A Visit To Remember

Twilight Sparkle looked at her in tray. The stack, which usually was more than several hooves high, was thankfully today a little smaller. A particularly busy day yesterday meant she had been able to power through quite a few tasks and move them to the out tray. As she looked at the pile, a gleam caught her eye. There were several letters within the small pile of paperwork, brought to her desk dutifully by one of the administrator ponies each day. This one however had clearly been placed so it would be easily spotted among everything else. The lettering on it was gold, which Twilight recognised immediately as coming from the royal palace at Canterlot.

She immediately wondered why the letter hadn’t come the usual way, via Spike. Levitating it in front of her face however told her that this wasn’t a letter penned by Celestia directly, it had been put together by one of the clerks in the employ of Celestia who regularly sent letters across Equestria. The golden lettering on the front was addressed to The School of Friendship, with a small marker in the top left that noted it had been formally sent from the palace.

A small panic ensued as Twilight opened it up, how long had it been sitting there? Then the panic subsided, clearly not very long as it was placed towards the top of the pile. In fact it had likely arrived today. Every royal letter was dated - as she pulled the paper out she could see that this one only was written and likely sent about three days ago. It was still fresh. The letter opener she used had sliced the envelope open neatly, which she discarded as she began to read the letter.

Dear Twilight Sparkle

It has been some time since Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have made a visit to your School of Friendship, which we understand is performing extremely well. They would love a chance to see this for themselves. Therefore a royal visit has been scheduled five days from the sending of this letter. Please ensure you can accommodate this request and inform the palace as soon as possible if you are unable to do so.

Sincerely,

Inky Quill
Royal Clerk
Canterlot Palace

It was a very short letter, but to the point. Panic set in again as Twilight did some mental maths. They had two days to prepare for the visit. It was too late to inform the palace they couldn’t accommodate it, which Twilight wouldn’t dream of doing anyhow. She had no intention of lettering down royalty, even though technically she was now part of it. She wasn’t sure if that made it more or less important honestly. Either way it didn’t matter. She was now quite worried.

‘Starlight!’ she yelled. Her friend, just next door, stuck her head around the corner of the door with a puzzled look on her face.

‘Something wrong?’ she asked.

‘No - but we’re about to have an important visit.’ Twilight said, waving the letter with a hoof which Starlight levitated over and read.

‘Oh, I can see why you shouted.’ she said, looking a bit paler. ‘The letter is quite positive though, at least on the surface.’ Starlight said studying it a bit more. ‘Although it’s quite short.’

‘That’s my problem. The school is doing well, academically. Our students get good grades! But the day to day is something entirely different.’ Twilight retorted. Starlight could tell she was about to go into one of her panicky rants about problems. She thought it best to just let her get on with it and get it off her chest. ‘Classes are out of control, particularly anywhere there’s magic involved. We still have a lot of students who turn up late, or not at all. There was that fight in the library last week where books where transformed into pies and it took hours to clear up…’ she paused for a breath. ‘Not to mention half the teachers are currently sick down to that awful episode in the cafeteria. I mean I get some of the students needed to learn some cooking skills, but did we have to serve the food out of there and to our staff as well? Urghh…’ she flopped her head on the desk, rant over.

Starlight gave her a light pat on the back to comfort her. ‘Yes, but despite all that we’re still a top performing school. And those are minor things, the Princesses probably won’t even notice a bit of pie on the library walls…’ Starlight stopped, Twilight had picked her head up and was giving her a squinted look of disbelief. ‘Okay, all I am saying is it won’t be as bad on the day, trust me.’

‘I can’t leave it to trust.’ Twilight said, leaning back in her chair. ‘This is too important. The day of the visit has to be perfect.’

‘I mean, it’s not going to be…’ Starlight started to say, but often in situations, the realistic response wasn’t helpful. ‘I mean uh, we can try to make it as good as it’ll be. Any ideas?’

‘Hmm.’ Twilight thought for a moment. ‘Obviously let everypony know it’s happening. Tell the students to be on their best behaviour. What I’m worried about though is the lessons.’

‘Howso?’

‘Well, yes the school performs well - but a lot of the curriculum is still lacking. I think because all of this is new we’re being given an easy ride, which Celestia and Luna will see right through. We need a way to bring the teachers up to speed, quickly.’

‘They’re doing their best Twilight, any more and you’ll overload them. That is a recipe for disaster.’ Starlight said. The realist in her came through fully at this point. Her ear was more to the ground than Twilight on how the staff were doing. Aside from a few things, currently she found it hard to fault their teaching even if it was a little lacking in stretch and challenge - but that was because as Twilight said, this was all new to everypony.

‘Then I’m going to have to call on an old friend.’ Twilight said with a smile, holding up a book. ‘Not this one, but we have a whole library here. Come with me Starlight, there’s bound to be a spell we can find which will help.’ it was always her go to solution, magic. Starlight didn’t doubt that there would be some sort of spell that would help out, but what that was, she wasn’t sure yet. Spells took hundreds of thousands of forms, trying to guess what Twilight had in mind was nearly impossible.

Starlight just nodded. She had to admit she was somewhat curious to see what Twilight had in mind.

The library in The School of Friendship was mostly geared towards basic magic. Things to teach the students that were capable they could easily wrap their heads around. There was however a section for more advanced magic, for those particularly gifted students that found the majority of the library books a little too easy. It was here they were directed to practise some of the more interesting spells the school had on offer. Nopony was currently in it, the students that were in the library were quietly studying other books.

‘Hmmm, here.’ Twilight said, pulling out a tome. ‘I had this in my library back in Ponyville. “Advanced Knowledge Retention and Learning, Volume III” was always a great help to me during a cram session.’ she explained. She started to leaf through the pages as Starlight looked over her shoulder at the book. It clearly had been looked at by the students, it wasn’t covered in dust, but even these were what she would call specialist advanced spells. Most likely the students had looked at it, decided it was too tough and put it right back, opting for an easier tome to study from. In about the middle of the book, Twilight stopped on a spell. The title read “Advanced Knowledge Retention - Knowledge Mass”. She began to look down the instructions. Starlight followed her.

The spell would be no problem for a pony like Twilight, it was extremely advanced magic but she’d wield it like it was a toy. Even Starlight figured she could give it a go. There was however a problem with all advanced magic such as this, which the time made very clear at the bottom of the page after the instructions were fully explained:

Any knowledge gained and retained by anypony under the influence of this spell must be managed by their magical powers. Knowledge is only available as long as the pony channelling the spell continues to do so. Failure to do so has been observed to cause unintended side effects, the mass takes physical form in the user in an air like substance, which increases in volume the more knowledge the pony wishes to gain from this spell. If you notice a change in physical form, stop immediately. Slowly channel the spell down and disperse it, do not attempt to continue using the spell. Be warned - if you channel this spell on others, you, the caster will absorb the most of the substance, with the other ponie(s) absorbing some as well.

‘Ominous.’ Starlight said, pointing a hoof at the wording. ‘What do you think it means?’

‘I think it means that we’ll be fine, because once I’ve cast it I’ll be able to manage it between our teachers just fine.’ Twilight said, quite confidently. Starlight wasn’t convinced.

‘You’re going to cast this on the entire teaching staff? Then manage it for them? Twilight this is talking about just one pony failing to manage the spell themselves. You’re going to be able to cast it on you, me, all your friends and keep it under control?’ Starlight asked quite sincerely.

‘Of course! Look at the rest of the page before that bit, it’s not a very complicated spell.’ Twilight scoffed.

‘For you, this is advanced magic - even for a pony like me.’ Starlight said, once more the voice of reason. ‘You’re sure about this?’

‘What other options do we have? The Princesses arrive in less than two days. Without magic, we’re not going to be able to deliver perfect lessons.’ Twilight said quite flatly. ‘I’ll study the spell for the next day so I’m absolutely sure, if that’ll make you feel better. I can cast it the day the Princesses arrive and that way I only have to maintain it for a short period while they’re looking around and observing. I can handle it.’ Twilight said, smiling and looking back at the spell. ‘They’ll see great lessons, we’ll get all the praise. It’ll all go without a hitch.’ Twilight said. Starlight groaned, the last sentence was begging for trouble, but once Twilight had decided she was going to do something it was nearly impossible to get her to change her mind. Starlight didn’t have any better suggestions, so simply said ‘Fine.’ and left Twilight with the tome. She had other work to attend to before all this and was now behind. She was just about to leave when Twilight passed over some final instruction. ‘Ask everypony on staff to meet me the morning of the visit, I’ll explain what we’re doing.’

Starlight went back to her office, she still felt uneasy about it, but Twilight seemed quite assured of herself.

-

The day had been eventful. Twilight had put the tome in her desk drawer and forgotten all about it for the most part as she had dealt with the day's trials and tribulations. Once back at her office however she pulled the tome from her desk and began to read down the spell. Starlight had obviously been concerned. Casting a spell on others before testing it on herself as well would be extremely foolish, so Twilight decided she’d give it a go on herself first, besides the fact she didn’t want to end up causing any harm to her friends. It was after hours and apart from a few other staff members, most ponies had gone home with the students in their dorms. It was the perfect opportunity to give it a little test run and not be disturbed.

She gave the spell a second read just to refresh her memory. It was advanced magic for sure, there were certainly some parts of it Twilight was going to have to really concentrate quite heavily on. The thing was, Twilight wasn’t a princess for nothing. Her advanced magic skills would hopefully make what was considered advanced a trifling affair. She thought it best to get up off her desk and make her way to the middle of her office, based on the warning - just in case.

Levitating the tome in front of her she performed the necessary sequence of steps to conjure the spell, her horn glowing as she did so. As an extremely knowledgeable pony, Twilight was surprised that the spell quickly took hold. Her brain started to almost immediately flood with new information. Things that she never thought she’d need to know, or she wasn’t that way minded, were suddenly as simple to her as breathing. Fixing mechanical objects, how to sew a dress, the optimum angle to position her wings to fly at maximum velocity to induce a sonic rainboom were all so obvious now. She was amazed at the capacity for the spell to quickly and efficiently induce new knowledge into her mind.

‘Hnng.’ then she felt it, a pang. Not painful, but something wasn’t right. There was something new that she didn’t know, but with the influx of information her mind was struggling to place it and figure out exactly what it was. She knew something new, but it was getting lost in a thick soup of greater knowledge. She tried to concentrate, but wasn’t able to pin it down. Twilight decided it was best to just let it go and focus on what she could absorb as she continued to channel the spell. The information however, still found its way into Twilight’s mind.

But then it happened again.

And again.

And again.

The spell was quickly going out of control. Twilight was channelling it at her maximum capacity, which would be far above anypony else. She hadn’t been paying attention to the side effects, her eyes closed and total concentration on the spell itself. Feeling something odd, she quickly opened them and gasped.

‘Oh Celestia.’

Her stomach had formed into a ball shape beneath her, round and spherical, it pressed out and was now fighting against her legs for space. With the distraction and channelling the spell at the same rate, Twilight suddenly found that, unable to concentrate any further on the spell but keeping it going, her body began to expand rapidly. This side effect was quite the doozy, so much so in fact for a moment, Twilight continued to channel just to see if there was a limit to how much of the unreadable knowledge her body could take. She was still learning, flooding herself with new knowledge that was slightly overwhelming her. Her body, completely overwhelmed by the excess, was failing spectacularly to contain it all. She felt her stomach swell even more, a light bwomph! as it lifted her off the floor and her body began to fill her office. She felt her bloated flanks press up against her desk and her balloon stomach spread so wide so quickly that she was now wedged against the two outer walls. She struggled for any movement, only able to pathetically bob herself around from left to right as she attempted to angle to the tome to be in front of her face which was rapidly being overtaken by a ballooning body that showed no signs of slowing down. Another minute and her whole inflated form would be pressed so hard up against the walls she’d likely bring them down. As Twilight's head sunk firmly into her ball body, she stopped the spell, the tome dropping to the ground in front of her with a thunk as she let the spell come to a natural stop.

Creeeaaakkkk!
She had never come across a side effect like this in magic before. It was as the tome had said, her body had absorbed the excess knowledge in an air-like form and spread it around her as a way to compensate for it, but not lose it. It seemed very strange, usually spells fizzled out or stopped working when something wasn’t right - but this one kept going. She was able to feel a little with her hooves, pressed firmly into the side of her body; her skin felt almost rubbery, as if the spell had compensated for the side effect by making her able to continue to absorb the knowledge as she had continued to cast. Her body however, was practically a ball, not much to distinguish her as a pony besides her sunken head, sunken hooves and wobbling flanks that pressed into the ceiling behind her. It had been quick too, Twilight not noticing just how speedily she had ballooned up, so to speak.

She wondered how long it would take for the side effects to wear off now that she had stopped channelling, the tome had mentioned that continuous casting was required to retain the information. Now she had stopped and been bobbing about in this new form for about half a minute, she wondered how long it would take for her to return to normal. She tried to think about how to fix a tractor, but her mind was blank. Previously where there had been information there, now there was nothing. The same with the other things she knew she had learned. It was all gone - so why was she still like this? She wobbled again, but then as quickly as she had ballooned up, she blimped down.

Paf!

There was a quick magical flash as the excess knowledge dissipated out of her body. Twilight had been raised up a few feet above the ground due to her blimped physique. Now that was gone she tumbled a few feet down, landing on her flank on the hard floor below.

‘Ow!’ she wasn’t prepared for the fall, giving her now back to normal rear a bit of a rub as it had taken the brunt of the fall. It seemed nopony had noticed what had been going on, her office door was still shut and the mare was very much alone. She quickly grabbed a notebook from nearby, scribbling down as furiously as she could.

Do not channel all knowledge at once - limit it to specific subject areas relevant to the staff member
Less potency behind the channelling
Pay attention to staff, side effects visible very quickly
Ensure spell does not become out of control - extremely obvious side effect

Twilight picked up the tome again. Clearly, this spell was not to be trifled with. She had been a bit overpowering with the cast though, she was sure she could manage it a bit better. She read back down the instructions and channelled again, cranking down her magical potency to see what the results would be. The book also mentioned verbally speaking what knowledge to gain, otherwise the spell would assume information and fill your mind with whatever it thought was best. Perhaps that had been her downfall.

‘Teach me how to fix a tractor.’ Twilight said as she channelled. Suddenly, once more she found the information implanted into her mind and knew how to fix one up. With the spell dialled down, it wasn’t filling her with additional, less useful knowledge. Twilight tried something else.

‘Teach me how to sew a dress.’ she spoke. Once more the information was there, she looked at herself. No side effect, Twilight was her normal self and normal size. This was the key, she’d have to instruct the spell who she wanted to learn what as she channelled it. She had it, feeling smug she stopped casting. The knowledge went away and she didn’t come crashing down to the floor - having not transformed herself into a pony blimp this time around. There was obviously a bit more tweaking to do - she considered on the day of the visit she’d have to manage this magic across multiple ponies spread out around the school which would be no small feat. Tomorrow, she’d call Starlight into her office first thing in the morning and attempt it on her. That seemed like the best idea to start small, see how she got on and gradually work up - time permitting of course.

She put the tome away in her desk and called it a night, satisfied that she’d be able to manage the magic better tomorrow.

-

‘You wanted to see me Twilight?’ Starlight said, opening the door to Twilight's office. Twilight was once more looking at the magical spell, she had it memorised by this point, but she had opted to keep the tome quite close, just in case.

‘Yes, I know you had concerns about what we’re planning to do for the visit tomorrow.’

Starlight looked uneasy. ‘I know you’re good with magic Twilight, but yes, concerned would be probably a bit of an understatement. You know the Princesses will be pleased with what they see. Do we really need to do this?’ she asked.

‘I just want everything to be right Starlight. To that end I took your advice, I did attempt the spell on myself last night. Everything went without a single hitch.’ Twilight lied, it had gone without a hitch, on the second attempt. She wasn’t about to blurt out to Starlight she had practically become a pony blimp in her own office. She had spent quite some time after calling it a night making sure nothing in her office had actually been disturbed. Twilight had ended up sleeping at her desk, again.

‘Oh, well then. You have a grasp of the spell.’ Starlight said.

‘Absolutely, but I do want to test it on somepony else before we move to the entire staff.’ Twilight explained. ‘Do you mind?’

‘You’re sure you know how to do this?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Alright then, but I’m holding you accountable if anything weird happens.’ Starlight rolled her eyes then closed them. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

‘Alright.’ Twilight once more started to channel the spell. ‘Teach Starlight how to make honeysuckle jelly.’ Twilight said. ‘And teach me how to operate one of the large ovens in the school cafeteria.’ she then waited a few moments, making sure to fine tune the amount of magic delivery so there was only enough to benefit what she’d asked for her and Starlight. She watched her friend a little apprehensively, expecting her stomach to suddenly blimp out at any moment. Instead, Starlight spoke.

‘Take two cups of honeysuckle flowers…boiling water…lemon…hey, it works!’ she exclaimed. ‘What about you!?’

‘Ensure the gas flow is turned on…not too much, gently turn the knob upwards to reach a desired temperature…’ Twilight repeated. ‘Yup, works for me. I could go and cook a pretty good meal on that thing.’

‘Haha, you’re making me hungry.’ Starlight said, licking her lips. ‘Well, this is great! I don’t know why I doubted you.’ Starlight looked a lot better, much more placated. Twilight stopped casting.

‘Now tell me how to make honeysuckle jelly.’ she said. All she got was a blank look from Starlight. ‘Yeah, the information doesn’t stick around. I have to maintain the spell.’

‘Won’t that be fairly obvious to the Princesses? You know, with the constant glow?’

‘Well…’ Twilight levitated a clipboard and quill. ‘I’ll mix it with a bit of levitation, they won’t realise.’

‘They might ask you where Spike is.’

‘Vacation, which isn’t a lie.’ Twilight replied. ‘He went off this morning.’

‘Oh, we’re short staffed as it is.’

‘It’ll be finnneeeeee.’ Twilight said, putting a friendly hoof on Starlights back and trotting her out the office. ‘Look, I’ll be perfecting this for the rest of the day. We can get the staff together in the morning and the inspection will be perfect, you’ll see. Anyway, lots to do!’ Twilight exclaimed, shutting the door before Starlight had a chance to respond. There were still lots of other things to get ready for, as well as the daily administration work. Twilight was going to be busy all day.

She decided firstly to check in with Rarity, who was in her usual room. A lesson was in progress which Twilight didn’t want to disturb. She listened in to what was being said however, parking herself at the door and just observing what was going on.

‘...so the importance of a hem stitch cannot be underestimated dears! I want everycreature to have a go with your needle and thread!’ Rarity said quite enthusiastically, she started passing around the required items to her students. This should be interesting, Twilight thought. Rarity was great at this sort of thing, at least for herself and when she ran the boutique. Her transition to teaching hadn’t been exactly seamless, she found it difficult to impart the information sometimes to her students. Still, she had made great progress. Twilight was hoping she’d see the spark in her students and in a few moments would all be stitching away.

‘Ow!’ there was a yell from one, Twilight cast her eyes over to the student in question. A young dragon who appeared to have pricked one of their claws with the needle.

‘A-Ah yes, class - please wear your protective gloves!’ Rarity quickly amended. Twilight rolled her eyes, basic safety equipment was well, basic. How Rarity had missed that she didn’t know. If the Princesses were here, it would have been noticed. She continued to observe the lesson going on. The class started to sew, which went on for about ten minutes - Rarity trotting around and observing their work as she a few times nervously pointed to a not very well drawn diagram of what she wanted them to stitch on the board. She had provided them all with exactly the same amount of material, so Twilight expected them to produce a uniform result, at least within reason.

What actually happened when Rarity called for time and for them to show their work was wildly different. Some students had followed the diagram, some hadn’t, others had just decided to wing it and come up with something that didn’t work at all. Rarity nervously smiled again, aware Twilight was watching.

‘Well done class! Now if I can just come around to each of you and give you some pointers?...’ she said. Twilight left her to it, even Rarity who was a unicorn of excellence was clearly having trouble here. She made a mental note that reinforcing teaching skills would be what she’d direct the spell to do when tomorrow came.

Twilight decided to continue on her small jaunt. Applejack was out today, occasionally she had to leave the school to help out back on the farm, so her classes were covered by Starlight. That left Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Pinkie’s classes were often quite chaotic. Today was no different. As Twilight opened the door to the room, an errant pie hit her right in the middle of the face.

‘Ah!’ Twilight exclaimed, spitting bits of pie out her mouth as best she could. It was warm, indicating it had been sitting for a while. Mostly whipped cream though, so it didn’t really do any harm.

‘Ooooops, sorry Twilight!’ Pinkie said, bouncing over. ‘We’re just doing some pie flinging practice!’ she explained. ‘Rolling Pin! Aim more towards the target if you can!’ she shouted back at her students, but in a friendly - non scornful way. This was quite often how Pinkie’s classes went, she got completely distracted from the set curriculum. Twilight didn’t mind a bit of fun now and then, it often gave the students a bit of a break and could actually help them with their studies if they were motivated. The thing was, Pinkie struggled to get them to pass her course because she went off on a tangent too much. Twilight was reasonably sure pie flinging wasn’t part of her lesson plan, but probably part of the Pinkie Pie wants to have some fun plan.

‘Er, right. Pinkie, what are you supposed to be teaching them?’ Twilight asked quite sincerely.

‘Oh easy, Friendship Fostering with Jokes!’ Pinkie quite happily said, pulling a few more pies out and handing them to her students as she moved the target a bit closer, likely in the hopes they’d have an easier time hitting it and not the head of the school.

‘Mmm hmm, and I’m curious how a pie is a joke.’ Twilight said.

‘Well it was funny when you got hit with it.’ Pinkie said, smiling. ‘Sorry again.’

‘Right, Pinkie, we discussed this. I don’t mind a bit of fun and games but-’

Splat!
The effort Pinkie had made to move the target hadn’t really worked out in her favour. Twilight was hit by another pie, which completely covered her face. She shook her head to get rid of the whipped cream, right after this she’d be heading to a washroom to get the worst of it out of her mane. She made an annoyed grunt, looking slightly upset as the cream was pushed aside onto the floor.

‘Hair Lick! You need to move your aim waaaaaay over!’ Pinkie instructed her students. ‘Sorry Twilight, maybe we can talk about this later? I don’t want you getting a third pie in the face.’ Pinkie said.

‘Yes, talk about this later.’ Twilight said under her breath. She decided to take her friend's advice and leave the lesson as quickly as possible. She knew she’d be telling the spell to keep Pinkie focused on what she was supposed to be teaching. Twilight found herself out in the corridor alone, away from the pandemonium of the lesson.

Now where was that washroom?

She decided to save Fluttershy for last, usually she was the most reliable and good natured of her friends who rarely veered off task. Rainbow Dash was a bit of a shirker. Twilight had seen genuinely good teaching and quality lessons from her. The problem was, nine times out of ten she stopped by to see what her friend was doing, she wasn’t doing anything. Students quite often made comments Dash would rather snooze at her desk or get the students doing self study, while she snoozed at her desk than actually teach a lesson. Twilight opened the door, wondering if she’d find a sound asleep Dash or a lesson going on.

To her surprise Dash was quite awake and talking to the class - this was odd. Perhaps she had caught her on a good day.

‘So name me a few places you might make friends outside of school. Anycreature?’ she asked, a few hands went up. Dash picked on some students who gave satisfying answers.

‘The park!’

‘Out in town?’

‘Doing the same thing you like!’

Dash smiled and continued to lead the lesson. ‘All good answers, take notes and put those ones down in your books. I’d also like you to put down some of the places outside of Ponyville that some of our non pony friends come from. Had you thought about the dragonlands, or Yak Yakistan? Where might creatures make friends there?’ she asked. There was a silence among the class as the students appeared to consider their answers. While they did, Rainbow greeted her friend. ‘Hey Twilight! Can I help you?’

‘No, just observing.’ Twilight said. ‘Good lesson Rainbow, keep it up.’ Twilight said. She decided she didn’t need to see more and didn’t want to greatly disrupt the flow of Rainbow’s teaching. She left, shutting the door behind her as Rainbow went back to speaking to her students.

The thing was, Rainbow was quite cunning. Twilight decided to induce a little magic, a sound amplification spell that let her hear what was going on a few feet away. She projected it through the wall from where she was out in the corridor into the room to see if what she had stumbled upon was indeed the lesson.

‘She gone?’ Rainbow asked the students.

‘Uh, think so.’ one answered.

‘Phew, that was a close one.’ she heard Rainbow exclaim. ‘You guys really saved my flank. Go back to talking among yourselves.’ Dash said, before Twilight heard Dash park herself on her chair and start to quite quickly snore. She frowned. Not only did Dash need some more discipline, which the spell would provide, but perhaps even some coffee? She had never known a pony who was so tired this much and used as much free time as they could find to get forty winks. It was disappointing she was faking it in this manner, the students wouldn’t have a hope in heck of passing.

There was no point bursting in with a ‘gotcha!’ - Twilight decided to cross her hooves and hope that Fluttershy’s lesson would be the saving grace of her trot around the school that it often was.

It wasn’t.

‘My goodness, what is going on!’ Twilight had trotted into more pandemonium than the other three classes combined. The students were all huddled in a corner while a rather large and quite upset looking bear appeared to be arguing with Fluttershy in front of them. Several pieces of furniture were flipped over or pushed away from where they should have been, the room itself looked a mess.

‘It’s out of control!’

‘Save us, Mrs Twilight!’ one of the students yelled. Fluttershy and the bear were still seemingly arguing.

‘Fluttershy! I want to know what’s going on, this instant!’ Twilight demanded, bringing a halt to the argument as Fluttershy and the bear looked bemused. The madness Twilight had trotted into seemed to fade away quite quickly, although the students still were huddling in the corner, looking quite worried and upset.

‘Oh, Twilight! We were just going through how to approach a larger creature and make friends! Unfortunately one of the students came on a little too strong, Mr Bear here got a teensy bit panicked. I was just telling him to calm down.’

Mr Bear, as Fluttershy had called him, made a few grunts and groans before shrugging his shoulders.

‘He says he’s sorry for the mess.’ Fluttershy conveyed. ‘Now class, even large creatures like this can get frightened. You just spooked him a bit.’ Fluttershy explained. The students seemed to come out from their corner, still looking somewhat nervous. Fluttershy was very good at what she did, but she had a gift she could fall back on and couldn’t teach others. Although she was trying her best to show her students the easiest way to get in touch with animals without being able to directly speak with them. Twilight wasn’t even sure what she could have conveyed the spell to do here to help with the situation, apart from somehow get it to tell Fluttershy to teach the students her gift - which was impossible. Occasionally things like this did happen, Fluttershy generally had it under control - but this would have been another disaster should she have trotted in with Celestia and Luna.

‘Okay, carry on Fluttershy - can you just ask Mr Bear not to destroy our equipment? It’s not good for the students and well, not exactly cheap.’ she said.

‘Can do Twilight, come on kids - everything's okay now. Take your seats and we’ll carry on. Now, let’s try this again and I’ll show you the proper way to do it.’

Twilight left. Generally she trotted into one, maybe two bad lessons. Four however, was a new record. She had to get back to her office, she needed to destress slightly from the encounter with the bear and calm down. She could feel her eye twitching as worry set in about tomorrow. She asked one of the other faculty members to send Starlight her way when she was done covering Applejack’s class. She had to talk to her.

‘It was that bad?’ Starlight asked, she had found Twilight slumped over her desk, passing a small stress ball back and forth between her hooves.

‘Rarity was teaching badly, Pinkie Pie was distracted again, Rainbow Dash wasn’t even teaching at all and Fluttershy had one of her altercations with the animals.’ Twilight said, following it up with a large ‘Urggghhh!’. She flopped down onto the desk and buried her head in some papers. ‘It’s hopeless. The visit will be terrible, Celestia and Luna will shut the school down. We’re doomed.’

Starlight let her friend wallow for a moment, before giggling a little and then attempting to speak some words of comfort. ‘Twilight, it really isn’t that bad - I think you’re overthinking it.’ she said. ‘You happened to trot into four bad lessons by accident. Do you really think it’s going to be the exact same tomorrow? Besides, you don’t know what happened after you left. Rarity might have gotten her act together, Pinkie became undistracted, Dash had a pang of guilt and got on with teaching and Fluttershy probably calmed everycreature down and carried on.’

There was a muffled ‘Perhaps.’ from beneath the papers as Twilight continued to wallow. Starlight could tell she wasn’t being that much of a help, so she switched up her tune.

‘Look you have the spell mastered right? So as long as it all goes okay tomorrow, we’ll be fine.’ at least Starlight could put her friends faith in her own magical abilities. Twilight looked up as she said this, looking a little uneasy.

‘Oh, the spell - yes! Of course, absolutely mastered. That will make tomorrow go swimmingly.’ she said with a smile. Starlight raised an eyebrow.

‘You do have it under control, right?’

‘Absolutely.’ it was a firm reply. Starlight decided not to push it. She watched Twilight tidy the small pile of papers she had plonked her head into and start reading them, she knew that meant she was going to get into administration work. She thought it best to leave her to it and go about her day. There was little more she could really do or help her with.

Tomorrow was the day of the visit, Twilight would be stressed out enough without adding to it from today’s fiasco. As Twilight concentrated on her work, Starlight wordlessly left the office.

She hoped everything would be okay on the day.

-

The first thing to do was tell all her friends what Twilight was planning. She didn’t feel right just casting it on them without them knowing. The wording had to be right though, Twilight absolutely had to nail that and not make any of them worried or suspicious. They had assembled in the small staff room. Applejack was still away on her farm duties, so Starlight was there just as backup, although she was already aware of what was going to happen.

‘So what’s this about Twi?’ Dash asked, who was kicking back in a chair.

‘Well two things.’ Twilight started to say. ‘Firstly today, we’re having a royal visit. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are coming to the school to see what we’re doing here. They should be arriving in the next thirty minutes.’ Twilight said, that was piece of information number one delivered, she watched some of her friends tense up. Even after all these years they knew how important it was to do well for the princesses. This nicely let Twilight lead into the next sentence. ‘I know, we all want to do well for them - so if you don’t mind I have an insurance policy, so to speak.’ Twilight levitated the tome, hidden behind her and put it down on the table. ‘I’ve learned a spell from this book which will ensure you’re all top of your game for the visit. Any objections?’ she asked.

‘Top of our game? How so?’ Rarity asked. ‘I know you happened to see my little fiasco yesterday, but we do quite well Twilight. Is this necessary?’

‘I just want to make sure everything is right.’ Twilight said with a smile. ‘It’ll make you expert teachers in the classroom is all. You’ll look like seasoned veterans to the princesses.’ she explained.

‘Oh, well I suppose then a little help wouldn’t hurt.’ Rarity said, seemingly satisfied. Nopony else in the room raised any objections or asked any questions. Twilight beamed a big smile.

‘Great! Well if you wouldn’t mind getting ready to greet our guests, I’ll make sure everything is in place for today.’

Everypony got up and left, except for Twilight and Starlight. They had a few preparations to make before Celestia and Luna arrived.

The students were informed of the visit as the school started to spring to life, Twilight and Starlight had put notices up around the place for them to read. Large bold font underneath told them to be on their best behaviour.

Twilight and her faculty were standing outside, waiting for the royal carriage to draw up. She noticed a few students peeking out of windows, clearly they were curious as well. Twilight had her ledger ready and being levitated, so when the two arrived, the illusion of spellcasting was already there to cover up the larger spell she’d be concentrating on shortly.

It was only a few minutes however, the carriage drew up, escorted by a number of the royal guard as always. Celestia and Luna excited the carriage. Formality was still observed with Twilight giving Celestia an official welcome, however her mentor still leaned in for a hug.

‘Princess Celestia and Luna, welcome to The School of Friendship.’ Twilight said with a smile. ‘How was your journey?’

‘Fine, thank you very much for asking Twilight. I’m excited to see the school, as is Luna.’ Celestia said, looking at her sister.

‘Yes, quite excited. We’ve heard lots of good things.’

‘Well I’m hoping I can show you all the good things you’ve heard about. Follow me.’ Twilight said, turning tail to lead the pair of them up the steps and into the building. Celestia and Luna greeted the rest of the faculty as they trotted, making small talk to each of the teachers about how they were getting on. Before long they were in the large entrance lobby, with each of the teachers giving the princesses a goodbye and saying they hoped they’d come and have a look at their lessons. ‘Shall we give them ten minutes and then go and see one? Twilight asked. She wasn’t sure who Celestia and Luna would pick on first. Would they even want to go together? The answer was however somewhat expected.

‘I think if me and Luna split up and look at different classes, talking to your friends they all seemed to have interesting things to do today. Obviously you can’t escort us both, just point Luna in the direction of where she needs to go - is that alright sister?’

‘Fine, Twilight where can I find Rainbow Dash?’

‘Oh, down the hall on the left, third door.’ Twilight said. She knew she’d have to cast the spell quite soon. She waited for Celestia to say where she wanted to go.

‘I think if we can go to Rarity, how does that sound, Twilight?’

‘Fine, let’s go.’ she said, the trio split up. Twilight began to concentrate herself on making sure all her staff had the spell cast on them, thankfully she found she didn’t have to verbally utter the command of what she wanted - thinking it she had discovered last night with a little more experiment seemed to be enough. She had to cast it on four ponies though at once, which was a new ask - she didn’t dare risk trying to do it on select ones. Princess Luna might wander to the next room on her own and she’d have no idea who she had gone to look at. It was best and safest to maintain the spell on her four friends all at the same time.

She began to cast as her and Celestia made her way towards Rarity’s room.

Twilight opened the door, fearing the worst.

However all the students were quite closely paying attention, following what looked like a very well drawn up diagram on her board - with clear instruction being conveyed.

‘Rarity has been teaching sewing.’ Twilight explained as her and Celestia stood looking.

‘A useful skill, that must be difficult with the variety of appendages the students have.’

‘We’ve had to account for that.’ Twilight replied. She felt a slight pang, casting the spell between this many ponies was quite taxing and she had only been at it for about five minutes. She increased the flow rate of magic, which seemed to make it subside. As they were observing Rarity, Twilight thought of a few more commands - just to ensure all the bases were covered to ensure while they stood there, nothing went awry.

‘H-Hah.’

‘Hmm, something wrong Twilight?’

‘Oh no - nothing Princess.’ Twilight replied, hastily scribbling down some notes on her pad to make herself look busy. The pang had been more pronounced this time. She looked down, her stomach had bloated out just a tad - not noticeably but it had certainly gotten slightly bigger. Panic set in to a degree, she hoped Celestia wouldn’t notice. ‘Can you excuse me for a moment?’ Twilight said, leaving the room and trotting a short distance down the corridor to be alone. Her stomach was quite rapidly getting bigger and blimping up. The thing was, she had to continue to maintain the spell for the duration of this visit, she just hadn’t quite accounted for just how much effort she’d have to put behind it to keep it going like this. She made some further adjustments which seemed to help reduce the swelling, she felt confident enough to go back to Celestia.

‘Everything okay?’ Celestia asked. She seemed quite concerned.

‘Oh yes, fine - sorry I just needed to attend to something.’ Twilight replied. She seemed to have gotten away with it. The pair continued to watch what was going on for a further ten minutes, with Twilight getting a handle on managing the spell. The thing was, she could see when something was about to happen or indeed did happen she had to utter another command to bring it in check to keep the observation perfect. Each time she did, it was putting more strain on keeping the spell under control. She noticed Rarity’s belly bob out a little, some of the students giggled.

‘U-Uh, perhaps we should move on to the next room?’ Twilight suggested. ‘Maybe we can see how Luna is doing with Rainbow?’

‘Yes, I think I’ve seen enough. Very interesting.’ Celestia said. ‘Lead the way.’

Twilight wiped her brow, she quickly trotted towards Rainbow’s room, hoping that all would be well.

Once more, all seemed to be quite okay, but there were a few things Twilight had to appendage onto the spell a few things.

‘Quite competent, although clearly needs a coffee.’ Luna said. Twilight immediately added that to the spell as well. She saw an immediate result.

The problem was, it was too much to keep track of and just keep adding on with none of the build up of side effects. She wasn’t asking for everything like she had with the initial test, but she was putting a whole heap of things extra on top of what she was already casting. Twilight felt another pang - she needed to get to somewhere with space, away from the Princesses. That way she could keep casting and they’d be none the wiser.

‘Fluttershy is to your right four doors down, Starlight can be found in the next corridor and Pinkie Pie is three doors to your left. Do you two mind excusing me, I just need…some space.’ Twilight said, the genuine truth. The two princesses looked rather unbothered.

‘Of course Twilight, come find us when you can.’ Celestia said. The two continued to watch Rainbow’s session, Twilight trotted her hooves as fast as they would carry her to the courtyard, a large open space was what she was going to need.

-

The courtyard was a large space, mostly secluded from the rest of the school besides a few windows and doorways that led into it and looked into it. With most of the school in lessons though, Twilight was relatively confident she’d be undisturbed here.

The plan was simple, she wasn’t going to be able to control the spell, already her belly since she had entered the space had inflated itself a fair way, enough for her to feel it pressing into the side of her legs as she looked down and observed it. She’d just have to…blimp up, hoping Celestia and Luna wouldn’t come looking for her, then once the lessons were over, stop casting and shrink back down to normal size. She had an ace up her sleeve, an additional spell that let her observe what was going on in each lesson from afar. She cast it to look into each of the rooms where her friends were teaching, not bothering to look at Starlight.

It seemed Celestia and Luna had once more split up, with them each going to a different room. Luna was with Fluttershy, while Celestia was with Rainbow Dash.

To Twilight’s horror, she could see that each of her friends were starting to show signs of succumbing to the side effects of the spell, each at a varying size. She had to do something, Twilight refined her casting.
Fwoooop!
Twilight quickly and rapidly began to inflate like a huge balloon. Not only was it a great tax on her to keep four ponies fed with knowledge, but to attempt to divert the side effects of the spell only meant one thing, four ponies worth of knowledge was all being dumped into her all at once. It was an unstoppable barrage of overloading magic, causing Twilight to expand at four times the speed she had in her office.

Already she was the size of a small room, and only getting bigger. Her belly had bulged out into a ball that was rapidly filling with air, her rear ballooned too - if only for the magic to go somewhere else in her body that was large and able to take the expansion that was happening to her. Twilight continued to maintain the spell however, the princesses were not done, now moving to different rooms to see different teachers. She felt her hooves lock her place, spread around her body as her over inflated body bloated out so much that her head and hooves began to sink into it - yet still she continued to cast.

Creeeeeeeaaakkkkkkkkk!

She felt herself rising, now roughly up to the second floor of the school, the alicorn had become a small blimp of a pony, still filling with air as the magic consumed her body. She fruitlessly wiggled her hooves, now deeply embedded in her ball body, her vision starting to be filled with purple as her neck resembled an over inflated tyre which was pressured against inflated cheeks, Twilight seeing her blimpy body getting bigger and bigger as each second passed.

The whole thing was a unique feeling, Twilight actually in a strange way felt rather good. There was something…enticing about all this, she did want to end the spell as quickly as she could, if she was found like this or anypony happened to look out of a window, the jig would be up. But Twilight felt herself actually increasing her magical flow, she wondered if the spell or her body had a limit, it didn’t seem to, she was continuously rapidly increasing in size, her body filling the courtyard in its entirety as she expanded more and more.

Creeeeakkk!
Fwiiiisshhhhhh!
The small pinprick of light at the end of a bloated, overinflated tunnel was getting smaller and smaller as Twilight fully concentrated herself on the spell. She had become a complete ball, any semblance of the shape of a pony quite gone. Her body had five tiny holes for her four legs and head, spread around at the right intervals. Beyond that, her tail looked somewhat out of place, as if pinned on the back of her. Her cutie mark had stretched itself on both sides, expanding outwards along with the rest of her body. There was a few movements, little telltale signs that the pony inside was moving herself around, her blimped frame wobbled slightly here and there.

The thing was, as good as Twilight was at controlling magic she was pushing this spell far beyond what it was really supposed to do. She simply couldn’t keep on taking this much magic into herself endlessly. There was a limit, Twilight was about reaching it.

When the magic started to struggle to offload its excess into her, it only had four places left to go. To the ponies the spell was being cast on. Twilight's blimping began to quite quickly slow down as she reached equilibrium, however her friend's expansion was just about to begin.

‘O-Oh no!’

Twilight once more started to panic as she saw her friends bodies begin to expand as well. All four of them started to inflate at once, as the magic she had previously been absorbing herself began to flow to them. She tried desperately to shut the spell off, at least if she could stop it, there might be a few hiccups but most of the visit was now coming to a close. There was only one problem.

She couldn’t shut it off.

The spell had gotten so much extra oomph added to it by Twilight adding more and more tweaks and power here and there that try as she might, the spell continued to flow magic into everypony. She watched as Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie all started to look confused at once, then began to blimp up as she had. All of them looked quite panicked, all except Pinkie who exclaimed to her class ‘Hey, I’m a balloon! Ohhhhh, fun!’

Luna and Celestia who were observing the lessons began to look around, trying to get an indication of what was going on. Celestia, an even more powerful magic user than Twilight, began to cast a finder spell to see if she could track down Twilight. She had quickly come to the conclusion that Twilight’s absence was likely tied into all this.

Meanwhile the rest of the teachers continued to inflate. The students had fled the lessons, knowing something wasn’t right. She watched via the observation spell as all four of them quickly began to fill their rooms, overtaken by the magic as they quickly inflated beyond mobility and became magic filled balloons themselves. Twilight could only helplessly hope the spell casting stopped, she continued trying to bring the spell to heel.

‘Oh goodness, that’s where she’s got to.’ she heard a voice say not through the observation spell. Even though her head was quite buried in her own overinflated spherical body, Twilight could still hear noises from outside. It seemed Celestia had put her spell to good use, finding the Twilight blimp completely filling the courtyard of the school.

There was a small giggle from Luna. ‘My, I haven’t seen that spell in quite some time. Remember when we used it on Cadance? She wasn’t pleased.’ Luna said.

‘Mmmm, it didn’t get quite this out of control though. Twilight!? I assume you can hear us. You need to empty your head to stop it casting, concentrate on something else - while you’re attempting to gain more knowledge, you’ll keep casting. You’re stuck in a feedback loop!’ she heard Celestia shout.

It was worth a try. She shut off the observation spell, last seeing her friends pressing up against walls and desperately tried to think of something else.

Let’s see…balloons, balls…no, try something else Twilight. Um, wait, this is thinking…just stop…close your eyes…empty thoughts…

Twilight did her best to empty her mind as much as she could. She was flooded with knowledge, the overflow of the spell having filled her completely. Suddenly, she felt herself be calm. There was a sereness to this form, completely surrounded by yourself. Just her, for what seemed to go on forever. She felt at peace, she felt…

Paf!

The spell shut off, in an instant, the overinflated ball that was Twilight Sparkle was replaced with regular Twilight Sparkle. Before hitting the ground, she remembered to flap her wings to cushion her fall. She flapped gently down to the ground, seeing Celestia and Luna coming towards her. Her face went bright red, a few moments ago they had been quite the blimp. Now that the spell had shut off and she was back to normal, she had some explaining to do.

‘Goodness Twilight, are you alright?’ Celestia asked. ‘If we hadn’t found you…you know that spell is extremely powerful. What were you doing using it like that?’

‘I uh…okay.’ Twilight took a deep breath. ‘I was worried, we’re not the perfect school you’ve heard about. There are some problems. The students are fine, that is the truth - I was trying to make sure the staff presented themselves well. It all got well, quite out of hoof.’ she said, nervously scratching the back of her head and waiting for the drubbing she was expecting from Celestia.

‘Twilight, at what point did you get the impression I was looking for perfection? You should know this by now - I like to see everything, warts and all.’ Celestia smiled. ‘Luna is the same, we were actually quite surprised things seemed to be so…normal.’

‘I just…wanted it to be right.’ Twilight said, she seemed a little defeated. Luna put a friendly hoof on her shoulder.

‘It was right Twilight, but we’re not expecting perfection. I think we’d like to see the real school now, if that’s okay with you?’ she asked. ‘Not the one where everything is perfect…until the staff start turning into blimps.’

‘Of course, nothing would make me happier.’ Twilight said. She began to trot away with Celestia and Luna, feeling a bit more confident. ‘Perhaps Fluttershy then?’ she suggested.

‘Let’s.’ Celestia said. ‘By the way, where did you find that spell? We had a copy, as Luna mentioned it got used once, but I swore after that the side effects were far too great a risk to keep using it - with the magic only being temporary as well we decided it was more trouble than it was worth.’

‘Oh, we have an advanced spell section in the library.’ Twilight said. ‘I remember quite a lot of the books came from a palace donation…’ she stopped herself, then looked at the pair. ‘Did you check what you passed to the school before you donated those books?’ Twilight asked, suddenly Princess Celestia looked quite sheepish.

‘A-Ah, we trusted our staff to do it. Clearly I’ll need to be having some words when we’re back at the palace in Canterlot.’ she said with a nervous smile. ‘Now then, Fluttershy you said?’ Celestia repeated, seemingly keen to move the conversation on and not dwell on it.

‘Yes, I think she’s doing a lesson with some of her animal friends.’ Twilight said. In her mind, she laughed quite heartily. She wondered what had happened when the spell had been tested with Cadance, probably a similar thing to her. It explained why Celestia was so quick to offer advice to be able to break the feedback casting loop.

In any case, Twilight had the spell memorised and the tome itself was secreted in the library, although for the sake of the students she’d remove it - she didn’t want them coming across it and her finding another blimp in her school.

The feeling of it all had however been quite…lovely. She decided that she’d keep the tome locked in her desk, perhaps some time in the not too distant future, she could find a spot where she’d be undisturbed. A bit of privacy, just her and the spell.

They trotted off to Fluttershy’s lesson. It seemed the visit would go well after all.