft squeaks that it made. She wiggled her rump, pressing her diaper down into the beachball as she rolled around on top of it. As she did, with another squeak, she suddenly found herself stuck gripping the ball between her hooves and beneath her chin while her padded butt had managed to slip through the middle of one of the tubes. Trixie bounced about feebly in an attempt to free herself, but it was to no avail. Bouncing and rocking about, Trixie squeezed down on the beachball as she tried to push it out of her now pinned legs.

Her bouncing and creaking had attracted Discord’s attention, however, and it wasn’t long before the draconequess popped up beside the stuck unicorn wearing a flat-top cap and a gas-attendant’s uniform. “Oh, a little under-flated are we? Don’t you worry Ms Trixie, we’ll have you blimped up in no time!” He said as he pulled a spool of hose out from a station that popped up next to him. Trixie suckled on her pacifier, shaking her head in protest, but Discord paid her no attention as he hooked up hoses to the tubes, beachballs, and toys all around Trixie. “Have fun!” He laughed before vanishing in a puff of smoke. The stand began to whirr to life, and the steady hiss of air echoed around as everything began to inflate around Trixie…

Shining Armor wobbled ineffectually back and forth as he tried to swim, to direct himself, but the super-thick inflatable diaper cover wrapped around him was too much – he just splashed the water a bit, but when the slide narrowed down a little he promptly got wedged in place.

The water built up behind him, pushing him down a few more inches with a squeeeak and a slide, but then that was it – he was stuck.

“Look out!” Cadence called from behind him, as she slid down the same slide after him, and she bumped into him with a fwoomp! Her momentum shifted the balance, squishing both their diapers in on them and making it so Shining slid down a bit further… and a bit further… until suddenly he was past the bottle-neck and they both went crashing down into the water at the bottom of the slide.

The impact with the water made the orange outer layers of the diapers inflate even more, and though they'd gone well under the water from the drop they just bobbed back to the surface like corks.

Even as they did, though, the current of the next part of the artificial river began to pull on them – making them move towards yet another drop.

The water splashed around them as they were pulled down the next slide, slipping into darkness momentarily as the sides of the slides curled up to form a cover. Were it not for the rush of water and the crinkle-squish of their diapers, it would be impossible for the ponies to tell what was happening to them. Shining jerked a bit to the side, rolling forward onto his belly. Cadence let out a yelp as she felt something push her forward, not able to realize she had been pushed in front of Shining in the slide.

It was now her turn to become lodged in the slide, her legs kicking wildly as the water flowed around her. With a pomf!, Shining received a face full of lifejacket padding fluff. He mpphhed as he kicked and pushed against Cadence’s rear, the water building up again…

“Gah! S-stop this!” Starlight yelled as the water pushed her back to a sitting position. Her diaper had become so swollen and soggy, it now covered almost every one of the small fountains in the shallow pool. She stuck her hooves out, trying to maintain her balance as her diaper swelled out. She could feel the occasional jet of water spray against her diaper, making it grow even bigger. The pressure began to grow as more and more water was unable to escape, blocked by her massive, soaked padding.

The cool water was making her feel chilly as it splashed around inside her diaper, sploshing from side to side with every movement she made, and she blushed and tried to squeeze it – not sure herself whether she wanted it to stop moving or to move more.

As the diaper swelled up, thin little streams of water started to trickle out of the waistband as the increasing pressure forced just a little through the thin gap. Then she covered the final nozzle, and the pressure jumped even more.

“N-noooo...” Starlight moaned, knowing that her enchanted diaper had to contain far more water than it looked – and it looked huge, so it was hard to even guess how much high pressure water there was in there.

Then, finally, something gave way.

Starlight went shooting up into the air like a soggy rocket, the fountains erupting again beneath her, and her whine faded away as she shot upwards – until it came back, as she dropped back down again in the main pool with an enormous splash.

Twilight let out a shout as a wave suddenly washed over her and Smarty-Pants, turning the lazy river into wild rapids. Ember and Gilda were washed ashore in their tubes from the wave created by Starlight, the unicorn in question grabbing onto one of their tubes to ride out towards the shallow end as well. It was at this time that the pressure in the slide behind Shining and Cadence also blew out, sending the pair launching through the air. They arced through the sky, heading straight for the playground over which Daybreak and Nightmare were now hovering. The alicorns had just enough time to spot the puffy orange butts flying towards each other before they smacked into them. The four dropped down into the bucket at the top of the playpen.

The bucket began to tip forwards, the water sloshing about inside. Nightmare tried to climb on top of Shining to lift herself out, but Daybreak pounced on top of her, tugging her back down to the bottom. Cadence let out a scream as the water began to pour down the sides and the group was sent flying over the edge.

Below the bucket, Trixie was still trying to free herself from her squeaky bonds when she felt a few trickles of water from above. She glanced up, only to yelp a moment later before four very soggy crinkly butts fell on top of her with a loud squeak!

The amount of water in the bucket was enormous, and it swept the whole group along as it flooded into the water park. No matter where they'd ended up, they were caught up in the raging torrent of water and swirled around, going from pool to pool as each one was added to the massive flood.

By the door, Discord whistled to himself as he read a book about sheep. The sound of the water got closer, and he produced a fishing net with his free hand before holding it sideways to cover the door.

Water slammed into it, and it broke down with a crash. Seven padded ponies, one diapered dragon and one waterlogged griffin were all flushed through, piling up on top of one another in the net, and Discord lifted it up to examine the soggy, squishy pile.

“That looks like the catch of the day!” he said, poking it and producing a series of squishy sounds, and some groans came from the inside of the net. “Good thing none of them are small enough I have to throw them back...”

Taking the water-swollen tail of the Nightmare suit in one hand and the soaking wet mane of the Breaker suit in the other, he twisted the whole group so water poured out onto the ground before letting go and allowing them to bounce back. “Well, time to go back to class! We've got some important activities to do before bed time~”

Discord slung the net over his back, walking out of the pool and back into the classroom. Dropping the net onto the floor, he took a hold of the net, flipping it up to dump all the ponies out. They all tumbled to the floor, their padding and suits now fluffy and warm. “Who’s up for some games?” Discord announced, pulling a stack of board games out of seemingly nowhere. Everypony looked up at him, Twilight noticing that their desks were no longer in the room. On top of that, rather than a traditional school-house room, the classroom was now more designed like a preschool, with a large mat spread out on the floor, and several decorations hanging from the ceiling.

Discord placed the games on the ground, allowing everypony to gather around. Gilda pulled one of the games towards her. “Predict Whom?” She muttered, a little confused. She shrugged, waddling over to one of the sides of the room as Trixie followed after her. Starlight picked up another board game, one that looked like some kind of contraption you build involving mice.

Meanwhile Daybreak and Nightmare were quickly setting up a chessboard, occasionally glancing up at each other to stick out their tongues as they prepared their game. Cadence, Twilight, and Shining waddled off with a game of Scrabble, leaving Ember to wander over to Starlight. Discord decided to join in on their game, coiling up on one side of the board.

“What are the rules for this one?” Ember asked, inspecting one of the pieces – a soft little toy mouse. “I don't think I know many pony games.”

“This one is new to me as well,” Starlight admitted, opening the rules page. “Okay, it's fairly simple… we roll the dice to see how far we move, and we need to collect as much cheese as possible. If we land on one of the spaces that says to add a piece to the thing in the middle of the board, that's what we do, and then at the far end we each need to avoid being caught by… something?”

“That's just right,” Discord agreed, tapping each of their pieces in turn. “But, hmm, this is no good as a game for two such young Princesses! It's not nearly high enough quality!”

His tail flicked across, and things distorted around them.

Suddenly, both found themselves standing on a giant version of the board. Their diapers rustled as they looked around, and Starlight blinked.

“Um… what?”

“Better roll those dice!” Discord said, and a six-sided die about half Starlight's height appeared next to her. “If you want to get the cheese, that is!”

Starlight frowned, then kicked the die. It bounced across the board, then came to a stop, and she hesitantly walked forwards three spaces.

That put her on a cheese space, and she spotted a wedge of swiss cheese that was lying by the square. As she touched it, though, there was a flash, and she was wearing a thin pair of overall pyjamas that made up a kind of mouse costume.

Starlight tugged on the overalls, trying to remove them, though it was of little use. A small piece of cheese had been placed in the front pocked of her overalls, which Starlight sniffed at a little. As Starlight pulled at her costume, Ember gave the dice a kick, sending it rolling around. She waddled the appropriate number of spaces forward, landing on a fancy looking crank. With a flash of light, a similar style crank appeared on the board beside her, one part of an elaborate looking machine that was in the making…

Twilight rocked around on her padded rump, leaning back into the plush belly of Smarty-Pants. “Oooh, I always loved this game! It’s great for building your vocabulary, you know!” She said excitedly as they set up the board.

“Yes, I remember you wanted to play it almost every night.” Cadence chuckled as she hovered tiles over to everypony. They arranged their tiles, which clacked satisfyingly against the holders. “Alright, Shiny, why don’t you go first.” Cadence suggested.

Shining scratched his chin, looking down at his letters. “FKOOPTY”. His horn glowed as he lifted the letters out to spell “poofy” on the board. Grinning a little, he didn’t notice as his padding puffed up just a bit to match the description he had given.

“Hmmm...” Twilight mused, looking at her own letters. There were a few good words there – faced, defy, edify…

“Aha!” she said, and arranged all seven letters at once. Starting with the P that Shining had left, she added -acified to it, making an eight letter word and using all seven of her letters.

“Showoff,” Cadence said, without much heat, and Twilight beamed.

She took seven new tiles and sat back a bit, glad to have started with such a long word, and suckled on her own pacifier.

Neither of the others noticed the sudden appearance of a large pacifier in Twilight's mouth, too busy with their own letters. Cadence used the Y to make 'soggy', then sighed as she wet her diaper, and then Shining had to build off that so went with 'soft'.

'Thicken' came next, and Twilight's plush alicorn-suit swelled up as she put down the last letter in the word. It felt comfy, and she snuggled into it as Cadence stepped up with 'crinkly'.

As the turn order came around to him again, Shining realized there was a word he could play that would use up all of his own tiles – and connect two of the places they'd put down letters already. Feeling very smug, he put down all his tiles to spell out 'entranced'...

Shining armor settled down into his puffy diaper, grinning a little as his eyes swirled. He wondered why he had ever been put off by Discord’s ideas. Everything so far had been wonderfully cozy and comfy. He couldn’t imagine sitting on the floor without his pillow-like diaper anymore! He smiled, watching as Cadence thought, finding her own thick diaper really quite adorable…

Meanwhile Daybreak and Nightmare were in the middle of their game of chess, Nightmare grumbling as she found one of her Knights cornered by Daybreak’s bishop and pawn. Her hoof hovered over one of her pieces as she contemplated, Daybreak simply leaning back and crossing her legs smugly. “Oh come now, that hardly fun at all!” Discord shouted across the room. Daybreak and Nightmare glanced over to see him snap and fire a bolt of light towards them. Both ponies shielded their eyes, only to blink a moment later and find themselves standing in a massive plush field. Black and white checkers crossed the field just like the board, and several ponies all stood around them. Nightmare’s Knight was now a Shadowbolt cowering as a puffily padded Starswirl and royal guardspony stared him down. “Surrender, sister, you have no chance of winning!” Daybreak shouted from across the field. She stood on top of a thickly padded Tirek, both wearing extravagant crowns.

Nightmare simply laughed, hovering up to land on top of a bounce-house Rook. “Never! You’ll have to pry this kingdom from my puffy hooves!”

“Fine, then!” Daybreak countered. “Star Swirl The Bishop, defeat that Shadowbolt!”

The padded-up Star Swirl raised his head, horn glowing, and fired a spell at the Shadowbolt. His target's diaper swelled up suddenly as the pony soaked it, blushing and shifting awkwardly, and by the time it had finished growing it was a ball of poof that only vaguely had a Shadowbolt sticking out of it.

Star Swirl advanced into the square and gave his foe a telekinetic push, rolling the Shadowbolt to the side, and Daybreak smirked smugly at Nightmare.

Simmering, Nightmare gestured with a crinkly hoof. “It's not over yet! Night Guard, advance!”

The Night Guard she meant stepped forwards, and Daybreak realized too late that there was a Night Guard right at the end of the board – about to step onto the eighth row.

He did so, and Nightmare laughed. “Very good! Now, fall victim to my power!”

Her horn flashed, and the Night Guard's diaper was engulfed by a sinister energy. It spread out along his body and down his legs, turning a deep black except for a few slightly lighter colours, and within a few seconds it was another crinkly Nightmare suit.

“That can't be fair!” Daybreaker protested.

“Oh, but it is!” both Nightmares said in unison. “Still think you can win? I think you'll find I'll be the one taking your kingdom!”

As Daybreak attempted to think of a solution, Trixie and Gilda were busy with their own game. Gilda tapped her beak, staring down at the remaining pictures of ponies on her board. “Are you… white?” Gilda asked.

Trixie shook her head, and Gilda grumbled, clicking down Fleur, DJ-P0N3, and Rarity. Trixie looked down at her comparatively clearer board, grinning widely. “Are you part of the Apple Family?” She asked. Gilda nodded and Trixie knocked down several more pictures until only Big Mac and Braeburn’s pictures were looking up at her.

“This game is soooo unfair if you pick a Stallion…” grumbled Gilda, crossing her arms and pouting. “Ugh… are you from Cloudsdale?” She asked. Once again Trixie shook her head, leaving Gilda clicking down only a few of her pictures once again.

“Are you… Big Mac?” Trixie asked, beaming. Gilda groaned and nodded, forced to reveal her card. “Hooray, Trixie has won!” She laughed. With a pomf Gilda found herself sitting in a thick red sleeper, dressed to look just like the big farmpony she had on her picture.

She grumbled again, looking back to Trixie. “Alright, who were you?”

“I was Trixie!” Trixie laughed, showing her card. Gilda’s beak fell agape as she stared at Trixie’s smug picture.

Chapter 4

“Right, let's do another one!” Gilda demanded, struggling a little to set her side of the board up again. “I'm definitely going to win this one!”

Trixie's face set into a competitive grin, and she began doing the set up as well.

As the two of them got more into the game they were playing, the game of Mousetrap continued as Starlight picked up the dice with some difficulty.

She rolled it, producing several mousy squeak noises, and the plush cube rolled to a stop on the number five.

Thickly padded mouse sleeper wiggling from side to side as she advanced, Starlight went past the similarly mouse-clad Ember to land on a new square.

“Aww, not fair!” Ember complained, as she saw the square Starlight was about to land on. “You're getting more cheese than me!”

Starlight picked up the cheese piece, and hesitated – but the allure of the incredible taste was too much, and she ate it quickly.

Every bite made her mouse costume get thicker and plumper, her diaper expanding beneath it, and when she finished Starlight groaned in pleasure.

As she sat down on her diapered rump, the other part of the square activated – adding another piece to the growing contraption in the middle of the board.

“Well,” she said, belatedly responding to Ember's whine. “You – you should be in front, then!”

“I will!” Ember declared, picking up the dice and rolling it. That only produced a two, though, and she pouted before waddling forwards two spaces and sitting down.

“Not fair,” she repeated, finding it hard to express herself more eloquently as she licked her lips and thought about having another slice of cheese. “You're going to get to the big cheese plate first...”

As Starlight struggled with the Dice once again, Discord was busy assembling the next part of the machine. He took a step back, rubbing his somehow oily hands with a rag as he admired his handiwork. The oversized plastic crank now tied to an enormous set of stairs where a large ball of rubber sat at the top. Starlight rolled a one, marching forward and requiring another piece to be added to the machine. As the two approached the end, the machine steadily grew larger and more complicated, Discord panting from the effort of lifting the pieces.

While their game continued, Shining was struggling to think of more words to put down on the board. He moved the letters around on his stand, scratching his head. ‘CARROST’. What kind of letters were these? He couldn’t make anything with them! Grumbling, he found a small spot that had yet to be taken and simply changed Cadence’s ‘Puff’ to ‘Puffs’ and ended his turn.

Cadence was having similar difficulty with her letters. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t seem to think of something? ‘Balloon’?, No she didn’t have a B. ‘Swell’? No. ‘Wet’? She pondered it. She did have the letters, but where would she put them? She scrunched her muzzle, rocking back on her diaper and hearing it crinkle softly as she struggled to think of more words.

Eventually, the pink Princess admitted defeat – putting two of her tiles back in the bag, shaking it around, and taking two out again. With only one other tile in the bag, she got the same ones again, and pouted in annoyance.

For her part, Twilight had to look long and hard at her letters – trying to see if there was any pattern to them at all. There didn't seem to be anywhere on the board where she could make a word, and while a few suggestions floated through her mind – 'adult', or 'smart' – she dismissed them as nonsense words almost automatically.

Finally, she saw something! Carefully taking her letters, she laid down 'infantile', then sat back on her diaper with an audible squish.

Shining moved quickly, putting an R on the end of Twilight's word, making 'infantiler', and Cadence followed that up by making it 'infantilerer' and getting a triple word score.

“Aha!” Daybreaker laughed, pointing. “Your Shadowbolt is doomed! Attack!”

A pony in a Wonderbolt-like costume and a thick diaper inhaled, then puffed his own costume up to enormous size. Bouncing into the air, he landed on Nightmare's only remaining Shadowbolt and flattened them beneath his padded posterior.

“What do you think of that?” Daybreaker demanded, looking up at Nightmare – only to see her sister and foe smirk.

Another Night Guard advanced the final space, reaching the other side of the board, and their diaper glowed – then expanded rapidly, engulfing the Night Guard and turning them into yet another Nightmare Moon. A Queen piece, to go with the other Queen pieces Nightmare Moon had already promoted.

Daybreak gulped, looking over her other shoulder to see the second Nightmare grinning widely as she waddled up to smack the Wonderbolt off the board with her enormous tush. Daybreak tried to spot a way out of her predicament, but everywhere she looked was a fat, thickly padded Nightmare or one of her subjects. In a desperate attempt to stop her sister’s advances, Daybreak’s horn lit up to slide one of the rubbery bounce-house castles to block Nightmare’s advances. In response, an overstuffed plushie Diamond Dog bounced over to land on top of the castle. The seams strained as it creaked before bursting below the Diamond Dog, leaving it sitting smugly on its gut.

Finding herself surrounded, Daybreak attempted to dash in one direction, only to rebound off the large rump of Nightmare. She shook her head, attempting to regain her senses, but before she could all three Nightmares were standing around her. “Checkmate~” They all said before pouncing upon Daybreak, squishing and squashing her with their crinkly rears.

“Uuuuuuuggh, again?” Gilda complained. Trixie had won three times in a row, and had only managed to be suited up in a rather thin Sweetie Belle costume while Gilda was sporting several overly puffy suits. “You’re cheating, there’s no way you can win this much!” She grumbled as a thick Zecora suit plumped up around her. Trixie simply hummed happily as she set up yet another game.

“Trixie never cheats! Except when playing fair doesn’t work.” She pulled her character card out as Gilda did the same, her movements restricted by the thickness of the suits.

“All right, then,” Gilda muttered, replacing her card, and concentrated.

“Does your character… have wings?”

Trixie shook her head, and Gilda knocked over the wing-bearing pieces. Then it was Trixie's turn to ask a question, and Gilda confirmed that – yes, her own choice had a mane.

Piece after piece went down as they rattled off the questions, and Gilda squirmed a bit – feeling like she really needed to use her diaper, the urge growing stronger with every moment.

Finally, she was down to just three cards left, and knew Trixie had to be one of them.

Shifting in her seat, trying to cross her hind legs even through the three thick plush suits she was wearing on top of the thickness of her diaper, Gilda frowned. “Does your character… have a horn?”

“Nope!” Trixie said proudly, and watched as Gilda reached out to one of the remaining pieces… then flipped all three down, one at a time.

“What was that you said about cheating?” Gilda demanded.

“Um, that is...” Trixie began, nervously, then shook her head. “You must have made a mistake-”

“So who is your character, then?” Gilda went on.

“Rainbow Dash,” Trixie announced.

“Rainbow Dash has wings,” the costumed griffin pointed out.

“Well, of course Trixie meant the unicorn Rarity,” Trixie said instead, not noticing the tingling sensation around her back.

“She's got a horn, and you said they didn't have a horn.”

“That's because Trixie misspoke. She meant that her character was a baby dragon-”

“-who have scales, don't they?” Gilda replied, starting to smirk. Unlike Trixie, she could see what was happening, and she liked the result. “Come on, who was it?”

“Well, um...” Trixie looked from side to side, not noticing the thick, plushy sleeper growing over her. Every time Gilda pointed something out, the sleeper changed, picking up the features or details in question and getting thicker still.

Trixie’s suit grew thicker and thicker, slowly spreading her legs as stripes grew along them, and a thick draconic tail sprouted from the puffily padded rump. “I… well… er…” Trixie continued, gulping as the belly of her suit swelled out along with the rear. Gilda simply giggled, rocking back on her own rear as she tried to bite back laughing at Trixie’s silly form. Squeezing her legs together, she snickered further, until a faint ‘hiss’ joined in her laughter. Her own padding began to swell slowly as Gilda wet it, Trixie still attempting to bluff her way fruitlessly.

Starlight and Ember were now neck and neck in the game, both standing at the big pile of cheese at the end of the map. Each was stuffing their suit pockets full of slices, occasionally chomping down on them as their suits grew bigger and bigger. Neither was paying much attention as Starlight planted her puffy butt down, causing the final piece of the trap to be put into place. Discord began to turn the crank, causing the rubber ball to roll down the ramp, which bounced off of a puffy plaid mattress to land in a basket, that began working an air pump to blow up a balloon, which tipped up a plank to send a wrecking ball swinging and knocking a marble onto a track… which promptly got stuck. Discord grumbled, walking over to the track and giving it a swift kick. “Stupid thing, never works right…” The marble was dislodged, rolling faster and faster until it hit a crib-like cage.

The cage fell down, the rattling causing both Starlight and Ember to look upwards. Before either could react, though, they were suddenly squished tightly into each other’s puffy butts as the cage landed on top of them. Muffled cries for help could be heard as they pushed against each other, their suits squeaking as they wriggled their puffy trapped rears.

“Wasn't that fun?” Discord asked, picking up the cage with one hand. For some reason it stayed sealed at the bottom, keeping the mouse-costumed pony and dragon inside, and he put it under his arm and walked off with a whistle.

As he did, the miniature world of the Mousetrap game vanished in a puff of cheese, leaving them back in the play area with the other 'pupils' who'd just finished their games.

“Didn't everyone enjoy that?” he asked, ignoring the simmering glare from Day Breaker. “Play is important for Princesses as it keeps them properly proud! And other things that begin with p.”

Placing the cage back on the ground, he lifted it so that both Starlight and Ember could get out, though with their squeaky, padded costumes they weren't going anywhere fast.

“But now it's time for more fun!” he announced. “Everyone knows educational videos are common for school students… but that's boring, so we'll just watch a nice movie instead!”

“Wait, hold on,” Gilda said, frowning and trying to think. “That game wasn't fun… hey!”

A neat ribbon wrapped around her beak, tying it shut with a pacifier in it for her to suck on. “Don't speak out of turn,” Discord chided her. “Now, take your seats!”

Not looking to see if any of them were doing as he'd told them, he teleported to the front of the class and pulled on a window cord on the side of the blackboard. It wound up like a blind, revealing a giant television screen, and it showed a snowy static image for a few seconds before pausing just as it cleared up.

“Nightmare,” Discord said. “Either stop sitting on your sister or move so she can see the screen.”

Nightmare obliged, turning around so that Daybreak was now facing the screen, but continuing to lean backwards into her sister’s puffy rump to use as a backrest for her new sister seat. Daybreak grumbled, wriggling about under the fat alicorn. Even occasional grunts of embarrassment and attempts to free herself could be heard from Celestia as she tried to push Nightmare off her.

Discord started the movie back up again before wandering out of view of the projector. The screen flickered back into motion, showing the title card of some old cartoon. Twilight stared up at the screen, rocking slowly forward and back on her diaper. The screen showed some filly waddling along the street, thickly padded and several books tucked under her wings. She bobbed her head to the music, a bow in her mane and tail bouncing as she did. As she waddled along, she noticed an unattended balloon stand, marveling at the globes of rubber floating above her.

As the movie continued, Trixie’s attention was momentarily pulled away as Discord walked up beside her seat, several bags of popcorn and oversized bottles of soda in his arms. He began to pass them out, each pony beginning to munch and suck on the bottles as they watched the film.

The filly was now attempting to climb up the stand towards the balloons, her padding wiggling precariously closely to the tank with which the attendee filled the balloons.

For a moment, as Ember stared at the screen, she thought she saw something else on it at the same time. Something-

She blinked, and lost it, and within a moment it didn't seem important at all, so she subsided and continued to suck on her bottle.

The filly on the screen got a hoof over the edge of the stand, and pulled hard – lifting her most of the way onto the stand top. Then she slipped back again, and got her diapered rump stuck squarely into the nozzle of the helium tank.

It hissed automatically, and began to make her padding puff up and inflate. The sounds were oddly pleasing, squeaks and creaks and crinkles, and they made more than one of those watching smile faintly – something about them just feeling right, as if they wanted to make that kind of sound themselves.

Ember blinked again, catching a glimpse of something else on the screen. It was like a spiral, and there were words on it… but as she tried to read them, she relaxed, and the spiral vanished again.

By that point the diaper had become large enough to start to make the pony bob about in the air, too, and then her surprised flailing knocked the tank valves so the helium rate increased.

As the filly’s diaper ballooned, lifting her rear up into the air, Starlight squeezed her own enormous padding between her legs. She thought about how fun it would be for her own diaper to swell that large… it certainly had gotten quite big already. She smiled, imagining it swelling like the one the filly was wearing. She squeezed her diaper again, sighing as it crinkled softly.

Daybreak and Nightmare were munching away on their snacks, Daybreak attempted to swell enough to push Nightmare off her, and Nightmare attempting to pack on enough pounds of fluff to keep Daybreak pinned.

Cadence watched as the filly began to float along through the sky over the town towards her school. She blinked, suckling on her bottle as she watched. She leaned over, flopping against Shining as she wiggled her own padded rear. Shining looked over as Cadence fell against her, and thought he saw… something glittering in her eyes. As he blinked, it seemed to go away, and he was just left with this warm fuzzy feeling inside. He leaned into her as well, both eating their snacks as the movie showed the pony attempting to deflate her diaper to land back down at her school.

Gilda clicked her beak as she sucked on her bottle, eyes drooping a little as she kept watching.

It was kind of funny, actually… normally, she thought TV like this was just for total dweebs, but this time it was kind of interesting. Even that there was a pony in it didn't stop her being interested, and she stared at the screen.

Her eyes shimmered a little as the programme taught her things. Things which a casual observer would think weren't on screen at all, but she learned them all the same.

As she watched, the pony drifted slowly down from the sky. Her diaper didn't deflate all at once, producing a series of melodious paa-arp sounds like a particularly silly trumpet, until finally she reached the ground just outside her school.

Going inside, she was met by a teacher, and the teacher asked her if her diaper was comfortable.

“Yes,” Gilda answered, barely hearing the rest of them all saying the same thing, and wiggled in her soft, comfy diaper.

The filly trotted to her seat as the teacher looked down at a list of ponies. Most had appeared, but one was still missing! The scene zoomed away to show a pony curled up in bed, squeezing a small bird plushie in his hooves as he buried his face in the pillows. Crinkles could be heard as he wiggled his rear happily under the covers, sighing contentedly.

Trixie sighed, wishing she was able to curl up in her bed with her own plushies. She closed her eyes, imagining herself laying in a big crib just like the colt was. As she did, she felt some thick blankets falling around her, letting her wrap them up around her to keep her warm. If being a prissy padded princess meant she could be this warm and cozy, she thought it certainly would be something she could get used to.

The colt rolled over in bed, kicking his legs as a soft hiss could be heard as he wet his padding, letting out a soft sigh. As if on cue, several more hisses could be heard as the class wet their padding as well, enjoying how warm and soft their padding was.

Twilight yawned, feeling tired just from the suggestion of somepony snoozing in diapers, and snuggled down into her own sleeper a bit more. It made her feel cozy, and safe, and a little bit more of the messages in the film slipped through into her mind as she watched.

The view on the screen swished and dissolved as it went from showing a pony asleep to showing that same pony, galloping along with a falcon on his back and a determined expression on his face.

Oddly enough, it was as if there were two pictures at once – the one showing the cool-looking stallion and his fierce companion falcon, and another one showing a little colt waddling along in his diaper with his plush in one hoof.

The lesson was obvious, and Twilight nodded absently – absorbing the lesson that foals had a vivid imagination, and it was more fun to do things like that. That playing was absorbing, and could feel very real.

The colt was waddling as fast as he could, a determined look on his face as he imagined great beasts popping up out of the ground before him. His adult form slashed at the beasts with a sword, the colt prodding an oversized pooltoy with his own foam sword at the same time. The pooltoy bounced backwards, the beast recoiling and crying out a rather squeaky yell of pain.

Shining leaned forward, thoroughly invested in the colt’s playtime. He wasn’t the only one, as Ember watched with wide eyes as well, though she was rooting for the other team. The toy and creature swatted at the colt, who dodged to the side, only barely avoiding tripping from how widely his thick padding was spreading his hind legs. He threw his plushie at the beast, imagining his falcon flying high to scratch and claw as the monster. The toy leaned backwards before flopping forwards, and the colt leapt upon it.

Several squeaks and creaks followed as the colt attempted to defeat the monster, but his struggling only ended with him pinned under the toy, his imagination creating a laughing plump rubbery creature smushing him under its oversized behind. He grumbled, pushing against the toy as he tried to free himself.

No matter how hard he tried, the colt couldn't manage to get himself out from under the pooltoy, and his movements made it squeak ominously. His imagination turned that into the rubbery monster laughing louder, squeaking with every breath, and inhaling much more than it was exhaling – growing larger and larger, squashing him down and rendering him helpless.

The whole scene was especially potent for Celestia and Luna, stuck inside their Daybreaker and Nightmare plush suits which almost recreated the scene. The images made them feel more and more deeply involved in the show, as the shifting of the toy turned into the rubber critter squishing up and down on top of its victim.

Copying the critter, Luna/Nightmare lifted slightly off Celestia/Daybreaker before sitting right back down again and wiggling her tush – teasing her fellow prissy pampered princess, just like she was supposed to.

Eventually, however, the colt freed himself, and the dream transition flickered again. This time it showed the colt in bed, stirring to look out the window, and the camera viewpoint followed his gaze.

The sky was dark, the moon hidden behind a cover of thick clouds, which only dimmed the night even further. The colt gulped as he looked out through the window, thinking he saw something moving around in the distance. Despite nothing seeming to be outside, the colt, and subsequently, Twilight were both quite scared. Incoherent shapes moved outside, and the colt let out a yelp before ducking down under the covers, quaking. Twilight gulped as well, sympathizing with the young pony. The outside was scary, and her bedroom, diapers, and plushies made her safer.

Twilight squeezed a small Spike plushie, suckling on her pacifier as the foal squeezed his own toy to keep him safe from the monsters hiding outside. Even his padding seemed a bit thicker than before, making him feel even safer. The camera began to sweep out over the landscape, moving over to another filly’s room, where she was out stargazing, pointing out shapes in the skies above.

The constellations formed one by one as the filly pointed to them, showing Ursa Minor then Scorpius then Vulpeca, before moving on to show Ursa Major and Cygnus and all the other constellations overhead.

All the stars overhead twinkled, shimmered, or glimmered and wavered in the deep black sky, and a nebula swirled in the night. It was all very peaceful, and the watching diapered-up students began to have stars in their own eyes as well.

Every glitter seemed to take away a little more maturity, replacing it with foalish wonder at the beauty of the night. Every pattern of stars became an animal, or a beast, and Cadence saw one pattern of stars which looked just like a heart.

She giggled when she saw it, before remembering to be quiet.

At the bottom of the view, the filly continued to watch the stars and point them out. Her diaper was already damp, showing how long she'd been doing it, but she didn't seem to notice – and as she continued to watch, she shifted a little without noticing before starting to soak her diaper.

As the filly wet her diaper again, the stars above seemed to shift and swirl, their twinkling drawing in everypony watching even further. The stars formed more creatures, each large and plush, with thick diaper wrapped around their haunches. The constellations began to prance about the sky, waving their overstuffed pampers around as they did. A kangaroo bounced along on its swollen diaper, while a bear was chasing several large honeybees with an outstretched diaper. The plush bees swarmed in, making his padding bloat up just a bit as they buzzed, rumbled, and quivered in his diaper as the bear waddled around.

Shining giggled at the sight, the idea of the bear possibly being stung never crossing his mind. Instead, all he could think about was how silly all the animals looked, and how happy they all were dancing and parading around their thickly padded rears. He wiggled in his own padding, imagining showing off his diaper to everypony. They’d just love having a diaper as thick and puffy as his, he was sure of it!

The movie continued, yet steadily each scene lost more and more coherence until it was soon nothing but a swirl of colors and shapes, with the occasional thought of thick diapers, wet diapers, big diapers, and all kind of diapers flowing through everypony’s head as they watched.

Back in Twilight's room, Spike found himself captivated by the holo-foil effect of the page showing the film being watched. He had to keep staring, unable to pull his eyes away any more than the students watching it in the classroom, and he found himself not really able to come up with a reason why he should pull his eyes away either.

The captions told him that everyone who watched the film found themselves entranced, and Spike nodded as he absorbed that instruction.

Discord spent the time doing a crossword, filling in clues and doodling in the margins. The crossword was done on the surface of a sphere, but that didn't seem to present him any problem – though he did end up covering the entire sphere in closely spaced letters by the time he was done.

Checking his watch – a sundial with an attached lamp – he clapped his hands sharply. The movie ran through the last ten minutes in about three seconds, fast forwarding with an audible zip-zip-zip, and finally concluded.

“Now, wasn't that nice?” he asked, as the Princess Pupils began to realize the screen had stopped giving them instructions. “I thought so! And since you were all such good watchers, it's time for dressup!”

Waving his hand, Discord made one entire wall of the classroom rotate one hundred and eighty degrees to reveal a collection of wardrobes, drawers and racks of clothing.

“Now, as you all know, common sense means you can only wear one outfit at once,” he lectured. “But you're Princesses, so that doesn't apply! Go ahead and wear just as much as you want!”

It took a moment for everypony to regain their senses once the movie had finished. Nightmare was still bouncing lightly on top of Daybreak, both guzzling up their drinks to swell even larger. Eventually Cadence’s eyes adjusted back to the bright light of the classroom and noticed the ridiculous number of dresses hanging on the wall. Waddling over to them, she pulled a pink, frilly dress from off of the rack, slipping it on over her. She grinned at how the dress held her snugly, the skirt framing her thick padding cutely. Shining was following closely behind her, pulling out an outfit that looked like a royal guard’s uniform, had it been crafted for a young foal to wear on Halloween. The buckles were far larger than anypony would need them to be, and short chains running between the buttons jangled loudly as Shining attempted to slip in.

Meanwhile Starlight was busy stuffing herself into a sleeper not-unlike a spacesuit. The material creaked as it strained to stretch around her large diaper, Starlight blushing and grunting from the effort as she slid down into it. A flap on the back of the suit bulged outwards as her diaper pushed up against the inside. The front squished down into the floor from the bulk of her padding, and Starlight’s hooves were lifted so high she could only reach the floor by squeezing her hind legs into her diaper as well. It wasn’t too long before she had managed to slip it on, the buttons on the flap straining to hold in her overstuffed padding as she bounced into the air.

To her surprise, however, she bounded much higher than she would have expected, her head bumping into the ceiling before she came flopping down on her pampered behind. As if she were really on the moon, any soft step sent her sailing through the air!

Starlight laughed with joy at the sensations, a peal of enjoyment which made Trixie look up from what she was considering.

Turning her attention back to the costumes, Trixie held up first one and then the other. There was a costume worthy of an archmage, with starry swirls and coils of flame and smoke decorating the robe, and there was an entirely different outfit to make the wearer look like a classy, aloof cat.

After several more seconds of thinking, Trixie decided there was no reason she couldn't have both of them.

Unzipping the cat costume, she fiddled around with it to make sure she could fit inside and then stepped in. Her hooves slid down to the ends of the sleeves for all four legs, reaching snug little compartments which cushioned them with plush paws, and she used her magic to pull hard on the zipper and get it back up to the neck.

By the time she was done, only her face stuck out of the feline outfit – which now seemed to be a lot more puffy than it had been when she was considering it. The bulk of the outfit only magnified the puff of her diaper, and the paws made it so every step was even more of a waddle than it had been when she was just coping with a thick diaper.

Undeterred, she draped the archmage costume around herself as well. The springy tail of the cat-costume meant she couldn't get the robe to drape down and conceal her feline diaper-butt, but she still liked the look – especially with the very impressive hat that came with the mage outfit.

Nightmare glanced over to watch the others, only to spot something hanging on the rack. Something she thought would just look perfect on Daybreak. She jumped to her hooves, Daybreak taking a gasp of air at the weight finally removing itself from her. She glared over at Nightmare, only to see what she had in her hooves. In stark contrast to much of the other outfits on display, the jacket Nightmare held was rather drab, a simple faded blue color, but what worried Daybreak was the number of straps and buckles along its overly-long sleeves. Daybreak got to her hooves as well, only to have Nightmare begin to chase her. The black alicorn leapt forwards, tackling Daybreak and causing the two to roll over each other.

Despite her struggles, Nightmare soon found herself attempting to tug the straitjacket away from Daybreak, both ponies holding tightly to one sleeve. “Nnngggh, quit struggling, Daybreak, you’ll surely be the talk of the town in this!” Nightmare cried out.

“Ha! As if I’d even take your fashion advice on something that wasn’t meant to trap me!” Daybreak replied, pulling again on the jacket.

“Girls, girls! There’s no need to argue, I’m sure you two can share!” Discord suddenly puffed up between the two, his arms outstretched to press against both of their rears. The ponies paused, looking confused, only for a second later Discord to shove on their rumps and push them together. With a pomf, the sisters were squeezed tightly together, the jacket wrapping itself around both of them until they were stuck, side by side, diapers pressing snugly into each other with their hooves bound tightly across their chest. The sisters squirmed, crinkles filling the room as they tried to free themselves. Inside the alicorns, Celestia and Luna blushed brightly as they felt themselves squeezed and confined even further by the jacket hugging their sentient suits.

As the two struggled, Twilight was considering her options at the other end of the room.

This end seemed to be devoted largely to costume outfits that were like sleepers – complete from horn to hoof, and swaddling up the pony who wore them so they looked like somepony or something else entirely. The rack she was looking at contained costumes as diverse as a fox, a hawk, a sea urchin and what looked like an accountant.

As she pushed through them, however, one of them moved more than she could explain from just how she'd been trying to move it aside.

She examined it, confused, then tried again – only for it to suddenly animate, leaping off the hanger and going after her.

“Help!” she yelped, falling over backwards in a cascade of crinkling from her diaper and the alicorn sleeper she was already wearing, and Discord appeared next to her.

“Oh, Twilight, how wonderful!” he said, clapping. “You found one of the special self-applying sleepers!”

Twilight tried to kick out at the yellow sleeper as it wrapped around her legs. “Get it off me!”

“Sorry, no can do,” Discord replied, holding up a ten-page section of small print. “By activating it you've chosen to wear it, and you'll have to take it off yourself.”

By the time he'd finished, Twilight was already mostly stuck in her new sleeper, and it finished zipping itself up as she struggled back upright. It was mostly yellow, with a white underbelly, 'paws', eartips and tailtips, and looked mostly like a fox except for the odd white-and-black markings on the flanks.

“What even is this...” Twilight asked, trying to reach the zipper only to find it appeared to have vanished entirely.

“Well, I'd love to tell you, but Bandai would probably sue,” Discord said. “I hope you enjoy your Renasleeper!”

“Rena-what?” Twilight asked, then she slipped as her sleeper's silky paws failed to give her traction. She fell rump-down onto the floor, producing a squish sound, and put her head in her puffed-up paws.

Grumbling, Twilight tried to get back to her hooves, but no matter how slowly she moved and how careful she was to keep her balance, the paws of the suit were far too slippery. She flopped down on her rump once again, Starlight bouncing over her and giggling happily as she wiggled her rump about. Forced to crawl along, Twilight moved away from the animated sleepers in hopes of finding something a little more modest.

Gilda and Ember were both still searching, Gilda pushing aside the still damp raincloud outfit that she had been forced to wear earlier. She soon spotted an oddly thin sleeper, one that was a jet black, save for a blue back and two insectoid wings. Stretching the rubber, Gilda slipped herself into the material, which folded neatly around her talons to allow some amount of dexterity with them. She looked over to see Ember flopping down on her diaper, wrapping a bib around her neck with a few booties slipped over her feet as well. Despite the absurdity, Gilda was a bit jealous as Ember’s look, wishing she had spotted the booties first.

With flash of light, Gilda suddenly felt her suit plump up, shifting colors to resemble the dragon in front of her, until she and Ember were indistinguishable. At least, they would be if Gilda’s head wasn’t perched atop the fat dragon. “Eeep, what the heck?!” Gilda cried out.

Discord appeared beside her, as if on cue. “Gilda, you’ve forgotten the hood! Nopony will be fooled without that!” He suddenly revealed a changeling hood, slipping it over the gryphon’s head. With another flash of light, Gilda’s head now resembled the dragon, if only for a moment before another flash left Gilda now wearing a rather plump Discord imitation.

“This is just ridiculous,” Gilda muttered, pushing the hood back, and looking around to see if anyone else – largely any pony else – had noticed the embarrassing outfit she was wearing.

Looking between the straitjacketed rulers of Equestria, the posing rulers of the Crystal Empire, Twilight's odd fox-like sleeper and whatever Trixie was trying to pull off, she realized she might just have gotten off lightly – though, speaking of lightly, Starlight was still jumping around.

“I think there's altogether too many grumpy Princesses in this room!” Discord said. “Remember, good princesses love to dress up!”

The words echoed in Gilda's mind for a moment, making her feel a bit odd, and then she frowned.

Had she felt annoyed about something? Why would she be doing that, when she had the best costume of all – the costume that could let her have whatever anyone else picked whenever she felt like it!

Feeling much more happy about her choice, she put the hood back up again and went over to play a prank on Cadence and Shining, her outfit shifting as she wondered which of the two to imitate.

The two in question were busy debating over what the theme for their next costuming should be, prissy, or pampered?

“Prissy, obviously! The frillier, pinker, and cuter, the better princesses we are!” Shining declared, holding up an almost painfully bright pink tutu.

“Shiny, dear, pampered is what we need! Why, with the thickest diapers, we’ll be unable to be ignored!” She held up a onesie with a built in padded behind, one almost as large as Starlight’s.

“Oh, I suppose you’re right, pampered it is.” Replied the second Shining. Shining and Cadence looked over, to see another Shining, in the same outfit, sitting beside them.

“What the? Who’re you?” Cadence asked, dropping her outfit.

“Cadence, how could you! You know your dear tubby wubby hubby!” Shining replied, looking hurt.

“What? No, I’m her tubby wubby hubby!” Shining interjected, crossing his hooves and pouting.

“Well, I don’t see how that’s true! You’re aren’t looking too tubby to me!” Shining answered, poking at Shining’s belly.

Shining blushed. “I may not be tubby, but I am just as wubby!”

“Prove it.” Shining stuck his tongue out.

Shining glared at Shining, moving over to the rack of clothes and pulling out as much frilly, prissy, padded, pink, princess pampers and costumes he could. He slipped the tutu on, Shining yawning as he did. “Oh, so you’re a little wubby. I’m still tubby.” Shining grinned. Indeed, the waistband of his diaper had stretched a bit, and the buttons on his jacket were straining to hold in his swollen gut.

Shining gasped, only to slip on another silly overstuffed bonnet. “Stiiill not enough!” Shining proclaimed, his gut now poking out from under his jacket. Shining added more clothes, while Shining continued to balloon out, chuckling as Shining embarrassed himself.

Eventually, after more than three minutes, Shining and Shining were both shaped almost like beachballs from the sheer volume of costume they were wearing.

“Well?” Shining asked, panting. “Is that tubby-wubby enough?”

Cadence giggled. “I think much more tubby might be too much for the room!”

“Yes!” Cadence agreed. “Just as cushy a captain as can be!”

Cadence and Shining both looked at Cadence, neither noticing that the other Shining had vanished. “Where did you come from?” Shining demanded.

“Don't you remember?” Cadence asked. “We met years ago!”

“But that was me!” Cadence said crossly. “This is my tubby-wubby-hubby, go find your own!”

Cadence looked Cadence up and down. “You're Cadence, are you?”

“Yes!” Cadence agreed firmly.

“Well, you don't look nearly royal enough to be Cadence,” Cadence challenged. “So therefore it must be me. Simple!”

“I do too look royal!” Cadence gasped. “You take that back!”

“Don't look very royal to me,” Cadence replied. “You're not nearly frilly or sissy enough!”

Cadence snatched up the bright pink tutu Shining had been holding, and put herself in it. “There! See?”

She looked at Cadence, and her jaw dropped. Cadence was just as frilled-up as Cadence was, and struck a pose.

“See?” Cadence said. “You don't have the glam to be the real Cadence.”

Cadence turned, her tutu's miniskirt flaring up as she rummaged through the nearby outfits, and began throwing on frilly outfit after prissy, pink, sissy outfit – trying to outrun whatever Cadence was doing to match her.

Starlight bounced by again, her rump squeaking and crinkling as she rebounded off the floor with it, tumbling through the air. She waggled her rear, the buttons still straining to hold in her massive diaper. As she fell from her arc once again, she landed on top of Ember, who was searching around for a bow for her tail. With a few pops, the buttons on Starlight’s spacesuit flew open, exposing her thick diaper. The unicorn blushed, wiggling her rear as Ember tried to pull herself out from under her. Discord walked up, helping to tug Ember out and giving her a pat on her rear. “Oh, Ember, if you wanted to snuggled up to Starlight, all you had to do was ask! I’m sure she’d love to have you squished under her rear!”

Ember shook her head, but Discord simply dropped the dragon into the sleeper before pulling the flap back up and securing the buttons. “There you are!” He bounced his rear into Starlight’s, sending her flying back through the air again as Ember struggled to free herself from between the cozy sleeper and Starlight’s puffy, plastic pampers.

Meanwhile, Trixie was examining herself in the mirror – from hat to tail, her outfit looked just right!

Still, though, as she swung her rump out to the side, she couldn't help but think something was missing…

Thinking about the look, and about her kittysuit and the puffy paws it included, she suddenly realized – of course! She wasn't dressed as a magic user herself, she was dressed as a witch's familiar!

But that meant she needed a witch to be the familiar of – at least, that seemed to make sense. So she looked around, at the ponies and non-ponies who were already paired off in their costumes.

The two rulers – Nightmare and Daybreak, or Luna and Celestia – weren't an option, because they clearly went together. And Ember and Starlight were clearly having fun as a pair, and so were Shining and Cadence and Cadence.

Trixie's mind skipped a beat at that one, but she shrugged it off and moved on to the final Princess – Twilight, who was dressed in a cute, puffy fox-like costume but who wasn't wearing anything on top.

Trixie nodded to herself. Of course – Twilight was dressed like an animal, and so was Trixie. It made sense that one of them would be the familiar of the other.

Which was the familiar of which, though, was something she would have to think about. Once she'd persuaded Twilight to dress in something similar.

Mind made up, she gathered up a collection of costume bits a lot like the ones she was wearing – all kinds of things related to magic – and headed over to Twilight.

Twilight was attempting to free herself from her costume, her hooves running along the body in search of any form of zipper or buttons to open. She flopped onto her back, grumbling, only to notice Trixie leaning over her, grinning. “Uh… Trixie? What’re you doing?”

“Why, Sparkle, I would think that was obvious! Being a magical feline familiar, I need a familiar to be familiar to too! And you are the pony Trixie is most familiar with.” Trixie stated matter-of-factly. Twilight just looked confused, but Trixie waved her hoof dismissively as she lifted Twilight to her hooves again. “Oh, it really isn’t that complicated, all it means is that you get to be the witch! Once you’re more familiar to me, that is.” She said, holding up the witch’s outfit. The cloak looked more like a Halloween style quilt, very thick and very warm. The hat wasn’t much better, seeming just as heavy as the cloak was. Twilight’s eyes widened and she shook her head, stepping back.

“Uh-uh, no way! I’ve got enough fluff on me already!” Twilight proclaimed, indicating the thick suit.

“Remember, there’s no such thing as too much fluff!” Discord shouted over the others, snickering.

Twilight’s head grew a bit cloudy. Why was she so afraid of getting more fluff? After all, fluff did mean being comfortable, and more fluff would mean more comfort, wouldn’t it? As she thought, she barely registered her hooves reaching out to take the costume from Trixie and begin to wrap it around her.

Trixie beamed as she watched Twilight slipping the cloak over her suit, sure that they’ll be the best magical duo since… come to think of it, Trixie wasn’t sure how many famous magical duos there were. Well, then they’ll be the first!

Once Twilight was dressed in the thick, comfy cloak, and the big, puffy hat, Trixie passed her something else to put on as well – a pair of costume-glittery anklets, oversized so they would fit on the puffy fox-suit she was wearing just above the paws.

They were a bit of a struggle to get on, but Twilight did it, and then she put on the next thing as well – a similarly glittery ring which went around one of the toes of her paw-mitten.

Next was a staff, one which looked nigh useless for actual magic but which did lend a certain style.

The thing Trixie passed her after that was a large, puffed-up collar, and Twilight was about to put it on – then she refocused, and actually looked at it. “What's this?”

“It's to mark you as being the familiar, of course!” Trixie answered, the tail of her feline costume flicking idly back and forth.

“But… I thought you said you were the familiar,” Twilight replied uncertainly, wondering what she was missing.

“Oh, of course Trixie is the familiar,” Trixie said readily, taking the collar back and turning it to show the stone at the front – a stone which glittered. “But doesn't this look positively wonderful?”

She moved it so it caught the light. “Any witch would look so cute wearing this – and any familiar would look cute, too, showing how they're the familiar...”

Her voice dropped a little, as her own eyes drooped slightly – falling into her own trap just as fast as she was ensnaring Twilight. “Such a lovely, cute little symbol of… of…”

Trixie yawned, and Twilight took the collar. Neither of them noticed as Discord made a discreet pass with his claw, so there were two collars – one of which Twilight took, to put around the puffed-up neck of her outfit just above the cloak, and one of which Trixie slipped around her own neck.

The two curled up next to each other, Twilight’s head resting on Trixie’s puffy rump as they two began to drift off to sleep. Discord looked over to the others, each one stuck in their own puffy predicament. Cadence was now so overly frilly and floofy, she could do little more than lean up against her puffy Shining, while Cadence suddenly puffed to reveal herself to be Gilda. Cadence gasped, glaring at the gryphon who just laughed some more, only to start yawning as well. As much fun as she was having, Gilda did always feel a little tired after a good pranking.

Daybreak and Nightmare’s bickering continued, but neither was really in any position to try and escape, with their plump selves squished so snugly together. Even Starlight’s bounces were starting to slow, the astronaut dressed pony starting to tucker herself out…

She drifted down onto a pile of star and moon shaped pillows, snuggling into one as she wiggled her rump happily. She gave her pacifier a few suckles as she too began to drift off to sleep. Shining reached down to pull Cadence into a hug, or at least he did the best he could considering both of their overly frilly and floofy costumes.

Feeling proud with himself, Discord clapped his hands as the lights began to dim and mattresses appeared all along the floor under each pony.

“H-hey,” Ember protested, her voice a bit muffled. “I'm… not tired...”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Discord dismissed, waving his hand dismissively. “It's nap time for Princesses, of course.”

The words seemed to hang in the air, and Ember yawned – suddenly feeling a lot more tired than she had even seconds ago. She shifted a little, still not wanting to just drop straight off to sleep, but was too tired to object when Discord put a large bottle of warm milk in her claws and guided the nipple into her mouth.

All the other sleepy students – pony and non – were similarly bottled-up, and then Discord put on a bit of soothing music.

To Gilda, struggling to stay awake, the combination of the warm milk and the soft music and the snuggly sleeper she was wearing was almost totally irresistible. She yawned indistinctly, then her eyes closed and she drifted off to sleep.

After some indistinct but pleasant, warm, comfortable dreams, Twilight suddenly found herself awake as suddenly as the morning of an exam. She looked up, a little confused, and saw Discord standing over her.

“Just in time!” he said, tapping a watch on his wrist. “It's time for the graduation ceremony!”

“Gradu… wha?” Twilight asked, looking up at Discord. She tried to push herself up, only to find herself already sitting in a chair. All around her sat the others, each wearing a bright pink cap and gown, the latter of which did nothing to hide the fact each was wearing a thick puffy diaper beneath it. She was about to ask Discord something again when he simply shushed her and pointed to the front of the room.

Standing at a lectern was another Discord, this one wearing tiny glasses perched at the end of his snout. “Ladies and Gentlecolts, we’re here to celebrate the passing of blah blah blah blah…” Discord’s words faded into incoherent gibberish as Twilight tried to figure out what exactly was going on. “Our first graduate, Twilight Sparkle!” The Discord at the front suddenly said.

Twilight jumped a bit in her chair, the others turning to watch as she got out of her chair and waddled towards the front of the room. “Uh… t-thank you?” She asked. Discord shook her hoof, handing her a rolled-up piece of paper.

“Congratulations, Sparkle! Top marks in the class! You must be very proud! It’s just a shame you’re already an alicorn, so I suppose presenting you with a princess-ly crown will have to do for now.”

Discord produced a bright shiny tiara and placed it upon Twilight’s head before clapping, the others in the class following suit.

Twilight sat down again, feeling her diaper crinkle as she sat on it, before suddenly realizing what Discord had said. “Wait, already an-”

Discord was already consulting a large piece of paper, the top of which had bent towards them as he read. Twilight noticed that there were cutie marks on it, and stars as well – clusters of them next to the cutie marks of every pony in the room, as well as two symbols which looked like they represented Gilda and Ember.

“Shining Armor!” Discord called out, and the white-coated Guard Captain took the same path his sister had to the front.

“Now, your performance got much better towards the end of the class,” Discord told the somewhat confused stallion. “Your overall score was very good, and so you get our highest qualification. Literally.”

Shining accepted the diploma Discord gave him, seeming to still be waking up, and half-furled his wings. Then he noticed what he'd just done, and nearly fell over.

“Shining!” Cadence gasped. “You… you...”

“Quieten down there,” the first Discord said, not unkindly. “I realize it's quite a shock, but yes – this is a Princess Academy. What did you expect?”

He guided Shining to sit down, producing just the same kind of crinkle as before, and Cadence gave her husband a tearful hug.

“Celestia, Luna!” The two looked at each other, as if they only now noticed they weren’t stuck in the suits anymore. They waddled to the front, neither wanting to mention what had happened in the class. “I’m very proud of you two! You’ve set the perfect examples for what princesses are to be like! You’ve truly outdone yourselves. Just be sure not to slip back into bad habits, shall we?” Discord snickered, patting both of their diapers. Both princess’s padding pulsed, Celestia’s growing an orange and gold pattern while Luna’s became a pitch-black Nightmare style. They nodded, hurrying back to their desks in hopes that Discord would soon forget about them and not stuff them back into their suits.

Next up were Trixie and Starlight, Discord tutting a bit. “Fairly standard. Still, you do pass, and I hope that our dear Starlight continues work in the subject of Over-Poofology.” Discord snickered, indicating Starlight’s diaper, which was just a bit thicker than everyone else’s. Starlight blushed, Trixie glaring at Discord.

“Standard? Trixie is by no means standard! She is just as good as Sparkle, and demands the same treatment!” She said, stomping her hoof. Discord laughed, patting Trixie’s head as her wings flared up.

“Ah, still the master of tantrums, I see.”

“Ember, Gilda!” Discord called the next two up together, each waddling to the front of the room.

“Now, while you two did have some… issues, I’d still say you’ve each earned your horns!” Discord snapped his fingers, and the two began to glow brightly…

...only for the glow to fade again, leaving no noticeable changes whatsoever.

“...uh...” Gilda began, trying to sound as diffident as possible. “Should… there be a difference?”

“Of course there's a difference!” Discord said, crossing his arms and tapping his foot. “Phenomenal cosmic power! Isn't it obvious?”

The other Discord leaned over and whispered in his ear, and the Discord who'd been speaking rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “No appreciation for subtlety, some princesses. Look at your diapers.”

Ember was the first to do so, and spotted the change in seconds. “The tape has a horn on it,” she reported, trying to somehow look like the crinkly garments were nothing to do with her even though she was wearing them. “Is that significant?”

“Of course it is,” Discord replied. “Your diapers will always have that mark on the tapes, as an indicator of your power.”

Gilda coughed. “What about if we're not wearing any stupid diapers?”

“What an odd question,” Discord dismissed. “Of course you'll be wearing diapers. Now, just say 'super pretty princess power', and you'll activate the transformation.”

“Super pretty princess power!?” Gilda repeated, incredulous, and her diaper promptly began to glow – light shining from the tapes – before spreading to cover her completely in less than two seconds.

When the glow faded, Gilda was wearing a diaper-suit of herself – one which most definitely did have an alicorn horn, as well as a ridiculously silly princess-type outfit that wafted in the slightest breeze.

“Oh, come on,” she groaned.

“To revert, simply say 'my Princess duties are done for now,'” Discord exposited, shooing them both back to their seats.

“Alright, everypony! Good luck in the real world! And don’t forget to tell everypony what a fantastic aide Discord’s Princess Pampered Padding Powdered Primary School (Name not final) was for you!”

With a bright flash of light, Spike’s comic began to shake and flutter, before several thickly padded princesses came falling out of it on top of him. He groaned, trying to push himself free of the crinkly rumps as they rolled around on top of him. He managed to free his head, finding Discord standing over him and brushing his paws clean.

“Welcome to your first class of Princess school, Spike! I hope you’re ready to learn lots of puffy prissy things!”

Spike looked around, thoroughly confused. “Wait, but… I thought I finished the story?”

Discord nodded, lifting Spike up. “Yes, you finished the first issue, and thanks to that, you get to be part of the second issue! All those subliminal ads I put in really seemed to work, didn’t they?” Discord laughed. Spike looked down at the pile of ponies, his eyes widening as he realized they weren’t Twilight and her friends, but ponies from all around ponyville! Lyra, Ditzy, Colgate…

Discord dropped Spike down into his desk, the dragon’s diaper puffing out foal powder as he did while the draconequus wandered to the front of the room. “Now, lesson one: Everything and Anything to do with diapers…”

Author's Note

And that's that for the story.
Discord's not totally heartless, he's just a massive troll.

Chapter 1

“Okay, I think that's the last of them,” Twilight said, putting a stamp on the paperwork. “Send this off, please, Spike.”

Spike duly did so, breathing a flicker of flame onto the stack Twilight provided and making it vanish in a puff of green fire.

“Thank you, Spike,” Twilight said, sighing with relief.

“I'm surprised you're reacting like that,” Spike said, picking his comic back up. “I thought you liked doing lists and smart pony stuff like that.”

“Well, yes, it is interesting,” Twilight began. “But… it's not as interesting as it could be, and it's definitely not as fun as I imagined being a Princess would be. I used to dream about helping Princess Celestia, but for some reason I didn't imagine so much of it being work.”

Spike sniggered.

“And I've got a whole day of meetings tomorrow, too…” the Princess added. “Firstly with Starlight, to see how she's getting on, and then with the local governmental planning board…”

She stopped, as a familiar shape emerged from Spike's comic book. Appearing as an artistically drawn piece of brushwork, Discord laughed.

“Oh ho ho,” he said, scratching his chin. “Interesting! I didn't realize-”

“Why do you look like that?” Spike interrupted. “That's nothing like the comic book style.”

“Some people don't realize what spirit of chaos means,” Discord said, deflating a bit and turning back to his normal self. “But I hear that the Princess of Friendship is having trouble getting to grips with being a Princess!”

“Discord, this isn't the time,” Twilight tried.

“Of course it is!” Discord replied, with a smirk. “Because the Discord Academy for Perfect Princesses – name not final – is just about to enroll a new class of students!”

He leaned down to stage-whisper to Spike. “Funny how these things work out...”

Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but Discord snapped his claws and both of them vanished.

Spike waited a moment, then picked up his comic book again.

“Wonder what it'll be this time...” he said, absently.

Spike flipped open the comic book, skipping the first few pages upon noticing they simply depicted the last few minutes of Discord’s sudden appearance and stealing away of Twilight. Flipping to a new page, the scene depicted Celestia and Luna sitting at their breakfast table. The picture began to grind into motion, the faint sound of a projector whirring to life emanating from the book as well.

“Would you pass the syrup, Luna?” Celestia asked, placing her hoof out in anticipation for the bottle. Luna rolled her eyes and levitated it over to her hoof, Celestia taking the bottle out of the air and beginning to pour it over her waffles.

“Are you sure that’s wise, sister? You’ve already eaten half a bottle’s worth, and clearly the sugar has made you forget you have magic as well.” Luna joked, biting down on a few haybacon strips as Celestia waved her hoof dismissively after drowning her waffles in syrup. “I’m surprised you’ve managed to maintain your figure with so many sweets. Imagine what our subjects would say when they see you waddle out onto your thrown! It’d be quite un-pr-“

“Did somepony say, unprincess-like?” Discord asked as he appeared from under the table, dressed as a waiter and balancing several dishes upon his head and tail. Celestia and Luna looked at him mid-chew, blinking a few times. “Oh, pooh, I jumped the gun, didn’t I? Well, you can’t blame me, when I’m about to have the sun and moon princesses (or I suppose would-be-princesses if my school is to prove itself true to its name) attending my classes!” He proclaimed. He snapped his fingers, both Celestia and Luna suddenly vanishing in a flash of light, leaving Discord balancing his dishes alone. “Alright, that’s three down, now who am I forgetting?” He tilted his head to one side as his tapped his chin, the pile of cups upon his head remaining balanced even at 90 degrees. “Ah, right!” He vanished once again, the porcelain crashing to the floor as he did.

“I'm sorry, what?” Shining Armor asked, looking at his beloved wife. “Run that by me again?”

“I know, it's ridiculous,” Cadence agreed. “But, technically speaking, when I'm out of the city then it's Flurry Heart who's in charge.”

She raised a hoof. “You do still have authority, but it's as Flurry's regent – don't ask me, it doesn't make much sense to me either, but it's because you married into the royal family.”

They both looked over at the little alicorn foal, who waved at them happily.

“So… does that also apply to Equestria?” Shining asked.

Cadence looked at the Royal Archivist, who nodded in confirmation. “Indeed. While Princess Sparkle has a greater claim, in the event of the four adult Princesses being absent simultaneously from Equestria it is Princess Flurry Heart who is the interim ruler.”

“Great...” Shining sighed. “Laws are weird.”

“Look on the bright side,” Cadence said. “That's never going to come up.”

“I'll take it!” said a voice from nowhere.

Shining looked around, confused, until Discord unzipped a pot plant which had been in the corner of the room and jumped out.

“Discord!” Cadence said. “What are you – you're not going to harm a hair on Flurry's head!”

“Absolutely correct!” Discord agreed readily. “But let me ask you both a question. Wouldn't it be great if you did have the same authority as your sister slash babysittee, Princess Sparkle?”

Completely thrown, Shining answered the question honestly. “I suppose it'd make more sense, at least to do with the Crystal-”

“Good enough for me!” Discord said, and snapped his fingers again.

Both Cadence and Shining vanished.

Flurry Heart looked vaguely confused, then started to pout.

“Oh, don't be like that!” Discord told her, giving her a lollipop. “Your Highness.”

He glanced over at the archivist. “You might want to occupy her as soon as possible.”

As the pony rushed to comply, Discord put on a thinking cap – a hat festooned with bulbs, which lit up in unusual patterns as he concentrated. “There's not nearly enough students enrolled yet… aha! I know!”

Taking the Thinking Cap off again and hanging it upside down over Flurry's crib, he vanished again.

“Trixie, please, I do not need to see more of your teacups…” Starlight said, following Trixie into another room in which several shelves of fancy teacups were on display. Trixie simply tutted, levitating over a few more of the cups.

“Starlight, did Twilight not tell you that part of being a good friend is allowing your friends to share their interests with you? And Trixie has some rather interesting pieces in this room! Just look at this one, it was made all the way in Yakyakistan! Celestia knows why, they have no magic or other means of holding them in their hooves.”

“But, Trixie, we’ve been looking at your teacup collection for three hours…” Starlight answered, trying, and failing, to stop herself from whining. Trixie glared at Starlight, scrunching her muzzle a bit as she placed the teacup back onto its shelf.

“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to inform Twilight about-“ Trixie was cut off by one of her teacups jumping down off of its shelf, bouncing off the couch to land on the table before the two ponies. The little grey cup looked up at Trixie and Starlight, a grin crossing its surface as two yellow eyes popped into existence.

“Oh, was there something you wanted to tell Twilight? Well, I can be sure to pass along the message! Though I suppose it would be easier to have you two do it, wouldn’t it?” Discup said, grinning widely. Before either Starlight or Trixie could respond, they vanished in a puff of smoke, Trixie’s hat fluttering to the floor. “Well, I suppose that’s enough princesses… or close enough. After all, who ever heard of a non-pony princess…” Discord’s chuckling subsided as an idea came to him. “Ooooohh… maybe somepony else wouldn’t mind being my guest~”

Spike tapped the pages uncertainly. “This is all very well, but is this going to stay transformed? Because I was looking forward to the latest issue of the Power Ponies.”

“I'd better not be hearing any dragons complaining,” Discord replied, his voice oddly flat. “Because I've got some very loose definitions of Princess today.”

Spike gulped. “That's fine, thank you!”

Dragon Lord Ember tapped the tip of her staff against the basalt she was sitting on.

“So… let me go over this again,” she said. “You were lost.”

“Gah, yes!” Gilda confirmed, claws clenched. “Why is this so hard to understand!”

“Because you're days away from Griffinstone,” Ember replied. “I'm not sure how you could possibly get that lost.”

“I was going to see a friend, okay?” Gilda said. “Or, sort of friend. I hope she's a friend. You know, one of those.”

“I do, actually,” Ember confirmed. “That doesn't mean your story has merit. Who could you have possibly been visiting?”

“Rainbow Dash, she's-”

“Never mind,” Ember halted her. “That's good enough for me.”

“Glad to hear it,” Gilda said, a little sarcastically.

“Watch it,” one of Ember's guards said. “Or the Dragon Lord will smite you!”

“Dragon Lord?” Gilda repeated. “But… aren't you a girl?”

“Yes?” Ember asked. “So?”

“I'd have thought a girl ruler would be a Dragon Lady.”

“What about a Dragoness lord?” asked the other guard. “Or Princess, Princess is popular.”

Ember was about to reply, then paused. “I… have only one guard.”

“Oops, spotted again,” Discord said, putting away his guard costume. “I should really get these from a better shop.”

“Uh… who are you? And what are you? You look like somepony got bored, like, seven different times when they were drawing.” Gilda asked, cocking her head slightly as she looked at the strange patchwork creature that stood beside her. Discord puffed out his chest, placing his hooves on his hips as he struck an overly dramatic pose.

“Why, I’m Discord, your new principal, of course! And it really is wonderful to meet someone else who knows some of the animators! I swear, there’s so few ponies who have existential crises any more!” Discord shook Gilda’s claw before turning to face Ember. “And it’s an absolute pleasure to meet a dragon who isn’t still in diapers!”

“Hey!” Spike said, glaring down at Discord.

“Well, for now, that is.” Discord gave an overdramatic wink to Ember as he poked her with his elbow. Ember raised an eyebrow and was about to ask what that was supposed to mean, but was cut off by Discord again. “BUT! There’s no need to dwell on things! Especially because class is about to start! And you two wouldn’t want to be tardy on the first day, would you?” He snickered, and with another snap of his fingers, he, Gilda, and Ember all vanished, leaving the lone dragon guard dumbstruck.

Twilight groaned as she sat up, rubbing her eyes as her head ached slightly. “Bluuuuh, Discord, what are you doing this time?” She asked no one, trying to identify her surroundings. She soon realized she was sitting at a rather small desk, quills and ink placed out in front of her. She looked around, noticing Celestia and Luna sitting on opposite sides of her. They too began to stir and awaken, along with Trixie, Starlight, and Gilda in front. Twilight turned around to spot Cadence, Shining Armor, and Ember sitting in the back row, everypony looking just as confused as she was.

“What the hay just happened?” Starlight asked, sounding groggy. “Weren't we somewhere else?”

“I'm not sure of the specifics,” Twilight admitted. “But I think Discord's messing around with us again. I don't know why all of you are here, though...”

“None of us do,” Shining agreed. “There was something about-”

“Sparkle, Twilight,” a dry voice said from the front of the room.

“Here!” Twilight replied automatically, then blinked, focusing on the speaker. “Hey!”

Discord looked over a pair of severe glasses, his eyes going up to look at Twilight for a moment before returning to the ledger in front of him. “Glimmer, Starlight.”

“Okay, enough of this,” Gilda said, trying to get out of her desk. “I'm gonna-”

“Well, that's everyone,” Discord said, closing the ledger and throwing it over his shoulder. It hit the wall, then blossomed outwards into a large chart with a set of cutie marks and two other symbols on it. “Now, I must say I'm very disappointed to see that none of you have the right uniform!”

“What's all this about, Discord?” Celestia said. “Aren't you supposed to be behaving now?”

“I said I'd be friends,” Discord replied. “Nothing at all was said about behaving. But speaking of that, none of you are making a good first impression.”

“What the hay is going on!?” Gilda demanded, still unable to get out of her desk.

“Why, you're all enrolled, of course!” Discord announced grandly. “In the Discord Academy for Little Princesses.”

He gestured to the banner over the blackboard, which included a footnote stating that the title was not final.

“But let's get the uniform sorted out before we go any further,” he went on. “It's really lowering the tone of the classroom to have so many pupils not properly dressed.”

Starlight groaned. If there was one thing she was glad she would never have to deal with again from her days in Canterlot Academy, it was the drab uniforms. Always too tight, and the teachers were always picky if there was so much as a crease out of line… Discord glanced over to the pink unicorn, giving a sly grin. “I suppose you’ll do nicely to start with.” He grinned, flicking his paw and causing Starlight to levitate up out of her seat. Starlight inwardly chastised herself for drawing Discord’s attention, but soon calmed herself down. She supposed it couldn’t be that bad. Discord might have a penchant for the absurd, but whatever costume she was about to wear, it would likely only hurt her dignity.

As expected, a small shirt and wool-knit vest appeared in the air, along with an unfortunately short skirt. However, there was another article of clothing floating along with the others that Starlight didn’t recognize at first. It wasn’t until it unfolded and flew towards her that she made the connection.

“WHAT?! NO! No way, uh-uh, I am not wearing a diaper!” Starlight shrieked, lifting her legs up in the air as the diaper flew by beneath her. Discord twirled his paw as the diaper spun back around, aiming for Starlight’s rear. She struggled against the magic, her own horn glowing for a moment before fading back down once again. Starlight’s eyes crossed as she looked up at her horn, but her vision was quickly obscured by the shirt and vest pulling themselves over her. The diaper wrapped around her rear, crinkling as the tapes secured themselves and the skirt was tugged around her as well.

Starlight was dropped back onto her seat with an unceremonious pomf, leaving the unicorn blushing furiously as she tugged at her skirt. No matter how she pulled, the skirt did nothing to hide the thick, puffy garment cushioning her seat, and everypony stared at her, then to Discord, then back at Starlight.

“There we are, I’d say the new uniforms look rather stunning, don’t you? But, we’re already behind schedule! I best hurry things up!” Discord clapped his hands, and with several puffs of what smelled like foal-powder, everypony soon found themselves sitting in the same uniform as Starlight. Dress, diaper, and all.

“...why?” Shining asked, looking at his dress in resignation.

“I think it looks cute, at least,” Cadence tried.

“It's obvious!” Discord announced. “This is a Princess Academy, therefore there are only Princesses here and there's no need for a male uniform. Logic!”

Twilight loudly groaned at this unusual definition of the term logic, but Discord kept talking over her. “Now, let's start the first class with an introductory presentation on the school!”

He cracked his tail, and a projector dropped from the ceiling. The lights went down, and a white blind that hadn't been there a moment ago rolled down over the blackboard to provide a white projection surface.

“Okay, joke's over,” Celestia said, sounding unamused. “You've had your fun, Discord, and it is a funny joke that less than half the class consists of actual princesses, but we do have things to do today.”

In reply, Discord simply started the presentation.

Another Discord jumped onto the screen, this one rendered in a very old-cartoon style, and waved. “Hello, girls! My name's Discord, and welcome to your first day at the Discord Academy for Padded Foals!”

The larger Discord coughed, and the one on the screen looked shifty. “For Princesses,” he corrected. “Here you'll learn all about the different things a princess needs to learn! We hope you'll enjoy yourselves and join our list of satisfied alumni, currently consisting of Insert Name Here!”

A cheerful jingle played, presumably the school's song or something along those lines.

“We have a marvelous fine arts program, from music and performance to visual arts!” The screen showed a Discord in a puffy brown afro and a goatee painting a portrait of another Discord in medieval attire, holding up a rubber skull in his claw. “As well as a highly accredited (by me) scientific program!” A Discord in a lab coat was pouring brightly colored liquids between several flasks, before one began to bubble and hiss before exploding in his hand. “Ohoho, careful there, sport! You wouldn’t want to start a fire!” The scene shifted once again to show several more Discords in their own diapers and dresses scooting down a lunch aisle, each one being handed a large bowl of sweets.

“What does this have to do with being a princess? There’s nothing here about foreign relations or delegation!” Twilight muttered to herself, tugging on the waistband of her diaper fruitlessly.

“As well as state of- ghghgghg- the Princess- kkrrghk- name still under review- kkkdrrkk” The film began to skip and sputter, Discord groaning as he wandered over to the projector and smack it roughly.

“Oh, for goodness sake! I just cleaned the thing this morning!” The filmstrip suddenly burst into flames, quickly engulfing the projector and reducing it to a pile of ash in a matter of seconds.

“We’re all going to die here…” Ember said, staring at the burned up projector as Discord swept it up into a dustpan, coughing awkwardly.

“Well, I’m sure you all get the picture, don’t you? Perhaps we ought to move on to our first lesson of the day.” He said as he dumped the ashes out into a bin in the corner. “How does math sound?” He asked, the lights flicking back on.

“Great! Take this school, minus one gryphon, and we’re done!” Gilda jeered, pushing herself out of her chair to walk out the door.

“I wouldn't do that,” Discord cautioned her. “Truancy is considered a serious problem.”

“Well, it's about to get more serious!” Gilda shot back, trying to do a bold strut to the door – though the sheer volume of the poof of her diaper impeded it a little.

Then she reached the door itself, and something pounced on her from the doorframe. Wrapping around her waist before she could blink, it shot out two straps which stuck to the ceiling directly over Gilda's chair and dragged her back as she shouted in surprise.

When she stopped moving, it was finally obvious what had happened – Gilda had been set upon by some kind of animated foal bouncer, which suspended her and began bouncing her so that her diapered butt just about touched the seat on the downwards bounces.

“I did warn you,” Discord pointed out. “Now then. First off – subtraction.”

He indicated Gilda. “Since you're so interested in it, we'll try you first. What happens when a Princess has two sweets and has one taken away?”

“Shut up!” Gilda moaned, cheeks flaming, and tried awkwardly to get out of the bouncer seat. “This is stupid! This is all stupid!”

“Oh, dear,” Discord sighed. “Remedial lessons for you, I think.”

He clicked his claws, and a pacifier appeared in Gilda's mouth.

“Now, let's try another student,” the 'teacher' said, as Gilda wobbled up and down in her foal-bouncer seat.

“How about you?” Discord pointed towards Luna. She grumbled a bit, managing to hold back several outdated slurs that would fit Discord nicely.

“One sweet. Taking one sweet away from two still leaves one.” She said. Discord gave a sigh, flicking his tail as an oversized sucker appeared in front of Luna. It shoved itself into her mouth, overwhelming her with its near toothache inducing sweet cherry flavor.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not a complete answer! You would have one sweet, and one very unhappy princess left.” Discord responded. Luna attempted to spit out the sucker to retort, but the candy refused to budge from her mouth. “Honestly, I was hoping at least one of you would have studied up for this test! Perhaps subtraction isn’t your forte, let’s skip to addition!” Discord turned to Celestia, who was still hoping Discord was planning on ending this prank soon. “Now, Celestia, if a princess has five sweets, and you give her five, what will you have?”

“Er… ten sweets? And one very happy princess?” Celestia responded, making sure to give Discord a complete answer. He grinned widely as ten large slices of cake puffed into existence in front of Celestia, one quickly shoving its way into her muzzle.

“Correct, Celestia! You’ll get a point for being the first princess to know her material!” Discord waved a hand as a piece of chalk wrote a tally beside Celestia’s cutie-mark on the chart at the front of the room. Celestia didn’t give any sort of response, forced to swallow the thick slice of cake. As it landed in her gut, she could swear she felt her diaper and uniform get just the smallest bit tighter. She was unable to dwell on the feel as the second slice of cake shoved its way into her, however.

“What is that sheet for?” Twilight asked, pointing.

“Aren't you an observant one!” Discord praised. “Now, time for a question for you!”

“But you didn't answer my question,” Twilight protested.

“A Princess is in a room with several others with diapers,” Discord said. “She doesn't know how many diapers she has, but she knows she has at least one diaper, and she can see no-one else is wearing more than two diapers. For her to be satisfied, she needs to have more diapers than any one other pony in the room and at least a quarter of the total number of diapers in the room. How many more diapers does she want?”

Twilight blinked. “But… you didn't give some of the information I need to know to answer the question.”

“Clock's ticking!” Discord warned, producing a clock from up a sleeve that hadn't been there a moment before. “Better think fast!”

“Um, um...” Twilight began, trying to work out what the trick was. “Er...”

She looked around the room, then realized there was a connection with the way Celestia and Luna had been asked the question. “I mean – if she can see eight others with diapers, then she wants another five diapers!”

There was a fwoomph! Underneath her, and Twilight found herself abruptly sitting considerably higher in the seat as her diaper multiplied in thickness considerably. She wobbled a little, then had to steady herself with a hoof on the desk, and Discord checked off one mark under her name as well.

“Well done!” he announced, putting a pacifier into her mouth before she could keep talking. “I can see you're starting to get the hang of it!”

He indicated Trixie next. “Now, what about you...”

“Pah, Trixie can stump your foal’s challenge! Math was one of Trixie’s best subjects!” She boasted, leaning back in her chair.

A tiny Discord appeared out of Shining’s vest pocket, crossing his arms. “Well, it clearly wasn’t English.” He quipped, only to vanish down in the pocket as Trixie turned around to locate the source of the insult. Shining blushed, trying to look innocent as Trixie glared in his direction.

“Alright, suppose that Cushybutts cost 5.78 a box and contain 12 diapers in each package, each with 1.65 inches of thickness, and that Megapoof cost 8.14 a box and contain 8 diapers in a package with 2.20 inches of thickness each. Suppose a princess wants to buy the most thickness per bit she can with her funds and she only has 189.91828493049 bits to her name. How many diapers of each brand should she purchase?” Discord rattled off, picking up speed as he moved through the problem. Trixie began to blanch, raising a hoof slightly before putting it back down and staring at her desk as numbers raced through her head.

“Uh… er… that would be…. Uh…” She gulped, wracking her brains. How much did the Cushytush cost? Or, wait, was it Fluffybottom diapers? And why did this princess have so many decimals of bits? Should she round? How many significant figures were there?” She looked back up at Discord, voice wobbling. “Eh… f-fifteen of e-each?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Trixie! But your princess has overshot her budget! Oh well, she is a princess, I suppose she can buy as many diapers as she pleases!” He chuckled.

“Wait, but that’s not fai-“ Trixie was cut off as a pacifier appeared in her mouth, her diaper ballooning up to fill her seat, which was now several packs of fluffy diapers stacked on top of each other.

Twilight tried not to feel quietly superior about having successfully answered her question, though she knew Trixie's one had been a lot harder.

She shifted a little in her seat, feeling the thickness of her diapers, then looked up again as Discord turned his attention to the Dragon Lord.

“Well, now, a dragon's all about adding to their hoard,” the chaos spirit said. “So let's try a simple adding question!”

He produced a bottle of foal powder from under the desk, and put it down – making a little puff of it escape. “One day a dragon needed to work out how much foal powder to use to powder up his family. Now, he was a dragon with a big family, and had seven sons each of them with seven daughters, and each of those daughters had five little hatchlings. If a hatchling needs twenty grams of powder and there's a thousand grams in a bottle, can you add up how many bottles he needs?”

Ember stared at him flatly. “That's not addition.”

“Multiplication is just addition over and over again,” Discord shrugged. “How many bottles does the dragon need?”

The exasperated dragoness counted under her breath. “Forty-nine daughters, each of them with five hatchlings… fifty hatchlings per bottle… five bottles.”

“I'm sorry, you didn't answer the question in the right way,” Discord said, shaking his head and tutting. “The correct answer was 'the dragon needs five bottles', and that just tells me that you need a bottle!”

Ember jumped as what felt like an entire bottle of foal powder was shaken over her backside by an invisible hand, and great plumes of it went into the air to fill the room with a pleasant scent.

“Whoops, perhaps that was too much, a hatchling's only supposed to need twenty grams,” Discord mused, clicking his claws and providing Ember with a pacifier as well.

Ember wriggled about a little in her seat, each small movement causing clouds of foal powder to billow out of the legs and tail of her diaper. Discord turned to face Cadence and Shining, still grinning widely. “Well, I suppose this one is going to be rather tough, so how about you two get to collaborate on it?” He said as he picked up a piece of chalk and began to scribble on the board, equations and figures drawing themselves independently of his mad chicken-scratch. “Suppose the average guard takes three bathroom breaks per shift, each about five minutes long. Calculate how many hours and lost pay would be saved if the average castle decided to pad their guards up and cut out that time. Within five bits, if you would be so kind.”

Shining looked over to Cadence, who only shrugged a little. “You’re the one who pays and assigns the guards, I don’t know how many you have at a time!” Shining bit his lip, thinking. If there were at least two guards at the front gate, four in the throne room, at least one always with him and Cadence, and they switched shifts every four hours… Once he had figured out the number of guards and their hours, it wasn’t much longer before he and Cadence were able to come up with a few figures. “You remembered to subtract the cost of the diapers, right?” Shining asked, Cadence nodding after being asked that for the fifth time.

“You would save about 150 hours of work, along with 1200 bits of pay, after taking away the cost of the diapers for each guard.” Cadence answered, hoping that was thorough enough for Discord. The draconequess clapped, thoroughly impressed.

“Oh, very well done! Now, I hope you can appreciate that when you realize we’ll be employing the same tactics here! Oh, and it wouldn’t have hurt to mention how much liquid you might have to deal with too.” Discord winked. Shining blushed as he suddenly felt the urge to wet his diaper grow, causing him to squeeze his legs together and bounce a little in his seat. Cadence was facing another problem as she suddenly felt a hose poke into the back of her diaper and cool water spray into it. Her padding began to soak it up, spreading her legs slowly as it guzzled up the liquid.

“St-oop it!” Cadence protested. “This isn't fair!”

“I think you'll find the school's enrollment agreement permits it,” Discord replied, waving some signed paper they'd never seen before at them. “Now, before we get too bogged down with trivial matters, let's ask our newly padded-up guard princess – what happens if the amount of time a pony can go between potty breaks is divided in half?”

Shining blushed deeply as he lost the battle with his bladder, wetting his diaper, and didn't even notice as Discord put check marks in both his column and the one for Cadence – now with her diaper so saturated that little drips were leaking out, dribbling over the edge of the chair onto the floor.

“And it looks like we might be at the end of the lesson!” Discord went on. “Anypony who hasn't had a question yet, raise your hooves!”

There was a long pause, during which no hooves went up.

“Wrong!” Discord announced, shaking his head. “Really, I should have expected better from you, Starlight. Let's see how you handle this one.”

Starlight gulped, looking at the board as Discord hovered a piece of chalk ready to write.

“Calculate the impact of peer pressure on diaper wearing,” Discord said eventually. “Assume that a pony's preference for diapers is doubled by each other pony they see wearing diapers, and that their initial preference is one percent – how many ponies would it take wearing diapers to start a trend?”

Starlight glanced around, trying to think of some way to free herself without drawing more punishment to herself. “I, well…” She quickly attempted to perform the math in her head to avoid any form of punishment from Discord. Though even then, the fate of those who weren’t punished didn’t appear to be much better than those who were not. Celestia’s gut was now pressing into her desk, pushing her chair back slightly as it grew, the last bit of cake forcing itself into her mouth as she blushed brightly.

“If she saw eight other ponies wearing diapers, she’d have a percent of 256, but… does a trend happen when they reach 100? They’d only need to see seven in that case.” Discord nodded and placed a small check beside Starlight’s cutie-mark as she wiggled about.

“Corrrrrrect! And with that extra pony wearing a diaper, especially when some of them are so thick…” Discord grinned as he looked at Twilight and Trixie, whose padding crinkled loudly as they were now practically pillows for their rumps, “She’d just have to put on another, wouldn’t she?” Discord laughed as a deep blue diaper suddenly appeared around Starlight’s rear, lifting her up slightly in the seat as her face turned a bright red and a pacifier was shoved in her mouth.

Everypony (and dragon and gryphon) wriggled about in their seats, properly padded in their thick diapers, each suckling on their pacifiers. “Well, we did have a bit of trouble, but that wasn’t too bad of a start, I’d say! We ought to move on to history next! I hope you know your puffy past!” Discord laughed as the equations erased themselves from the board to be replaced by a map of Equestria and the surrounding lands.

“Let's begin with some of the basics,” Discord suggested to his entirely-captive audience. “What was the most significant moment of the last thousand years?”

Starlight glanced over at Twilight, a frown on her face.

“Mmmm...” Twilight began, blushing as she was reminded of the pacifier in her mouth.

“Remember your manners,” Discord chided. “Raise your hoof if you want to answer.”

After a long moment, Twilight raised her hoof, and her pacifier was removed by Discord so she could speak.

“There's a lot of choices,” Twilight began. “There's the return of Princess Luna, um… the return of the Crystal Empire… the, ah, Discord's return?”

“Wrong, wrong and wrong!” Discord said, putting the pacifier back in. “It's the invention of the disposable diaper! I'd have thought you would have known such an easy question, Twilight, that's not a good sign for your grade.”

Twilight blushed, the criticism somehow hitting home even though she knew it really shouldn't.

“Now, let's see if any of the others have a better grasp on the matter!” Discord went on. “Can anyone name an achievement by Star Swirl the Padded?”

Shining tentatively raised his hoof, Discord popping the pacifier out to allow him to speak as well. “Uh… did he… invent the disposable diaper?” The pacifier zipped back into his mouth as Discord shook his head, giving off a faux look of disappointment.

“Goodness, no! Star Swirl isn’t that old, Shining! He merely improved on the diaper! Before him diapers could only hold so much before leaking, you know! But Star Swirl created the Pocket Padding!” Discord waved his hooves dramatically, a thick diaper puffing out of thin air. A jet black diaper, with stars and a swirly purple vortex on the rump, Twilight’s eyes widening as she stared at it. “This diaper was practically infinite! You wet it, and it just kept swelling! You could stuff something in it and pull it out later, perfectly dry! The perfect padding for a prissy prancy princess!” He proclaimed proudly.

“Mmpphh mmpph-“ Starlight tried to ask, but was unable to speak around her pacifier. Discord looked to her and she raised her hoof sheepishly. “So why isn’t it used?” She asked once her mouth was free. Discord grinned and popped the pacifier back in her muzzle.

“Good question! Well, the problem was that it was infinite! It just kept growing! One day Star Swirl woke up in a sea of fluff, his diaper having swallowed him whole! And no matter what he did, he couldn’t find his way out! I forget what happened to the original diaper…” Discord mused, only to shake his head and look out at the class a second later. “So, which lucky princess wants to try it on?”

Everypony, as well as the two non-ponies, tried not to be noticed.

“An excellent idea!” Discord said, grandly. “Thank you so much for volunteering!”

There was a moment's silence, as none of the 'students' had any idea who he was talking to, until Starlight yelped as the star-studded diaper appeared around her rump – already as large as the padding she'd already been wearing.

She wriggled, trying futilely to dislodge it, and the stars seemed to twinkle as she did.

“It's good to see you love it so much,” Discord chuckled. “Now, let's move on to the next subject.”

He snapped his claws, and a piece of chalk drew on the board. It sketched out a crude drawing of Discord, and then the real Draconequus stepped out of the chalk picture.

“Three times in the past Equestria has faced Change-ling invasions,” Discord said, putting on a pair of pince-nez for a moment and taking on a lecturing air. “But the important question is-”

He stopped, and tweaked Gilda's beak. “Pay attention in class or you'll get punished for it,” he warned. “Now, as I was saying, the important question is – why did they invade Equestria?”

“Chrysalis was trying to take my place. She was planning on replacing everypony with changelings to steal their love.” Cadence spoke up, the memory of Chrysalis’ invasion being anything but pleasant. Discord simply chuckled, leaning back onto the chalkboard. Cadence gave an annoyed look, Shining not looking any more amused. He supposed he should have known that Discord had a different take on what the invasion was about.

“Now, Cadence, you really shouldn’t answer when you don’t know the material! And you didn’t raise your hoof!” It was at that moment Cadence realized her pacifier had disappeared, but only for long enough for Discord to shove it back into her muzzle. Grumbling to herself, she crossed her hooves and leaned back in her chair, diaper squishing as she did. “The Change-lings didn’t invade to steal love! They did it because they heard about everypony needing help with their diapers! They’re called change-lings, what else would they do?” He joked.

The whole class gave several muffled sounds of confusion behind their pacifiers, Shining and Cadence especially taken aback at Discord’s account of the events. He flicked his tail again as the chalk drew two bug-like ponies glaring at each other. Both looked rather puffy, with what looked like tapes along seams on their bodies. “The change-lings would often fight each other over who would get to actually change the ponies, even if they didn’t need it! Anypony caught by two change-lings would often have one diaper put over the other, over and over and over!”

“Allow me to demonstrate what it was like,” Discord added, and Cadence found herself being padded up by a burst of telekinetic magic – over and over again, over the top of her already-squishy diaper, until she was sitting several inches higher than she'd been sitting before.

“Mmf,” she groaned.

“Of course, a Princess has to have practical experience of history,” Discord told her. “Why would you think otherwise?”

Twilight mumbled around her pacifier, wanting dearly to correct Discord's deliberate mistakes, but didn't feel quite strongly enough about it to raise her hoof and suffer the additional humiliation.

“Well, now, it seems you're not up on current affairs...” Discord said, and made a show of picking up a calendar and ruffling through it. Month-pages scattered all over the floor, forming a pile over a foot deep, until Discord tapped one of them. “Aha!”

Looking up at the class, he tapped his chin. “Now, I wonder… who might be able to tell me what happened during the feud of the Royal Sisters?”

Once again, nopony was feeling particularly eager to answer Discord’s question, considering Discord’s “history” lesson could range from the sisters having a pillow fight to Nightmare preferring cloth over disposable diapers. Discord looked around the class, grinning eagerly. “If nopony raises their hoof, I’m going to start calling on poniiieees~” He chuckled. Celestia and Luna looked to each other, unsure of how to respond. Before either of them could raise their hoof, though, Discord spoke once again. “Luna, you ought to remember what happened that fateful day? Care to share with the class?”

Luna gulped as her pacifier was removed from her mouth to allow her to speak. “Well… I, uh… got a little… upset at my sister because I allowed my jealousy to overcome me. It was...” Luna was cut off by her pacifier being shoved back into her mouth, Discord waving his talons dismissively.

“Yes, you threw quite the tantrum, didn’t you? And Celly had to try and fix everything! I mean, really, who thinks that multiple diapers are better than thick ones?” He chuckled. Celestia blinked in surprise, taken aback by Discord’s explanation. She attempted to speak, remembered her pacifier, and rose her hoof. Discord pointed to her, her pacifier removing itself.

“That’s not what happened at all! Luna was not upset over some silly matter of diaper thickne-!” She was cut off as well, Discord looking amused.

“Are you suuuure, Celly? I believe I recall this whole matter being rather puffy and fluffy. Don’t you remember?” His eyes flashed a little, several colors spinning in them for barely a moment.

Celestia blinked, feeling very odd all of a sudden – somehow dizzy, and unsure of herself.

She wondered if she'd been misremembering, and if the dispute with her sister really had been about the philosophy of poofiness…

...then she blinked again, frowning, and recovered her senses. She shook her head, looking defiant, though the pacifier spoiled the effect – and, even as she sat there, she couldn't help but think about the merits of thickly padded diapers compared to just layering on diaper after diaper.

“What about you, Lulu?” Discord asked, turning his attention to the pony of the night-diapers, and smirked. “Don't you remember those arguments?”

Celestia caught another flash of colours from Discord's eyes, and frowned again – focusing briefly on the question so thoroughly she could almost remember the arguments.

-then she caught herself about to wet her diapers, and crossed her hind legs with a whimper.

“Neither of you?” Discord asked. “Well, perhaps you'll remember better if you're in the right costumes – it's always helpful to act out a role in class!”

Reaching behind him, he pulled out a pair of little plush toys. One of them was clearly Nightmare Moon, and the other looked like a harsher, more intense version of Princess Celestia.

The chaos spirit squeezed them both, revealing them to be made of material that crinkled like diapers did, and then tossed them through the air towards the Royal Sisters – and, as they moved, they grew.

The tiny plushies quickly swelled, growing larger and larger by the second. They both flopped onto the desks of the princesses, Twilight glancing left and right at the plushies to either side of her. By the time they landed, they were the size of small fillies, and were still growing bigger. Luna attempted to push the plushie off, but before she could raise her hooves up, both her and Celestia’s desks squeezed in on them. Their legs bound to their sides, Celestia and Luna struggled against their bindings, and plushies continued to swell. Suddenly the Nightmare plush lifted her head, leaning it onto her front hooves as she looked Luna in the eyes. “Hello there, Lulu~” She grinned, flashing her crinkly fangs at Luna. “I think you’ll it very comfy once we’re done, what do you think, Daybreak?” She glanced over to the menacing Celestia imposter.

Daybreak, now almost as large as Celestia, sat up on her haunches, leaning forward to stare at the pony bound in front of her. “Oh, definitely!” She snickered, licking her lips. Suddenly Daybreak opened her mouth, shoving Celestia into her. She began to gulp the princess down, Luna’s squeaks of fright muffled as Nightmare did the same. The two plushies continued to grow bigger, their bellies bulging outwards as the princesses slipped down into them. They squeezed and pressed on the padded rumps of their captives, slipping down into the seats they had recently occupied. Their swollen guts pressed comfortably into the desks, Celestia and Luna wriggled about inside the plushies, their hooves soon finding the legs of their cushy counterparts. It wasn’t long before the sisters were wearing the plushies like suits, their bellies now only slightly distended.

“Now, what was that you were saying about your feud?” Discord asked, grinning slyly. Daybreak grinned, clearly proud of herself.

“Why, my naughty little sister was just insisting that more diapers were better than thick diapers! It’s a complete waste? Why wear five thin diapers when you can wear one that’s even bigger than they are already!” She gave a confident laugh, Nightmare glaring at her, but her devilish smirk giving away her true feelings.

“Of course more diapers are better!” Nightmare shot back, wiggling in her seat and producing plenty of crinkles. “There's no better way to choose exactly how thick you need your padding to be, and of course there's no better way to show one's true beliefs than to mark it on your diaper!”

“Silence!” Daybreak demanded. “What twaddle! What absurdity!”

“That's much better,” Discord said, marking off a star for both Celestia and Luna as their evil-counterpart trap-suits began to snuggle themselves again.

Twilight tried to free herself from her chair, trying to work out how she could help – and drawing a blank – when Discord clapped his mismatched hands for attention.

“But perhaps the problem is that we've not gone far back enough – let's start with the founding of Equestria itself!”

He pondered the ponies and others present, then rolled a pair of dice before consulting a large book of tables he'd pulled out of the air. Then he pointed at Ember.

“What? I don’t know anything about Equestria’s history! I only know drago-“

“Ignorance of the subject is no excuse! Now, how was Equestria founded?” Discord asked, feigning annoyance at Ember’s confusion. The dragon poked her foreclaws together nervously, trying to think of something that would seem reasonable. Well, reasonable to the chaotic creature trapping her in this classroom.

“Uh… well… I know there were… three different kind of ponies… unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi… They… uh… came from a land… far away and… er… lived in peace for… always?” She said, her face turning red as she continued to rattle off clearly incorrect facts. Starlight placed her face in her hooves, Gilda trying to stop herself from snickering at the dragon’s complete and utter failure to answer the question.

“Tsk tsk tsk, Ember. You really ought to be studying more!” Discord said. “Here, I’ll get you some of the books.” He snapped his claw as several thick volumes appeared above Ember’s head, only to fall down a moment later and flatten the dragon cartoonishly before falling off the chair to reveal the dazed dragon.

“I'll be coming back to you later,” Discord added, giving her a stern look. “But we'll give you a few minutes to study up. Now, let's see… what about the history of Griffonstone?”

Gilda froze, then chuckled nervously. “Uh...”

“Thank you for volunteering!” Discord said, and Gilda's bouncer seat moved as if it was on rails in the ceiling. It moved left, then forwards, then across to face the rest of the class from just in front of the blackboard.

As Gilda blushed under her feathers and tried to shrink out of sight – her movements only making the bouncer spring up and down again – Discord began drawing on the chalkboard behind her.

“As we all know, Griffonstone was united by King Grover!” Discord said, drawing a picture of the town in chalk. “But the question is – how did he unify the griffons into a single nation?”

“...what?” Gilda asked, baffled. “That's one of the easiest questions ever! It was the Idol of Boreas!”

Discord paused, and shook his head sadly. “Oh, dear...” he sighed. “I think you'll find the correct answer is that he introduced them to the wonder of plastic pants, so they didn't leak while they were flying!”

Gilda's beak dropped open, unable to process that.

“Of course, We invented them,” Day Breaker commented, bouncing up and down in her seat for a moment and producing a loud rustle. “Grover was merely a copy-cat-bird!”

“Slander!” Nightmare Moon countered. “'twas Nightmare Moon who developed them, for night diapers!”

“Perhaps Gilda would like to demonstrate how they work,” Discord suggested, ignoring Gilda's head-shaking denials.

“It’s wonderful to see your enthusiasm!” Discord said as Gilda’s bouncer melted away, only for the cords to wrap around her claws and paws and hoist them up into the air. She bounced and writhed in an attempt to flee, but all it did was bounce her padded rear around as she swung back and forth. Discord produced a large pitcher of water and a funnel. The end of his tail slipped up to tickle Gilda, who clamped her beak tightly as she began to involuntarily giggle. Faster and harder Discord rubbed his tail about, and it wasn’t too long before Gilda burst out in to laughter, only for the funnel to be slipped into her beak.

Discord poured the water into the funnel, Gilda gulping it down. Her belly blew out slightly as she squeezed her legs together to try and keep herself from wetting her padding. The pressure continued to build, and no matter how much she wriggled and bounced, it did nothing to help her predicament as Discord continued to empty the seemingly bottomless jug. Eventually there was a soft hisss as Gilda’s padding began to swell, growing wet and squishy as she blushed brightly. Twilight tried to avert her gaze from the embarrassing sight, Nightmare and Daybreak watching smugly, though still tossing glares to the other across Twilight occasionally.

“Why, I think that’s a wonderful demonstration, wouldn’t you say?” Discord applauded, Gilda flipping down to hang by her claws before the bouncer squeezed in on her rump and let her bounce freely a moment later. Sliding back to her seat, Gilda’s face burned brightly as her padding continued to squish about, still swelling slowly as she wet it.

“Now, how’s Ember doing?” Discord asked, looking down at the squashed dragon. “Oh dear. I think she might need some help. Trixie, if you would…” Discord puffed a pump, the word “History” scrawled across it in childish writing. The hose of the pump led off of Trixie’s chair over to Ember’s tail. Trixie gave a few tentative pumps, Ember beginning to slowly regain shape. “How about now, Ember? Any clue on how Equestria was made?”

Ember blinked, still quite flat, and her head bobbed a bit as she tried to focus. “Um...”

Every time she seemed about to say something, another puff came puffing into her and she lost her focus again. The process continued for at least a dozen repetitions, until she was back to full size and Trixie stopped pumping the plunger.

“Well?” Discord asked. “I'm waiting...”

Lacking any options, Ember racked her brains.

It did seem like that 'history' pump had actually given her some knowledge, which was about as odd as she should have expected from a chaos spirit. Unable to really verify it, she began to explain what it seemed to have told her.

“So, um… there were groups of ponies who were wandering the land,” she said. “And they were all cold and uncomfortable, because the ground was hard and because they kept arguing with one another. And every night it got colder, because they hadn't invented blankets yet and had to sleep out in the open...”

“That's-” Twilight began, trying to correct Ember, but a pacifier landed in her mouth and shut her up.

“Then the leaders of the three pony tribes got together,” Ember went on. “One group – the earth ponies – had invented the idea of clothing, but didn't have any material thick enough to use. The pegasi had discovered a thick material, made from clouds, but didn't have anything to do with it. And the third, the unicorns, could put it all together, but they demanded payment.”

Ember didn't notice as her eyes glittered slightly, the story seeming to make more and more sense to her as she spoke. “And that was the coldest night of all, with monsters roaming the night – creatures which tried to take ponies and drain out their warmth through their cutie marks...”

“Aaaaand?” Discord asked, expectantly. Ember furrowed her brow, trying to think of what it was that might have happened that night. She glanced over at Trixie, still holding the pump in her hooves. The unicorn noticed and tentatively pulled up on the handle before pushing back down. Ember’s belly bulged out slightly, her mind becoming clearer.

“And that night, when the three leader ponies were all bickering, they needed some way to stay warm, and comfortable on the hard ground. And with all the creatures trying to steal their warmth through their cutiemarks, they needed protection too!” Ember began to grin, remembering the story as if she had been living through it. “And one of the pegasus’s advisors suddenly had a brilliant idea! While the leaders were arguing, she got the earth pony and unicorn’s advisor to get her the cloth and the needles while she brought the stuffing. And they began to stuff and stuff and stuff the fabric full until they made thick, warm diapers! They all plopped their puffy rumps on the ground, but it didn’t matter! They were so warm and soft they could just sleep in them like a bed! And with how thick they were, no monster could ever managed to steal away their warmth! Soon they had everypony padded up, and they absolutely loved it!” Ember giggled, not having noticed Trixie’s continued pumping until she placed her claws on her gut, which was now pressing into the desk in front of her.

As if breaking the spell, Ember glanced down at her gut, gasped, and was about to speak when her pacifier was shoved in her mouth again and the pump vanished in a puff of smoke. “Excellent work, Ember! Top marks!” He said, placing a star next to the flame on the chalk board.