Twilight Sparkle squinted as she carefully lifted the beaker full of murky liquid. The next step was critical, she needed to add only one drop into the other placed on the bunsen burner or things would go south. This was precision work, she had to get this just right in order to send her findings to Princess Celestia. Her magical aura was steady as it held the beaker poised to tip.
“...aaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”
That was curious. One moment the librarian was standing in front of her alchemy lab, the next she was on her back staring at the ceiling. As the dust settled, she still wasn’t really able to process what she was seeing. Instead of exploding as she predicted, her solution had imploded, drawing the books and decorations off the shelves to the middle of the room. Sitting up and making sure nothing was broken, Twilight surveyed the damage. Her alchemy table balanced precariously on two legs, the other snapped off and was covered by books. The rest of the room looked barren as shelving and other bits of debris scattered everywhere. There was only one pony who could have made this happen.
“What the hay Rainbow Dash!”
The largest heap of books shook and shivered as the rainbow maned pegasus pushed her way out from underneath.
“Geez Twi, I’m fine too. Thanks for asking by the way.”
“You’re fine? You’re fine? Look at my library! More important, look at my experiment! Do you know how long it took me to get the control just right? My notes are probably obliterated.”
“I’m sorry okay? I’ll help you clean up or something.” Tossing her mane out of her eyes, finally Rainbow was able to get a better look at the damage. Ponyfeathers, this was way more than she had initially thought it would be. She really shouldn’t have tried to squeeze in that fifteenth barrel roll.
Twilight was fuming. She had galloped straight past angry and was furious. “No, no no no no no. This isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” she advanced on the other mare, wings flaring. “This isn’t even the tenth time you’ve done this! It ends, now.”
Pressed nose to nose with Twilight, there was no room to escape. Furious purple eyes bore into magenta.
“SPIKE!” The scrabbling of claws across the upstairs was her response and before long a scaly head peeked from around the corner.
“Yikes! What happened? I heard the blast but you said not to disturb y—”
“Take a letter Spike.” Parchment and quill seemed to come from nowhere as the small dragon prepared himself. Whatever she was about to say next was probably going to be bad.
Rainbow began to sweat while pinned to the bookcase. Twilight was usually good natured about the whole ‘crashing into the library’ thing, but this seemed to be taking it overboard.
“Chillax Twi, I said I’d clean it up or replace it or whatever.”
“No! You don’t get to do that. I told everypony I was researching something very important. Do you want to know what you just destroyed? Ever since I went to that other world I’ve been fascinated. They have machines that ponies like us could only dream about! They had even found a way to fit the entire contents of a library into a box. So I figured I’d start by finding a new way to reinforce the metals we have here to make building more efficient, and you just smashed up what could revolutionize construction.”
Oh horseapples.
“So no more. I’m done with it.” Turning around to face Spike, she began dictating.
“I, Her Majesty Princess Twilight Sparkle, do hereby decree that Rainbow Beatrice Dash is banned from flying within fifty feet of the Golden Oaks Library. If she is caught breaking this royal decree, she will be banned from flying within the limits of Ponyville Township. She will be escorted under guard to enforce the aforementioned ban. If she continues to disrespect this decree, the crown will have no choice but to ask its ally Discord to remove her wings for an amount of time to be determined. This decree is in effect this day, the year of our Princesses 3013, A.C.
“Take that to town hall and put in Mayor Mare’s hooves, Spike.” The baby dragon nodded and bolted out the door, moving as fast as his small body could carry him.
“C’mon Twi, I said I was sorry! Did you have to use my middle name, that was uncool to the max! That thing’s not real is it?” Concern painted her features. She had to fly right over the library to get to and from the weather office. This would add an extra fifteen minutes to her journey both ways to swing around.
“The last time Spike was away on royal business he trained as a notary public. He’s the same as having a personal court scribe. It’s funny, that was my first royal decree, too.” Turning her back to her friend, she began floating books into place.
“Is there any way I can make it up to you? I don’t want to have to fly around the library.”
“You don’t want to walk? Well too bad, you should have thought of that before crashing in here.”
Rainbow Dash sighed. She had screwed up royally, there was no way Twi was going to forgive her for this. If only she hadn’t tried to do another stupid barrel roll. No, she couldn’t think like that. This was one of her best friends and she had ruined something important to her. She had to show some loyalty and make it right.
“Twi?”
An exasperated sigh. “Yes Rainbow?”
“Look, I messed up big time. I get it, okay? I’m really sorry. Let me make it up to you.”
Spinning around Twilight took a deep breath and let it out just as Cadence showed her. “How?”
“I have some tickets to the next Wonderbolts show in Cloudsdale. I know it’s not really your thing, but if you want you can have ‘em. You don’t even have to take me.”
Twilight had to admit, her interest was piqued. “Are you sure? The Cloudsdale show is supposed to be the best of the year.” Rainbow let out a shocked gasp. “I do listen when you talk, you know.”
“I really want to make this right and this is something that I care about a lot. I want you to take ‘em. And, y’know, I’m sorry.”
Twilight cast her glance aside for a moment before making up her mind. “Fine, I’ll tell the mayor to cancel sending my decree through on two conditions.”
“Oh?” RD couldn’t help but let a note of hopefulness enter her voice.
“One is that we go to that show together and the other is that you absolutely promise to start practicing outside of town more often. Deal?”
With a grin that spread to the other mare, Rainbow leapt for joy, doing a small circle around the room. “Yes!”
“Good, now grab a broom and start sweeping.”
Author's Note
Just a little bit of friendshippy fluff, I'll be adding an optional clop chapter soon. This is the first of my submissions for the one-shotober contest.
