Some things are just difficult to digest
“The problem with magic,” Twilight Sparkle said, phasing in and out of existence, “is that sometimes, you have to open your eyes and start pretending.”
“This might not be the best time for a lecture,” replied Rainbow Dash, smacking a flying chair from the air. The chair let out a yowl of defeat and resolved to fly no more, plummeting to the ground in a heap. It shuffled away as fast as its legs could carry it, nearly hitting Rarity as she chased down a swarm of teapots as they trumpeted their way towards Ponyville.
Twilight scoffed. One of her hooves achieved sentience, observed the universe around it, and immediately sunk into a deep depression before attaching itself back onto Twilight. She pretended not to notice it. “What are you talking about? It’s the perfect time for one! See, the world without magic revolves around things that we understand. When you drop an apple, the apple falls. Then it gets bruised and no one in their right mind wants to eat it, so it decays and turns into mush. Following me so far?”
Rainbow Dash resigned herself to an impromptu lesson as her head filled with the sound of droning gregorian wasps. They chanted to her about the nature of pain. Rainbow shook her head to try to clear it, and a bee flew out of her ear. “Sure. Whatever, Twilight. The eggs are getting away. Could you chase them down?” She would have tried to swoop after them herself, but her wings seemed to be stuck in their current animation frame, and she was having a bit of a hard time moving them.
“Well, the nature of magic isn’t to increase the same amount of what’s probable. It’s very existence is in defiance of the laws of nature!” Tenderly, like a mother bird keeping her chicks from toppling out of the nest to a very Polluck-y end, Twilight scooped up the fried eggs and held them close to her fluffy chest. She beamed at them proudly as they quivered against her. “Why, you could even say that magic exists to redefine what’s possible!”
A very indignant screech distracted Rainbow Dash for a moment. The teabags were doing unspeakable things to Rarity. Rainbow’s cheeks flushed as she looked away, trying to push the memory out of her mind. It fell to the earth with a cheery plop. What were they talking about, again? Oh yeah, something about impossibility. “Yeah, everything here seems pretty impossible, Twilight,” she said once the silence carried on a bit too long for comfort. Rainbow surveyed the room. The cheering of the teabags reached a crescendo and then all was quiet, so Rainbow took a chance and looked down again. Rarity and the teabags were smoking what looked to be… breakfast sausages?
Twilight cooed as the eggs began un-frying themselves. Their golden, crinkled edges slowly became less defined as they wobbled with all their might. Globs of butter clung to Twilight’s fur as the eggs oozed their way slowly down her hooves. “Exactly! So, since the nature of magic is to explore what we’ve always thought was impossible, why would we reject the craziest of outcomes?”
“Uh, Twilight? Your hooves are growing eggshells.” Rainbow dove down to save the waffles from the legions of forks that were hunting them. She stuck one in her mouth to rescue it from the agony of realizing its inevitable fate. Not bad, she thought. Needed syrup, but the syrup was going through a midlife crisis and she didn’t want to be the one to tell it that buying a new house wasn’t going to solve anything.
“So they are, Rainbow,” Twilight giggled ecstatically, tapping her hooves together. They made a porcelain clink as they hit. “Now, imagine for a moment that we didn’t reject them. Imagine what would happen if, instead of trying to control the chaotic flow of magic, we let it loose? We could discover so many things about the unnatural side of the universe if we didn’t rein it in all the time!” Her hooves shattered into a million glittery pieces. They hit the ground below and sprouted into saplings that smelled like old books.
Rainbow felt that Twilight should have been far more alarmed than she seemed to be. Instead of panicking, Twilight flew down towards the picnic basket and dipped her hoof-stumps in them. When they re-emerged, they were whole, though they looked to be made of something quite unlike flesh.
“Your hooves are made of bacon, Twilight,” stated Rainbow matter-of-factly, hugging the last waffle close. It cried and hugged her back, whispering something about how it didn’t feel so good and how much it didn’t want to go. Rainbow didn’t quite know how to respond to that, and squished it tighter.
The alicorn rolled her eyes and waved a delicious hoof. “Don’t interrupt me, I’m almost done. There’s so many ways this could help everypony, okay? Think of teleportation, for example. Going from one place to the next is difficult for the average pony. Why? Because when we do so, we try to appear exactly as we disappeared! But what if we let chaos do its thing a bit more? Every unicorn would be able to teleport, and they’d just reappear a different color or species or something. Think of how much we could learn from that! Why, even everyday things could become the world’s greatest science experiment!”
The waffle had dissolved into sprinkles when Rainbow wasn’t looking. That was, by far, the least of her concerns. “So, you want magic to be crazy like this all the time? Just for science? Twilight, geez, that’s awful! Other ponies could get really hurt! Look at what this is doing to Rarity!”
Twilight looked down. Rarity and her teabag harem were starting a family, and raising her half-teabag offspring. One of them was named after Twilight. Or, mostly after her. Teabag Sparkle raised its glassy eyes up at Twilight, and she never felt so proud. This was her adopted grandteabagthing. This was her legacy. “I don’t see what’s so wrong with it,” Twilight whispered in awe, waving down at the teabag filly. It waved back, full of lavender and peppermint goodness.
Rainbow Dash wasn’t impressed. “Twilight, it’s unnatural. And yeah, you said that was the point, but still, this is crazy! You’re partially made of bacon, Rarity had beverage spawn, and I think the tribal warfare between the forks and the spoons below is developing into a religious crusade. When you said you had something you wanted to show both of us, I thought it would be something boring, like official Princess stuff, or at the very least some news that wouldn’t literally wreck our lives!”
That made Twilight falter. “What do you mean, wreck?” She sniffed one of her hooves. Yup, she thought, that is bacon. Fascinating.
“I’m a Wonderbolt, and Rarity has businesses to run, for example. You can’t just decide that the laws of reality are a good idea to break, okay? This isn’t something everypony wants. Maybe it’d help science or whatever, and maybe some ponies would be able to make it work. But overall? It’s a stupid idea, and it’s completely ruined the picnic Rarity planned for us.”
Twilight deflated. Quite literally. She fluttered to the ground before a table hobbled up and reinflated her ego through a vigorous cheer routine. “Are you sure?” she burbled, slowly growing back to her usual size. “There’s so much we could learn. Discord said-”
“Oh he did, did he?” muttered Rainbow, rolling her eyes. They continued to roll in her head until she commanded them to stop. Surprisingly, they obeyed, because they followed the brain’s dictatorship or risked getting banished. “That makes it an even worse idea. Look, not every pony is okay with this, and this whole deal? It’s really going to mess up my whole day, not to mention my whole life.” She frowned at her wings, which were moving at a few frames per minute. It was an improvement, but not a quick enough one.
Twilight pouted, staring down at her bacon-hooves. One of them started to sizzle. Rainbow Dash didn’t know what that meant, but she decided to take it as a good sign. “This might seem like a good idea, I know. Discord can be pretty convincing. But you can’t use Equestria as a science experiment. You know that, don’t you?”
For the first time, Twilight perked up a bit. “I know, but-”
“It’s messed up,” continued Rainbow Dash, surveying the damage below her. A few sprinkles fell from her hooves. “And just because you’ll learn a lot doesn’t make it okay to make everypony else suffer for it.”
Twilight bit her lip. It bit back. “Of course, it’s just that-”
“Look, this isn’t progress if it hurts everypony. Breaking the laws of magic is a really bad idea because it affects everyone!” Rainbow thought about her job. Would the Wonderbolts accept her if her legs turned to something awful, too? Maybe, she reasoned, they just wouldn’t let her land. That would make sense, in the nonsense of this new world.
“But it isn’t!” shouted Twilight, stomping a hoof. It crumbled into bacon bits, and she toppled over from the force of it. “Look around, Rainbow. Is anypony else running around screaming?”
Rainbow looked around. No, there wasn’t really anypony else shrieking and panicking. It was just her, Twilight, and the teabag empire Rarity had started. “Uh, yeah, why is nopony else-”
“-panicking?” Twilight grinned from where she lay on the dirt. “The laws of magic were suspended just around the picnic. I wanted to see what would happen.”
Rainbow Dash frowned. Another bee flew out of her ear, this one humming Mozart. “Can you reverse it?”
“Sure. But why? I’ve learned so much already…” Twilight trailed off, looking around. Teabag Sparkle had just been crowned Empress. Rarity looked on, tearing up. One of her legs was already cybernetically delicious thanks to the teabag technology.
Rainbow fixed her with a look. “Because I’d really like to have a normal breakfast? For once? Please?”
“Oh, fine,” grumbled Twilight, her horn lighting up in a few colors Rainbow wasn’t convinced existed beforehoof. Her world exploded into a billion stars, which resolved themselves into a neat plaid pattern before fading to black.
Then Rainbow opened her eyes. A hoof was being extended to her. A purple hoof. And it wasn’t made of bacon. So she accepted the hoof, which gently pulled her upright. The picnic table was back to how it had been. Rarity was in one of the chairs, humming to herself as she looked around. Ponyville in the distance looked exactly as it should. Birds sang. Breakfast cooled on the table, and Rainbow Dash shrugged as she dug in.
“Sho,” she mumbled around a mouthful of egg and daisy sandwiches. “No more chaosh shience, okay?”
“Not with you two, of course,” agreed Twilight, daintily cutting up a waffle. “If I ever do repeat that, I’d make sure everypony was okay with it. Discord did have a point, though,” she added, giving Rarity a sideways glance. “Sometimes the impossible can produce quite interesting results. Would you like some more tea, Rarity?”
Rarity blushed and stuffed her mouth with toast so she wouldn’t have to answer, much to Twilight’s amusement. She giggled, and it wasn’t long before Rainbow Dash joined in on her laughter. It was a pity, really, because if she hadn’t laughed quite so loudly, she would have been able to hear Discord laughing along with them.
Author's Note
I don't really have an explanation for this. I don't think there is one.
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