Secrets.

Some are better held than others.

Spike's crush on Rarity, for instance, is a secret insofar as everypony agrees not to talk about it. The fact that everypony already knows – thus rendering it not worth talking about in the slightest – might have made it moot, but it was designated a secret all the same.

Other secrets, like Applejack's love of oranges, or Rarity's love of banjo music, would be carried to their respective graves. This is in no small part because, if anypony were to find out, the secret holders quite possibly might die of shame, taking it to their graves quite a lot faster than they had intended.

The point is, Twilight Sparkle had a secret. Well, really, she had many secrets of all shapes and sizes, some light as white lies – merely embarrassing – and others dark as the eternal abyss and potentially world-changing. Those secrets, whilst not unimportant, were not the focus of this desperate study session in the depths of her castle basement, where shiny new lab instruments glinted menacingly in what little candle light they could catch.

The lab instruments were not the focus of today's study session, either.

Dark, leather-bound books – genuine leather, which made Twilight shudder at their touch – lay in stacks and piles around the faint glow of the pentacle she had drawn in magically-conductive liquid opal.

She had deprived Spike a breakfast to do this. She had risked Spike taking a bite out of one of the castle walls as a result. She severely hoped he didn't try to munch anything load-bearing, or something she couldn't hide behind a tapestry. She had done the math, and deemed the risk acceptable.

Anything to rid her of this ghastly secret.

It was a secret about as well-kept as Spike's, but still as embarrassing as Rarity's, or Applejack's, and in her desperation she had turned to not-quite-black-but-definitely-a-dark-shade-of-grey magic.

The truth was, Twilight Sparkle couldn't dance.

Oh, that wasn't to say she wasn't physically capable of it, no. She could certainly sway her hips, and move her forelegs, but not in any sense rhythmically. Or in coordination with each other. Or, err, in any manner that was visibly appealing. Also, she could never quite figure out what to do with her tongue.

Her friends, most emphatically Rarity, had insisted she need not do anything with her tongue at all, but that seemed like a waste of a potentially wiggle-able appendage. Wigglable? Hrrm.

Still...

She wished she could dance as well as Rainbow Dash, who could appear boneless when she got into the swing of things, or as effortlessly as Pinkie Pie, who still retained a modicum of dignity whenever she cut loose and lost herself to the music.

She wished she had Rarity's elegance, or Fluttershy's grace, or Applejack's decorum.

She wished she didn't have the coordination of a bookworm. Perhaps her egghead threw off her centre of gravity? Some more maths would be required.

And that was why, today, sitting in the shimmering kaleidoscope glint of guttering candelabra flames on liquid opal, Twilight smiled almost-but-not-quite wickedly. A wicked smile, a maniacal laugh, that was all that separated her from being a not-quite-black-but-definitely-a-dark-shade-of-grey magic practitioner and from being an outright black magic practitioner.

And that would be a bad thing indeed.

Probably.

Twilight's almost-but-not-quite wicked smile faded, just to be cautious.

She flicked another page.

Her search into dark-grey magic spells on dancing had come up frustratingly fruitless. It's not to say that she didn't find anything – a lot of these spells were fascinating, and wonderfully complex – it's just that most of these dark-grey spells were cast by dancing, with elaborate choreography, as opposed to spells on how to dance the aforementioned elaborate choreography.

She flicked another page.

At this rate, all the liquid opal – expensive – she had used up to safeguard herself should the book try any funny business was going to go to waste. Safety precautions were never a waste, even when nothing went wrong, but... eugh!

She flicked another page, her hoof pressing down to the book, when her eyes darted over its contents.

Twilight beamed brightly. She had found it! A spell that would make her dance well.

As she read down the page, her smile faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by a venomous scowl.

It was one of those spells that required her to be able to dance well to cast it.

"Gah! What kind of horribly cruel unicorn comes up with a spell that teaches you to dance, but makes you have to dance to cast it?"

Was it just her imagination, or did the page just laugh at her?

She nearly slammed the book shut before catching herself. As frustrated as she was, nothing could possibly justify violence against books. She closed it firmly instead.

It wouldn't close right. The pages weren't flush together in the centre, bulging apart slightly, a telltale symptom of a damaged spine.

Twilight's hooves clapped to her mouth. Had she done this? The book had laughed at her, but-

No, she must strive to be better than the book. She was the better pony. She would fix this.

A quick inspection of the spine showed it to be utterly undamaged, even though the pages didn't quite sit together. An eyebrow quirked, eyes darted across the cover. She opened the book to the middle page.

Sitting in the book was a paper sleeve. With a tender little shake of it, a vinyl disc a bit wider than her hoof slid out, with a paper cover on the top saying 'Side A' in dark red ink, which didn't look like dried blood, of course it didn't.

"A record? What's a record doing in a hundreds-of-years old book on darkish magic?" Twilight mused to herself.

The back of the paper case had an intriguing diagram. Unlike the old Equish that the rest of the book had been written in – which Twilight had spent days painstakingly translating – this was written in easy-to-understand symbols, which made Twilight suspicious.

High magic was written by the stuffiest of scholars and the most erudite of experts. It was a known fact that such types didn't particularly care how accessible their information was to curious eyes; in fact they seemed to take great glee and delight in confusing the unenlightened with obfuscated messages.

Mages in particular were one step worse than doctors, but still one step below lawyers.

She glared down the easy-to-understand symbols, almost as if they would break down and admit that they were a hoax, a lie, false hope in her hour of desperation.

But no, the symbols did not change. They remained simple... almost a comic strip.

The first scene showed a sad pony placing a record on an archaic gramophone.

The second showed the record playing and the pony dancing with a smile.

The third showed the happy pony dancing away as friends watched. Some of them were dancing too.

There was no other way to interpret this. This record would obviously make a pony dance well enough that they wouldn't be ashamed to dance in public. That's what the rest of the spells around this section of the book were about, at least.

Twilight's upper lip trembled. She caught the traitorous tremble, but her lower lip shot out, taught, dragging the rest of that side of her mouth with it into a crooked, hopeful half-smile. She tried to scowl at her smile, but that just lowered her guard on the rest of her mouth, and she felt it spread into a cheerful, hopeful grin.

Curses. Her emotions were getting the better of her.

Nothing for it but to pull the gramophone out and play the small record, and hope for the best. Her crystal lab was shielded against all sorts of magical and physical effects: Worst case scenario the emergency fire ax would be brought out to hack the record to itty bitty bits.

Science was occasionally vulgar in its execution.

A gramophone was dragged from a study corner. The Beethooven record was delicately placed in its correct folder and placed back in its correct spot on the correct shelf. The small record from the book took its place, the needle poised over the start, ready to slot into the groove.

Twilight hesitated. Did she really dare unleash the magic of an unknown spell on so meagre a whim? Dare she risk lowering her carefully laid-out safeguards just for it to work?

She thought about it and decided that, yes, yes she did.

"After all," she said to herself, succumbing to that terrible habit of saying things out loud, "what's the worst that could happen?"

The needle fell, and a layered wall of sound began to play. It was discordant, but not altogether unappealing. There was a saying that, in jazz, it wasn't the notes that were played so much as the notes that weren't played.

Apparently this record was where all those unplayed notes came to die.

In a way, all those wrong notes came together to produce a new melody that was so wrong it approached right from entirely the wrong direction. Like a double negative.

Twilight began to rise and fall in time with the simple melody, her knees buckling and unbuckling, and she couldn't help but smile at the absurdity of it.

"This must be a school of chaos magic," she murmured, bobbing her head up and down. "It's fascinating, really."

The record reached a crescendo, the beat quickening and the notes becoming more layered. Twilight couldn't help but grin, as opposed to the wan smile she had been sporting until this point, as her hooves began to kick off the floor and her tongue began to waggle out of her mouth. Her eyes closed in delight as the music flowed through her, leaving her feeling more excited, more energetic still.

And so Twilight danced.

The music kept going. So Twilight kept dancing, waggling her rump to and fro.

The music kept going. So Twilight wiggled her hooves all around.

The music stopped. So Twilight... kept dancing?

Twilight's eyes shot open. The record had stopped a few seconds ago, she had noticed, but she hadn't. She tried to stop her rump from waggling. It kept waggling in spite of her efforts. She tried to stop her hooves from wiggling. They had a mind of their own.

Twilight glared the record down furiously, at least whenever her head wasn't jerked around by her dancing. The book it had come from was definitely laughing at her now, she could hear it in the dry rustle of paper-on-paper as it rocked back and forth in its own subdued uproar. She navigated herself over to it and waited.

-Two, three, four, one!

Her front left leg jerked to the rhythm of her 'dance', sending the book flying.

"Oops!" Twilight apologized, "I couldn't help it, I can't stop dancing. Not my fault!"

The book pouted at her from the corner it had smacked into, but otherwise remained silent.

Her ire turned back to the record player.

"So, 'what's the worst that could happen', huh? I should know better than to say stuff like that out loud." Twilight muttered bitterly, struggling to keep her tongue in her mouth, it doing its level best to fight its way from out between her lips again, "Why don't we try to fix this, then?"

Twilight used her magic, somewhat distracted by all her asynchronized bobbing and weaving, to toggle the little settings dial of the player into the 'reverse' position. The record started playing backwards.

Twilight waited patiently for the record to play back in its entirety – a standard failsafe for such spells was that playing the record in reverse would undo the spell.

That was common sense.

So, of course, as the record reached its backwards conclusion, that was exactly what didn't happen. Twilight heaved a bitter sigh as she still tottered back and forth like her hooves were lumps of butter slipping in place on a greased skillet .

"Of course," she groaned, "because that would be far too convenient."

She stopped to think, a serious exercise that was only somewhat undermined by her furious flurry of flailing limbs. During one particularly violent head-toss, her eye caught the sleeve of paper that she had pulled the (literally) cursed record from.

Figure three was still the dancing pony showing her friends.

Twilight sighed again, almost becoming lightheaded from so many bitter and miserable heaves passing through her lungs in so short a duration. She'd have to cut back.

So, if she wanted any chance of fixing this, she was going to have to go out and show her friends?

"Is that it, spell? You're going to force me to dance until I show my friends, so I can't be self-conscious about it anymore? I get what that might be supposed to do, but I'm not scared of showing my friends my dancing, like Fluttershy with her singing. I'm just really... eugh... really bad at it. So can you cut me a break and just fix yourself already, before I'm forced to go out like this?"

The spellbook rested in the corner. As Twilight watched it, pleadingly, a red silk bookmark fell out the side of it, looking for all the world like the book was sticking a tongue out at her.

"Oh, fine."

Twilight managed to make it upstairs and boogied her way around, looking for Spike. Trying to call him would probably just result in her biting her tongue.

She eventually found him in his bedroom. One of the nice perks about having a palace to themselves was that Spike had his own room, now. She had to knock and everything!

He definitely drilled into her that she had to knock, too.

She had no problem knocking, now. She had trouble stopping at just once though, with the way her limbs were jerking.

"You can come in."

Twilight stared at the door in frustration. Magic! She could open it with her magic. Her horn lit up and an aura of magic surrounded the doorknob. It twisted, and-

There was the gnarled tearing of splintering wood and the protesting screams of metal rending.

The door was ripped from its hinges as Twilight's head jerked to the silent rhythm, pulling her horn with it as a result. Spike sat on his bed, where he was reading comics, now staring at Twilight in shock.

"Woah. I said you could come in, not rip my door off. You don't have to throw a fit."

Twilight opened her mouth to retort, but just ended up biting her tongue. Not figuratively, she actually bit her tongue. It hurt.

"Wait – Oh geeze, you are having a fit aren't you?" Spike's eyes widened as he pushed himself off his bed, "I told you I don't trust you alone with the alchemical stuff. You need, like, a spotter or something."

Twilight's tongue throbbed a bit as she danced in the doorway, pushing herself forward in between bouts of 'The Monkey'. Spike plodded up to her and thrust a sock into her mouth. At least it tasted clean.

"There. Now you won't choke on your tongue or bite it off until this wears off. Let's hope it's soon, 'cause you kinda look ridiculous."

Twilight's eyes narrowed as she spit the sock out. "I'm not having a fit, Spike."

Spike looked her up and down slowly. "You sure?"

Twilight growled as one of her legs came out from under her. "Positive. I found a spell in an old book – rather, on a music record in an old book – that was supposed to make me dance better. Now I can't stop dancing-"

"Wait, that's dancing?"

"-until my friends see me," Twilight continued, doing her best to ignore Spike's interruption, "I was sort of hoping just showing you would be enough, but it appears not."

"Oh." Spike announced lamely, picking up the sock Twilight had spat out and throwing it in a pile of dirty clothes on the other side of the room. It was a teenager's bedroom: Even if he didn't wear clothes, he had to have a dirty pile of them on the floor, So Sayeth The Universe. "So, now what?"

That was a very good question.

"I suppose round my friends up in the ballroom and unleash this on them. That should fix it, and then I never, ever have to dance again." Spike stared at her a long while, unmoving, making Twilight feel a bit itchy. "What?"

"Well, are you sure you want your friends seeing you like this? Even I don't want to see you like this, and I've heard you sing in the shower."

Twilight bristled at that, though any indignance she had couldn't really be conveyed whilst she was flopping about like this. "Hey! I'm a very good singer, thank you very much."

"Oh, yeah, most of the time," Spike agreed, "Just not in the shower."

"If I had any ego to start with today, I'm certainly not going to have one by the end of it, am I?" Twilight sighed, her legs jerking with a somewhat melancholy inflection, obvious to anypony who had studied arthropod mating dances.

Spike noted that with a thoughtful, almost philosophical, nod. "Who do you think's going to laugh at you harder? Rainbow or Pinkie Pie?" This was asked not with malice or carelessness, but with the precise thought that comes with genuine consideration.

Twilight bit back a kneejerk retort when her front left and back right knees jerked. Instead she resorted to actually thinking about it, herself. "They're both my friends, and I’m sure they'll try to be very understanding and, hopefully, sympathetic."

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and good, but let’s be realistic here. C’mon.”

"That being said, they're also Rainbow and Pinkie. So when they do laugh at me, Rainbow's probably going to be crueler about it whilst Pinkie, though far less malicious, will laugh harder. Because of course she will."

"Right. So. Me, getting them now?"

Twilight backed out of the doorway, giving Spike enough room away from her flailing to pass her safely. "On second thought, take your time, I'm really not in any particular hurry for them to see me like this."

Twilight had a ballroom now. That was, quite certainly, a thing that had happened.

It was a huge sight more than her old library could have held – There were twenty foot high pale purple crystal columns around the edges, a row of arched windows reaching from the floor with their gilt tips touching the ceiling along the left side wall.

A raised platform at the far end of the room served as a stage, where a throne, or thrones, could be put for the Princess, or Princesses, to watch over the dancers, and a thick, dark red curtain to unveil whatever was placed behind it for dramatics. Rarity herself had picked the most dramatic-looking curtain available.

The ceiling was polished and reflective, making the room feel larger than it was and granting the dancers below a sight of themselves. It gave its audience the curious pleasure of seeing those with big egos or poor self-confidence get distracted staring up at themselves and then stumble over dizzily.

Probably an unintentional, but not unwelcome, side effect of the... well, no architect designed this place, did they? It just sort of... happened.

Actually, how did a tree know how to design her new home? Was it etched into its memory? Was the tree sapient, or even sentient? Why had it not made such structures before, or since?

Such thoughts distracted Twilight as she stared at the closed red curtains in front of her, her gramophone sitting innocently beside her. The record in it wasn't the same one that cursed her, but with a little trial and error she had found that her dancing changed in tempo to match the rhythm of whatever music was playing. Further... experimentation had led her to believe that hectic, fast paced music most complimented her erratic dancing style, so that was what she had chosen.

It made her look far less silly than dancing in silence, at least.

A little purple head popped in between the heavy fabric in front of her, eyeing her nervously.

"Uh, everypony's here,” he said with some trepidation. “They've promised to be understanding, and not to laugh until you're done. Pinkie even Pinkie Swore, so there's that."

Twilight smiled, just a tad bitterly, but still overall grateful. "Alright Spike, thank you. Let's just get this over with, shall we?"

Spike eyed her up and down. "You've been dancing like that for hours now. Aren't you tired or something?"

"I am utterly exhausted, Spike. My everything hurts, especially in places I only academically knew could hurt but never really thought possible. I might even consider burning the book that cast this spell on me," Twilight informed him matter-of-factly, thinking fiery thoughts. The book would burn like her joints did, that was for certain.

"Wow, you're actually going to hurt a book?” His eyes widened. “That's pretty harsh for you."

"Bibliocide might seem harsh, Spike, but I believe, in this case, it’s much deserved. Now, take your position and get ready to open the curtains on my signal. I don't want to have to do this more than once. In my lifetime."

Spike crawled the rest of the way under the heavy red fabric and got up, snapping off a quick salute before he plodded over to the thick ropes, thicker than Spike's arms, and gripped them. Twilight's magic gripped the needle, and this time she took extra care not to let the jerks of her head affect the delicate movement. She'd lost a few good records like that, waiting for Spike.

A dull, throbbing bass wafted from the gramophone.

Twilight counted, two, three, four and nodded to Spike. He nodded back and his hands became a blur of motion.

The curtains pulled apart, revealing five pairs of eyes staring back at her in equal parts worry, concern, and amusement. They had gathered into a loose crowd, sitting on the ballroom floor in front of the stage. Only Rarity had bothered to find a cushion.

Her audience awaited.

Twilight took center stage and cut loose, balling up the embarrassment and shame and forcing it deep, deep down. After this, she'd never have to do it again.

From the gramophone blared the one song that might make her dancing look somewhat appropriate:

She's a mane-iac, mane-iac oh woah

and she's dancing like she's never danced before

Twilight didn't really have to do anything. Because of the spell, all she really had to do was let herself do what she was already doing. The music let her feel less silly, but she was still rather self conscious about it.

Rightfully so, based on her friends' reactions.

Rarity appeared to be smiling at her, but the smile was too angular and showed far too much teeth. There was a visible tension to it, that looked like it very much might snap.

Fluttershy hid behind her mane, looking embarrassed enough for both Twilight and herself, daring only peek a single eye out from behind it.

Applejack hid underneath her hat, her lips tugging at the edges into a smile that betrayed her. She quickly reined it back in, at least until Twilight got to the chorus again.

Rainbow Dash’s response didn't surprise her in the least. Her eyes appeared to be watering, and she was rolling on the ground, changing direction only when she bumped into Pinkie or Applejack beside her. Her hoof hammered the ballroom floor to punctuate her guffaws. She only seemed to laugh harder as the song went on. Rarity, to her credit, occasionally shot her a nasty glare, for what good it did.

Pinkie... Twilight couldn't decide if her reaction was the best or the worst. Pinkie had found a bag of popcorn and was watching Twilight with rapturous fixation, eyes wide and almost sparkling. There was no smile, no laughter – just a tight look of fascination.

The song came to a close. Twilight had opted to pull down a bucket of confetti, in lieu of water, as it was autumn and the water would have been rather cold. Pinkie Pie nodded seriously.

There was a pause. Twilight remained still, breathing heavily, air burning her raw throat after so many hours of intense dancing.

That was when she realized it... she was just standing still, breathing heavily. She wasn't dancing.

She wasn't dancing!

"Oh, it worked!” She exclaimed, almost in surprise, which in itself surprised her, “I mean, I had no reason to doubt it would work, but I'm so grateful that it did because can you imagine what it would be like to have to dance all the time?"

Her friends, bar Rainbow who was still busy gasping with laughter, sighed in relief.

Rarity's rictus grimace softened into something natural. "Oh, good, dear. It would simply be unthinkable if you were forced to dance like... that... for a second more."

Twilight's relieved smile flickered a bit. "Well, I mean, I'm more relieved about not having to dance. Not that I was so bad at it."

Rainbow's laughter redoubled again, tears flowing freely by this point, probably in no small part because of how painful three solid minutes, now, of wretched cackling laughter must be. "If you could even call that dancing. You looked like a spider caught in a bug zapper. While having a stroke."

"Rainbow!” Rarity chided. “That was needlessly cruel!"

Applejack shrugged, knocking her hat back and standing up, stretching a bit. "Sorry, Rares, but I gotta admit, Rainbow's anala-whatsit was pretty much on the money. Spider on a bug zapper... yeah, I can see that."

"Rainbow's analogy was not apt!" Twilight growled, her legs bobbing again.

"Hey, it's not my fault you messed up another spell. For an egghead, things seem to blow up in your face pretty spectacularly, like, every other week, you know that, right?"

"That's not fair! Ninety nine point three seven three percent of the time absolutely nothing goes wrong with the spell! This is just one of the point six two seven percent of the times that it does." Twilight paused, considering that. "Except, I think that the spell went completely right, and the pony who came up with the spell was just a jerk."

"Huh. So, this one time you get the spell right is the one time you really wish you had stuffed something up, yeah?"

Twilight stared at Dash with apoplexy, her body practically vibrating with irritation. Vibrating like a metronome, even, with her hips keeping time – she was apparently just that mad.

Pinkie thrust her popcorn at Rainbow, stalking towards the stage as if in a trance.

"Pinkie Pie?"

"That," she paused, looking her up and down with a serious and appraising stare, "that was amazing. You were all like swoosh and pew and woo!"

Twilight sighed happily, nodding her head, partly in relief, partly in gratitude. "Thank you, Pinkie."

"I wish I had the self-confidence to dance that badly on purpose. I don't think I could, even if I tried!"

Twilight's head didn't stop nodding, even as the gratitude faded.

"Thank you, Pinkie."

"I mean, I get what you would totally call exuberant, because that's that word you used that one time, but never like that. It's like you didn't even care what ponies could possibly think of you! Boy, I tell ya, any other pony would be so embarrassed to be caught dancing like that, or ashamed, mortified even. But not you! Where another pony would lock themselves up in a deep hole forever and ever, never to see another pony so long as they live if they got caught dancing like that, you just kept going! Wow! I wish I could be as brave as you!"

"Thank you, Pinkie." Twilight repeated through gritted teeth, biting her tongue to stop herself from saying something worse. At least, she thought that was why she bit her tongue.

"Ah, sugarcube, don't think Twilight had much choice in the matter. Reckon it was just 'cause of the curse."

"Oh. Then why have I seen her dance like that before?"

At that, Rainbow's laughter redoubled. Fluttershy stared at Rainbow in mute horror, and Rarity remarked on just how gauche her behaviour was. It seemed Applejack was having just as much trouble holding back her own guffaws.

Pinkie noted Twilight's glare and offered her a sheepish grin.

"I, uh... no offense?"

"I would very much like to be alone right now."

"Oh. Oh, that's okay. Uh, get well soon?"

Twilight pondered that as she stormed out of the room, head swaying and knees bobbing. She'd just cured herself with that little display. Wasn't that obvious?

Behind her, Applejack started laughing just as hard as Rainbow. She heard Rarity's titters join shortly after, and even a few very subdued snickers from Fluttershy.

"Don't be mean, girls," Pinkie Pie scolded behind her. Twilight paused in the stage doorway, hopefully looking back over her shoulder. "I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to have to dance like that for even a single minute? I don't know how I'd even be able to live with myself!"

The doorway slammed behind Twilight. She could still hear the laughter through it.

But as her hips waggled and her tongue wiggled back out of her mouth, Twilight took some solace in the fact that at least she was cured. Next Chapter: 2, Estimated time remaining: 50 Minutes