Celestia took a step to the side and fluffed her wings. "Better?"
The camerapony pulled his head from his machine and nodded silently.
"In three, then. Two, one." Celestia went silent, letting the sudden thrum of bass roll over the green pasture around her. "It's a beautiful day for the Scrapheap Finals," she said cheerfully. "But it could do with a snack." A muffin landed on her head, skewering itself on her horn. She looked up at it. "That works."
The camerapony swung around and zoomed in on a blue blob on the far side of the field. Luna stomped her hoof in frustration, holding a dozen muffins in her field. "We will need help to deliver all these muffins!" she boomed in the Royal Canterlot Voice.
The camera swung around to Celestia, now without a muffin, who swallowed hastily. "I think we can do that," she mused.
Celestia waited a second. "Cut, run credits here."
Scrapheap Equestria
"Welcome to my junkyard!" Celestia announced. She perched high on a pile of metal debris and mechanical refuse. "Four acres of Canterlot's finest filth. This yard services everypony from the High Circle of the College of Gifted Unicorns-"
Luna cut in, walking into view from around another pile. "-to the Manehatten School of Engineering. We have gathered every possible kind of detritus, magical and mechanical, for one simple purpose."
Celestia levitated a muffin into view. "To deliver this."
"But first, let's meet our teams."
"Our first team is an unlikely group of friends from all over Equestria, the Royal Vagabonds," Celestia introduced. The camera took in three mares wearing rich purple jumpsuits.
"I'm Twilight, and I'm the leader of the Royal Vagabonds," Twilight introduced herself. "These are my teammates Rainbow and Pinkie. Rainbow's the fastest mare I know and one of the strongest, and Pinkie has a knack for finding impossible things. I'll tell them what we need and they'll deliver, no matter what."
Celestia cut in again. "In the heats, the Royal Vagabonds took on the Flim Flams with their hydraulic apple picking octopus. Then in the semifinals, the Vagabonds came out ahead of the Gallant Guards with their cloud powered diving machine."
"This week, they're joined by expert Cheese Sandwich." The camera shifted to an identically dressed stallion. "Cheese has traveled Equestria, leaving parties in his wake, so if anyone knows how to deliver baked goods on target, it's Cheese."
Luna took over as the camera focused on another three mares. "Taking on the Vagabonds are three of their closest friends. It's a showdown of Harmony as we introduce the Diamond and the Roughs."
"I'm Rarity, leader of the Diamond and the Roughs," Rarity introduced herself haughtily. "Fluttershy is such a dear with attention to detail, and Applejack provides twice the muscle as any hunky stallion. I take their quality work and turn it into something dazzling."
"The Roughs blew through the heats on their hovercraft made from ridiculously exquisite fabric and a slab of plywood, leaving Trixie's Minions in the dust," Luna said. "In the semifinals they managed to survive the Cutie Mark Crusaders' rocket powered stagecoach. They've licked their wounds and are back for a challenge that, fortunately, doesn't require anything to explode."
"Given their attraction to danger, we've brought in an expert on the subject, A.K. Yearling. Miss Yearling is the author of the popular Daring Do series and has studied and built a variety of contraptions in research for her books."
Earlier
"You're sure you can dub out all the times they call me 'Daring?'" the yellow pegasus muttered.
"Of course, Miss Do," Celestia promised.
"Okay then. Sounds like fun. And it's not like I have anything better to do until Ahuizotl launches his next boneheaded scheme."
The diarchy of Equestria stood upon a throne of metal and ancient stone while the eight contestants gathered around them. "My little inventors," Celestia called grandly, "are you ready?"
"Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmyGOSH!" Rainbow squealed.
Twilight followed Rainbow's line of sight to land squarely on Daring Do. She facehoofed. "Here we go," she muttered.
"Take two," Luna muttered.
"My little inventors," Celestia called again.
"Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!"
"Take four."
"My little inventors-"
"Can we trade experts?"
"Take seven."
"My little invent-"
"Can I switch teams?"
"Rainbow!" Twilight screamed.
"Take twelve."
"My little...uhm, line?"
"Oh sweet merciful you," Luna mumbled with a facehoof.
"Take I've lost count plus one."
"My little inventors, the scrapheap is ready!" Celestia boomed. "The challenge before you, to deliver a tasty muffin as far as you can without lifting a hoof. Royal Vagabonds, are you ready?"
"Yeah!" bellowed the purple-clad team.
"Diamond and the Roughs, are you ready?" Luna asked.
"Yeah!" yelled the blue-clad team. Well, probably. It was hard to tell with Fluttershy sometimes. Lots of the time. All the time.
"Then, by scrapheap tradition, you have until I set the sun, which should be in," Celestia glanced up and nudged the ball of fire east a bit, "ten hours."
"The field of battle is open to thee and thine!" Luna bellowed. The teams ran off to their build areas.
"I said ten hours," Celestia said as the cameraponies spread out, "but it's actually thirteen. First, the teams get an hour of design time so the experts can bring our little ponies up to snuff."
"Additionally, both teams get an hour break for midday meal," Luna added. "The third hour we'll use to allow for interviewing the teams during the build process."
"And after you raise the moon, sister, we get to deal with the paperwork explaining why today had nearly twenty hours of daylight," Celestia said.
"We told you, sister, that adjusting the sunset for a game would be a decision you would regret."
"Hrm, well, no help for it now. As usual, each team has been given a set of enchanted communication gems, a cart and harness, and a full suite of magical and mechanical tools. And as always, we want all of it back at the end of the day. The teams cannot take any of it apart to use in their machines."
"Now let's have a look at what they're planning."
Author's Note
No, I'm not going to write a prequel or six. The previous episodes are all noodle incidents.
Plans and Other Bad Ideas
The teams are absolutely not allowed to just hoof their muffins to our judge. Their machines have to be stationary, or near enough. Carriages, chariots, and airships are strictly prohibited.
Cheese took quill in mouth and sketched over the canvas. "Now," he mumbled, "th' bef way to deplowy a muffon is to hoof it. Bu' we can' do thad." He put down the quill and sat back on his haunches. "So instead we're going with plan B. A party cannon!"
"YES!" Pinkie shouted, throwing her hooves into the air. She caught them on the way back down. "But wait, the Princesses confiscated my cannon already."
"Wait, somepony actually figured out how to do that?" Rainbow asked, her mouth hanging open.
Pinkie nodded sadly.
Rainbow blinked. "Did they say if they were giving it back?"
"Of course they'll give it back," Twilight gasped, putting a foreleg around Pinkie. "They just wanted to make sure you had a chance to build an all new party cannon."
Pinkie looked up at Twilight. "Really?" she asked tremulously.
Twilight nodded once, firmly. "Absolutely."
"Well then what are we waiting for?" Pinkie yelled. She jumped up and bit down hard on the quill.
Cheese watched Pinkie draw furiously. "There you go, a little bit more reinforcement there. We don't know what we'll actually be able to make it out of. Longer barrel for range. A bit more confetti. You're really good at this."
"How are we going to make sure the muffin lands safely?" Twilight asked. She nudged her way between the two earth ponies and got a look at their final design.
It was complete gibberish. The Cake twins had made more coherent drawings. A stick-pony labeled "Pinkie" was standing next to a cucumber that spouted icicles that were on fire with a blob labeled "muffin" flying off in the distance.
Twilight took the quill in her field and wiped the enchanted canvas clean of the mess. "What say I try my hoof at laying out blueprints?" she asked.
Daring drew a primary feather over the Roughs' canvas, quickly creating a series of crude drawings. "We only have ten hours, so we'll stick with the basics. That means a catapult."
"Sounds good," Applejack drawled. "Just rig up a giant slingshot or something?"
"Not for a muffin," Daring mused. "Anything that shoots like that puts a lot of pressure really fast on the projectile. A muffin won't hold up under that. We want something with an arm that can throw the muffin. There are a bunch of different types, but we have time to do a proper job of it. Trebuchet or onager."
"What's the difference?" Rarity asked.
"A trebuchet is will send the muffin practically into orbit. Have you ever seen foals try and turn a seesaw into a catapult?"
"I was the heavy weight in one of those," Applejack said. "Don't remember much about it though. That was a bad week."
"Well, a trebuchet is a lot like that, only you lift up the seesaw so it has more room to swing. And instead of dropping something on the arm, you have a weight built into it and use ropes to hold the arm in place until you want to let go."
"So nothing like a seesaw," Rarity observed dryly.
"Pretty much. It's reliable and powerful, but if we need to fire more than once, it's slow."
"What about the other one?" Applejack asked. "The onathingy."
"Onager. This design uses spring action." Daring looked back at her own back, drawing attention to her right wing. A moment later she snapped the wing up and forward to her crest. "That's the motion of an onager, basically. It's a simpler build and a lot faster to fire, but we'll have a lot harder time adjusting the range."
Rarity hummed and sat on her haunches, looking over the sketches Daring had made. "What would our sisters do?" she asked Applejack.
"Tree-bucket's bigger," Applejack said.
"I agree," Rarity said. "And since we do not wish to explode, we shall go for the onager."
Daring quirked an eyebrow. "Interesting logic. Your sisters're some kind of scamps?"
"They're Cutie Mark Crusaders, darling," Rarity said sadly.
Daring Do's jaw dropped. "You mean those stories are true?" she yelled.
Twilight backed away from her design. All this practical engineering and scrounging for whatever material could possibly work was really teaching her to be less precise and more flexible with her plans. The freedom it allowed her was a rush. Almost...naughty. She only sketched the orthagonal view and the side view was inaccurate after four decimal places. Such a naughty mare!
Rainbow scratched her head. "Where are we going to get a barrel capable of containing a nuclear explosion?"
"Two clouds, a plank of wood, four large garbage bags, and ten rolls of ducttape will get the job done," Twilight said confidently.
"I think you underestimated the explosive power of cake batter in sector 4-6B," Pinkie added.
Twilight blinked. "Uh, there is no 4-6B."
"Well that would be why!" Cheese inserted. "Look your alicornness, this design might hold up to whatever wimpy blasts you were planning on using, but we're planning to use some serious munitions here. We'll need at least a pound of gouda for reinforcement."
Twilight blinked again. It didn't help. "You want to build the cannon with cheese."
"Exactly."
"Cheese from a junkyard. In order to use uncooked bakery products as a propellant. Also from a junkyard."
"Yuh-huh," Pinkie agreed.
Twilight hung her head. "Why do I even bother?"
Daring pointed her hoof at the finished sketch. "We need something heavy for the base, that's going to be critical. We need a rope to build up tension with, that's going to be critical."
"We need to make it fabulous," Rarity added.
"That's not critical," Daring grumped. "Just go scrounge, okay?"
"Rainbow, we need a base, a barrel, and a sabot," Twilight said. "Pinkie, you just do whatever it is you do. Get to it, girls!"
