What a Mare May Call the Greatest Things in Life, or; What I Found In A Bag of Garbage
It was a hot summer day in Ponyville. Clear Skies pushed diligently at a lone rain cloud, trying to move it over the town to generate a little shade, only for it to crumble into wisps of smoke the second the wind picked up. Somewhere in the upper troposphere, Rainbow Dash's aerial maneuvers were cut short when her wings caught on fire, and her pained screams formed a strange kind of musical counterpoint to the faint sizzling sound that filled the town. The little town was strewn with ponies lying limp, with only their pained moaning distinguishing them from the dead.
It was a good day for Silver Spanner. She had already been flagged down by six ponies today, all of them wanting help with their radios. Blistering heat like this was just the thing to make them tune in to local stations, but most ponies in this town barely ever used their radios. The result was plenty of appliances that needed a tune-up, a touch-up, and sometimes a complete remodeling. She had even gotten called to Rich Manor, given a chance to work on a top-of-the-line crystal radio made entirely from parts shipped from the Frozen North. Oh, the look on that little filly's face...
Yes, today was a good day. If Spanner were the sort of mare who traded in bits, her saddlebags would have been forming wide chasms in the road behind her. As it was, though, her gait was joyfully unburdened, and she could rest easy knowing that there was a lot of free stuff in her future. Now, if only Rubbish Bin would hurry up and get too old to do his own repairs...
Suddenly, Spanner's fantasies of lightning guns were cut short as she caught sight of something truly glorious out of the corner of her eye. There, glistening black beneath the relentless heat of the sun, full of twisted angles and crumpled corners, was a bag of garbage. It was just sitting there on the curb, tightly bound shut and without the slightest tear in its pristine plastic. Spanner's eyes flitted between the bag and the house it was most likely to have come from, and a manic grin spread around her muzzle. It was almost too perfect.
She looked to the left. She looked to the right. The street was clear of onlookers, even if you accounted for the basically brain-dead pegasi baking on rooftops. A quick magic pulse revealed a total absence of enchanted tripwires or security spells, and the road seemed resolute in not giving way beneath her. But Silver Spanner had not gotten this far in life by being foolhardy, so she dropped down as low as she could, until her belly was scraping against the gravel. Only then did she begin her advance towards the garbage bag.
Had anypony somehow been watching this scene unfold without alerting the unicorn and her razor-sharp senses, they might have been put in mind of a jungle cat stalking its prey through the tall grass. There was certainly a cat-like poise and grace to Spanner, though it was ruined slightly by how she was overplaying every rise and fall of her hooves. Her face was such an oil painting of dramatic seriousness that it almost seemed to be a parody of seriousness.
When she was about two feet away from her quarry, though, all pretense of stealth was discarded. The grumpy frown was reversed into a smile of purest joy, and her legs coiled beneath her like four high-powered springs. She inched forward by another half-inch, and then sprang into the air. There was no escape now. The bag was prey, she was the predator, and it was going to be a slaughter.
The black plastic tore before her descent had even reached its arc, courtesy of her platinum-tinted magic. She grabbed hold of the contents and brought them racing up to meet her halfway. Tattered fabric and twisted wire mesh tangled in her mane as she fell, and her hooves slammed down on a fool's cap, its jangling bells easily flattened beneath her impressive -but very modest- weight. Spanner's smile widened, and she admired the spoils of her kill.
The bounty of cans, from tin to aluminum, was already enough to make the pounce worth it, but that was only the beginning. The remains of a Carbridle typewriter, its keys bashed in from some poor mare's frustration at pounding out a novel, provoked the same reaction from Spanner as a Countess Coloratura private performance would get from a schoolfilly. As Spanner rustled through a tangle of shredded cloth, dozens of tacky jewel earrings spilled out, and a cursory spell revealed them to be excellent conductors of electricity and magic.
"Now, that gives me an idea," Spanner whispered menacingly to herself. She untangled a few bits and pieces of the wire mesh, winding them around this gemstone and that one, then entwining her own hoof with the design. A quick spell of teslafication (which was totally a real word, no matter what that know-it-all Twilight Sparkle said), and the apparatus crackled with electricity. The dull jewels crackled an ethereal blue, and when Spanner pawed tentatively at the fabric, it burst into flame.
"Cool." Spanner looked at the rest of her bounty, torn between torching it with her new zappy-claw or seeing if she could make any further improvements on the design. Her gaze settled on the typewriter, and she let her magic idly fiddle with the screws until they popped out. As the typewriter drifted apart in her grasp, she had an idea, and began to warp the panels into a vaguely cylindrical shape. She wove even more wires into the inside of the cylinder, adding a few crystals to make sure it would conduct electricity. For the final touch, she twisted the claw so that it meshed perfectly with the cylinder, creating a hoof-mounted zappy-cannon. Silver Spanner's grin was so wide it threatened to unhinge the top part of her head, and she cocked the cannon's barrel with a deft flick of her magic, ready to...
"Ahem."
Spanner looked up from her creation, and met the disapproving glare of Ponyville's own up-and-coming fashionista, Rarity. The look on her face was one of reserved disgust, and the subconscious urge to feel ashamed of being fetlock-deep in garbage invaded Spanner's mind.
"Silver, I really shouldn't have to keep telling grown mares to stay out of my garbage, but this is the tenth time this month. There are other dumpsters in this town, darling."
Spanner nodded along, having already spaced out as a defensive measure. Her eyes drifted downwards, and settled on a sewing machine that was floating in Rarity's magic. "What have you got there?"
"What, this old thing?" Rarity looked down at the machine, and the disgust faded from her eyes. "I'm afraid I worked this poor dear to exhaustion on a special order for Sapphire Shores, so now it's time to put her out to pasture. Or at least it would be," her words took on the poisoned barbs of a cobra, "if somepony hadn't turned my garbage bag into an utter mess."
Spanner looked at the general disorder around her, and gave a blushing shrug. Then she noticed a few unused jewels sitting in the corner of her eye, and an idea sparked in her mind. "Maybe I can help you out. With the sewing machine, I mean."
Rarity raised an eyebrow, but didn't resist when Spanner grabbed the machine from her grip and set to work on it. The mechanic didn't waste a second, peeling back the outer layers of the machine to expose the inner workings. Most of the mechanisms were shot, but that was hardly cause for concern. Spanner simply turned to the typewriter, its panels stripped and its gears exposed, and set about building a sewing machine out of a typewriter. She had to stick on three more needle-arms or whatever they were called just so that all of the parts would work without going to waste, but within mere minutes it was done.
"Just one final touch," Spanner declared to her captive audience. She picked up one of the jewels and fitted it into the center of a complex circle of unmoving gears. One quick jolt of electricity, and the teslafied crystal brought the reborn sewing machine roaring into its new life. "Hey, presto. Am I good, or am I good?" She put on her cockiest grin for that last line, and shot Rarity a look that would have sunk a thousand ships.
The fashionista brushed it off, instead focusing on the machine. "Ingenious," she whispered, taking it back and turning it over in her aura. "It hardly even looks like the old thing."
"Works six times as fast, too. You might need a second horn just to keep up with this puppy." Spanner gave a little laugh that was met with silence. "So, uh, we good?"
Rarity nodded in a half-attentive manner, still enraptured by Spanner's masterful work. "Until next time."
Spanner nodded, and ran off with her cannon and most of the wire mesh. She had maybe five minutes until Rarity realized that her garbage was still strewn all over the road.
Author's Note
That was fun. I had fun. Did you have fun?
