Near Miss sat in her landlord's office, trying to explain why her apartment had suddenly gained an open-air skylight. "Ever since my old space heater died, I've been working on ways to heat up my apartment on the cheap. A week ago I hit upon the idea of using adiabatic heating. I used magic to weld together a steel cube with a valve attached for letting air in and out. I then used magic to force air through the valve until the cube was nice and warm," said Near Miss, smiling slightly at her cleverness.

Sufficient Repairs, her landlord, had been listening and watching his tenant carefully. "That all sounds well and good, but how did we go from gentle heating to missing chunks of roof?" asked the earth pony stallion.

Near Miss glanced about the room before steadying herself. "At first it worked great, the main downside was that I occasionally had to add more air to keep it warm as it heated the room. Also, whenever I released the air, the heater got really cold and actually made the room colder. As such I only let the pressure down right before leaving for work, so that I didn't have to deal with a cold room.

"The problem started yesterday morning when I woke up late, and forgot to vent it before I left. When I got back home, I added air to warm up the room, and then added air again before I went to sleep. I woke up shivering a few hours ago so I added even more air to it. Just as it was getting nice and toasty, the pressure must have been too much and it exploded, with most of it leaving through the roof." As she spoke Near Miss made less and less eye contact with Sufficient Repairs until by the end she was just staring at the base of his desk lamp.

The landlord leaned back in his chair before looking for something in his drawer. "To start with you are very lucky to escape that kind of explosion with only a few scratches, and I'm very happy that you are alright, but this is the third major accident you have had since you moved in. I'm sorry, but I can't have you around for a fourth, so I won't be renewing your lease."

He seemed to have found what he was looking for, a large bag of bits. "As you know," he continued, "I insisted that you pay for unicorn renter's insurance, and it's a good thing I did, because that insurance explicitly includes unicorn powered appliance failure, which sounds like a pretty good explanation of what happened this morning, so here is your safety deposit back, I need you out by the end of the week." He pushed the bag of one thousand bits across the desk to Near Miss. "I wish it didn't have to end this way Miss Near Miss," he concluded.

Near Miss numbly nodded, took the bag of bits, got up, and left without saying another word.

Author's Note

I'm new at this, so any comments will be greatly appreciated.