There was something enlightening about the ability to fly, Twilight found. Flitting from one corner of her basement to another, she pondered why she had never thought of it before. The room under Goldenoaks Library had served as a decent enough research facility before her ascension, but now that she could fly, Twilight had found a whole new dimension to the place.

Now she could reach all her scrolls without a ladder.

Still, today was for more than just reading, as strange as that may have been for the newly minted Princess. Today she was doing proper research, with potions, and goggles, and a lab coat.

Specifically, she was researching the merits of morphic field theory; a branch of magic theory that dealt in such areas as flight without wings, the grafting of phantom limbs to facilitate some of the more complex spells, and of course that elusive and oh so complicated subject that baffled magic scholars all over Equestria: the material versus the immaterial.

Twilight had a few samples before her for examination: poison glands of a mundane scorpion, pegasus feathers to represent a halfway point between magical and mundane, and then various vials of bodily fluids harvested from properly magical creatures. The idea was that the more magical the creature, the stronger the morphic field. The more magic was involved in the ability, the greater the odds that it might be concentrated, or transferred.

Twilight triple-checked her notes before getting to work. If she got this right, Princess Celestia would be pleased. She might get rewarded with an honourary title... or rather, something more honourary than the title she had now. Maybe she'd get her own castle. Maybe she'd get even more advanced magic lessons.

Maybe she'd get more books.

With paper and quill in hand, she got to work.

Then the crash happened.

Twilight felt the air woosh over her before she realised something had fallen in, then that same something rammed into her at full speed, knocking the vial out of her magic and spilling its contents. Only after the crash did Twilight realise this was a familiar something: blue, hooved, winged, and decorated with a rainbow-coloured mane and tail. Of course it was.

The something groaned, sniffed the purple stuff that it had gotten splashed with, then smiled. "Uh, hey, Twilight. Sorry about the landing."

"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight stomped a hoof on the ground, removing her goggles angrily, as only a true egghead could. "What do you think you're doing?"

Rainbow cringed and pointed at the open window. "Well, I was just-"

"Come on, you need to get decontaminated right now." Without warning, Twilight cast a containment spell around Rainbow Dash to hold her in a red glow.

This did not go over well. "But Twilight-hey! Put me down! I can walk just fine." She struggled and wriggled with all her might, but the alicorn's magic held her still. She couldn't even fly out.

"Well, clearly you can't, if you can't even be trusted to make a decent landing," Twilight noted. "I'm shocked at you, Rainbow Dash. I thought your days of crashing into random homes were over."

"It's not my fault, Twilight! I'm trying to tell you-"

"No excuses. You need to be decontaminated right now. Gosh, I don't even know what you were spilled with... do you have any idea how badly you might have hurt yourself? I was working with some very important and potentially dangerous substances." She marched right up the stairs with her captive in tow, straight towards the bathroom.

"Well, then, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in a residential area in the first place," Rainbow muttered under her breath.

Twilight ignored the remark. She let the bath fill up, grabbed a vial of special all-purpose magic absorbing decontamination soap from her counter and dunked Rainbow Dash in.

"Oof!" Rainbow Dash tried to stand up, but more magic held her down, forcing her to stay in the suds. "This isn't funny, Twilight. Now let me go!"

"No can do, Rainbow Dash. I have get every last bit of whatever it was, or who knows what might happen."

Twilight grabbed a brush and immediately got to work scrubbing the blue mare's fur.

"Ow! Do you have to be so rough?"

"Oh, don't be such a baby. You did this to yourself, you're lucky I'm willing to clean you up like this. You could have gotten hurt, Rainbow Dash. Though I suppose at least you didn't endanger anypony else this time, or sell them off."

Rainbow Dash grunted. Do the Sonic Rainboom a couple of times, no one cares. Fight dragons a couple of times, no one cares. But you accidentally trade your friend away once, not even for life, and suddenly you’re a slaver. Twilight had really let the authority go to her head after that Trader's Market. "You mean you would have hurt me, Twilight, if you're using stuff that's so dangerous."

"Don't be ridiculous; I have to do this important research for Princess Celestia. You need to be more careful. Now turn around, so I can wipe your extremities."

Rainbow fumed. Even so, she couldn't break free. "I can't move in this magic, Twilight."

"Oh, right, silly me."

Rainbow was tilted back farther, her hooves and flanks exposed to the overzealous Princess.

Then agony struck.

Her heart started pounding in her chest, a vein in the back of her head felt like it was going to pop, her wings flared up with magic.

Twilight was scrubbing her hooves.

"N-ngg..." Rainbow Dash tried to bite through it, tried to suck it up like she had so often before.

"See? Nice and clean. You need a good scrubbing, Rainbow, especially if you ever want to make it to the Wonderbolts. You really need to work on your tidiness and organisa-"

"STOP!"

Rainbow Dash fell down into the tub. Warm water soothed the assailed nerve endings of her hooves, slowly the spots in her eyes faded.

She surfaced from the sudsy water, finally catching her breath. Her heart still pounded in her chest, though. "Stop, Twilight. This isn't funny. This isn't fair."

"I'm sorry."

Rainbow's ears twitched. Something in Twilight's tone had changed. The alicorn sounded more monotonous, droning, almost. Looking up, Rainbow found her friend frozen, staring blankly ahead. "Twilight? Are you okay? Your eyes are looking kinda... swirly."

"Yes," came the dreamy reply. "I am okay."

Rainbow Dash leaned in closer. Yup, those eyes definitely had lights swirling in them. They didn’t blink when Rainbow waved a hoof in front of them, either. "Twilight, why are you looking like that?"

"Rarity gave me a mud mask yesterday and I combed my hair this morning."

Not the sort of response she was expecting, but it was a start. "Okay, why are you staring blankly ahead like that and why do you have swirls in your eyes?"

Twilight blinked. "I'm not sure. I seem to be under some kind of... influence."

"What kind of influence?"

"Given the nature of my research, I must have accidentally splashed you with secretions of the Bufus hypnoticus. It appears that, rather than extracting the magic, the decontaminating soap caused the morphogenetic field exuded by the secretions have melded with your own, imbuing you with the creature's lethemantic abilities."

About a fifth of that sentence registered. Clearly Twilight was not only following orders, but als taking things literally. In that case, the solution was easy. "Tell me again, and explain it like you would to me."

"Bubbly stuff make you think loud."

Rainbow facehooved. "Explain it like you would to me if you thought I was smarter than a two-year-old."

"I tried to get you cleaned up. I used the wrong soap. Your voice can now control me. What is your wish, Mistress?"

"Are you trying to play some prank on me?"

Twilight kept on staring blankly ahead. "No, Mistress. I cannot think."

"So you'll do anything I say?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Anything?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Okay. First things first: clean me up, but gently this time." Rainbow saw the coarse brush rise up again, and quickly realised Twilight Sparkle's idea of 'gently washing' anyone was based on her experiences with Spike, a dragon who had no problem with being used as a pincushion. So she quickly amended that command. "Wash me as if you were washing Fluttershy."

The brush floated away. Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief.

Twilight grabbed a different bottle of soap, and started massaging it into Rainbow's mane. The smell of it was divine.

"Hey, this is really good stuff. Nice and soft..." She leaned back and enjoyed the gentler affections from her friend. "What kind of soap is this?"

"Flea wash."

Author's Note

So this bit was in the blog, the next part will be about as short, but mostly comedic in nature. It's a two-shot, hadn't done one of those yet by design, might as well.