Story May Or May Not Be Based On My Own Activities
The Crusaders generally agreed that there was no fun to be had in Rarity's stockroom or rather, there was no fun left -- and the worst part was having the entire town know it.
How many times had they been sent to collectively sulk among stacked bolts of cloth and bins of gems? Enough to have thoroughly explored whatever possibilities for entertainment might have existed among the supplies, which somehow still wasn't quite sufficient to find them in the vicinity when the time came for cleanup. The fillies had a tendency to seek out inspiration from their environment, and since any markworthy definition for a truly complete search obviously required taking most of said environment apart...
So they had attempted to battle each other with the hollow tubes found at the center of those bolts. (The fact that you had to do a lot of unwinding in order to reach anything useful was promptly blamed on the adults, and the lack of resulting flank-based light surges just meant it hadn't been a very good idea anyway.) Gems had been sorted, searched, short-sheeted (because if you were already pranking somepony's bed, a few rough gems under the sheets wouldn't hurt -- or rather, it would be really, really annoying), and occasionally swallowed. And when it came to the enchanted devices which Sweetie's older sister used to aid in sewing? The Crusaders stitched things together all the time!
Like balloons. They'd already tried balloons, and the crash had been appropriately spectacular.
Oh, and any proper attempt to become vigilantes just had to come with costumes. Scootaloo considered the trio to have been doing spectacularly, right up until the moment they'd tried to arrest Princess Luna. Because while the history books suggested the crimes had been real enough, punishing them apparently ran up against something called a Statute Of Limitations. The fillies felt that sitting in the police chief's office for three hours while various ponies tried to explain the concept meant their own had to have run out.
And then there was that special gold cloth, which was just so hard to make. It had any number of Crusading uses, and the small bolt which openly rested within its own special cubbyhole would be pressed into none of them. The fillies knew exactly how hard it was to make now, because that one small claims court judgment had assigned them to a moon of making it. The results had been about twenty extra attempts away from becoming passable, and Apple Bloom was still trying to comb the last stray strands out of her fur.
It was the first day of the weekend, a beautiful warm spring day with only a little bit of school time left, summer so close as to taste the endless Crusading opportunities on the wind -- and they didn't have any actual plans. The trio had been able to come up with exactly one idea, and what had already been looking like their Best Concept Ever quickly galloped into a stumbling block. Namely, the plan required a mask. Nothing cheap or rubbery: an exact replica of an adult's face. It was the only way to launch Stage One, they had no idea how to go about acquiring such a thing, and it had put the plan on hold for a while.
They didn't have a real Plan. The universe, forever looking for opportunities to punish the innocent, had inflicted them with Homework. And when that happened...
You couldn't just stick the fillies in an enclosed space and say 'Don't do anything'. The adults felt saying that was casting out the widest possible net to entrap any potential future chaos, and the Crusaders reasonably pointed out that any really big net was going to have a lot of holes in it. Additionally, anypony directly forbidding Scootaloo from doing anything quickly noticed the rather visible way in which she made a point of not breathing, presumably as a first step.
If you were trying to keep the Crusaders on track, you had to forbid activities by name. One at a time and, for anything truly complex, while including individual part numbers. It also helped to trap them with things they'd already failed at before, because they never saw any need to repeat a fiasco. And since they'd been stuck in the stockroom under orders to Do Their Homework so many times...
When it came to things they hadn't failed with yet, the stockroom was down to a number of the thread spools and the weak, clear-drying craft glue. (Which peeled a lot, often in great long stretchy strips.) And that was why the town collectively considered shutting the Crusaders away in the Boutique's stockroom to be a somewhat effective punishment. Rarity generally agreed, followed by asking just why she was being punished.
The first day of the weekend. No Crusading plans worthy of execution, but still a weekend. (They had a sleepover scheduled at the clubhouse that night, and were desperately hoping to come up with an idea before morning.) And they weren't allowed to go outside until some degree of homework was complete.
Homework currently came with a lot of pictures. Every subject was rather well-centered in the shot, and there had been some trouble taken to reproduce color photography.
"This is gross," Scootaloo announced.
The fillies didn't really appreciate it.
"Ah know it's gross," Apple Bloom grumped. "Supposed t' be part of jus' bein' a pony, if'fin y'think this is gross. Ah see somethin' scuttlin' across the floor, Ah move back. That's what instinct says t' do. Then Ah line up for a stomp."
All three nodded. That was proper.
"It's what you're supposed to do," Scootaloo stated.
"Unless you're Snails," Sweetie observed, and turned a page. "He likes it." (All three gagged.) "So..." Her brow briefly furrowed around the horn. "...does that mean Snails isn't a pony?"
"He's something worse," Scootaloo immediately decided.
"What?"
With open disgust, "A boy. And what about all the stuff which happens when you trot through one?"
This nod came with a tripled shudder.
"Some of 'em put the really big ones up in trees," the earth pony sighed.
"Some," the pegasus firmly stated, "put them between trees. The trunks which are far enough apart to ride a scooter between. And only when you don't expect them to be there. I get up some speed, I think I've got a clear path, there isn't enough dew to see the thing, and then it's all over my face and in my fur and --"
Sweetie nosed her book to a new page.
"This one's kind of pretty."
The other two stared at her.
"Look at the colors!" One white forehoof nudged the book sideways. "Aren't they nice? It's called a peacock --"
"-- it's still got eight legs," Scootaloo darkly announced. "And it scuttles around. When it isn't putting webs between perfectly good trees. And by the way, when I said I get the webs all over my face and fur, that's kind of, you know, the best case."
They had homework. Their entire class had homework, the subject was entomology, and the focus was spiders.
The fillies didn't believe in learning by aggregate. Because Snails, as part of their formed class, was a marked entomologist (in training). As with all things disgusting and crawly, he would readily master the subject and if you considered learning by aggregate to be in play, then Miss Cheerilee should really consider the Crusaders to have learned it too. They didn't believe in this because they had absolutely no idea what 'aggregate' meant.
They had homework. They had been told to do something involving a spiderweb, and they really hadn't been paying much attention at the time: the issues involved in getting a fully lifelike mask had been consuming them since recess. Some mutual discussion of daydream-muddled memories had eventually assembled a theory: they had to study (because life was cruel) and then they had to go take pictures of webs. Because apparently there were a lot of types. At least four. That was one of the things they were supposed to remember for the test.
Also, the average acre of temperate zone land hosted a population of one million spiders. That was something they were trying very hard to forget.
(The 'study' part was correct. However, when it came to the webs, they were actually supposed to be drawing something -- but Cheerilee, who had moved across the years with her class in order to keep teaching the same group, had learned to keep her expectations low.)
Sweetie had managed to talk her mother into the loan of a camera. And Rarity did understand that the fillies had to go out into the wild eventually. But once they were released...
"This one jumps," Sweetie announced. "And it's a really bright green. Which kind of shimmers. Some of them really are sort of pretty if you just --
"-- I can jump," Scootaloo groused, followed by wriggling discontent belly and barrel against the floor. "Big deal."
"Twenty-five times your own height?"
The brief moment of silence represented the birth and death of Stunts Which Were Never Meant To Be.
"...stupid spiders," declared the jealousy.
They had to find webs. But spiderwebs were always in the place you didn't expect them or worse, were just about to trot through. You hardly ever found them on purpose and when there were a million spiders per acre, not finding webs everywhere meant that the mean arachnids just wanted the fillies to lose the whole weekend.
Warm sunlight streamed through the closed window. All three immediately decided Sun was teasing them.
"Let's jus' wrap up the chapter," Apple Bloom sighed. "An' then we can go look for the gross."
"Hours," Scootaloo reminded her. "And that's not even the worst case."
"What's worse?" Sweetie naturally asked.
"We're gonna be looking for gross. What if we find it?"
They all waited until the shivering stopped.
"And once we trot through it," Scootaloo unnecessarily added, "there won't be anything left to take pictures of. We're supposed to be showing we learned about webs! What part of that means going through a scavenger hunt? I learned about webs! There's tunnel and blorb and strangled and street --"
The other two politely held off on the correction. It was usually best to give Scootaloo the real data just before the actual quiz, because that meant it might be remembered all the way up until the initial raising of the test quill.
"-- and we know all that! But trying to find them..."
She checked on her audience. Sweetie seemed sympathetic. Apple Bloom, however, was looking at the stockroom shelves.
"There aren't any in here," Scootaloo grumped. Any spider setting up shop in the Boutique had better be prepared to trade: silk for survival.
"Jus' thinkin'..." said the rather distant voice of impending Crusader logic.
"What?"
"Why's it gotta be a real web?"
The other two stared at her.
The earth pony's internal boiler of Why Not, having just gotten up its first head of steam, started pushing towards the usual track. "We've just gotta show we can identify the types, right? If'fin we make the types, then we've identified plenty!"
"It has to be in the wild," Sweetie quickly pointed out.
"Spiders are everywhere," Apple Bloom firmly said. "Million per acre." (The shudder was still mandatory.) "Whole world's wild."
"It would save so much time," Scootaloo began to dream. "And we've got to be better at it than spiders! Because they're stupid!"
Sweetie was still somewhat dubious. "Um," she timidly tried, "spiders... when they make webs..." A rising hot blush started to underlight white fur. "It comes out of... out -- of... um..." Which was followed by a tide of green. "I... don't think there's a mark for that. I don't want a mark for that..."
But the earth pony's orange gaze was slowly centering on a target. Because they were still allowed to look at everything in the stockroom (despite Rarity's best efforts), but...
"Check me on this," Apple Bloom distantly said. "She ain't never said we can't touch the spools, right?"
"The bolts," Sweetie immediately began to recite. "The sewing devices. The gold cloth because it's so hard to --"
"-- but not the spools..."
As with just about every Crusader project, there were a few start-up issues to deal with.
"Pass me some lip guards?" Scootaloo said. "I've gotta feed this stuff through my mouth."
One spider could make a web all by themselves, and that was clearly unfair. For ponies, it was going to be a multi-part operation. Somepony had to get the end of the thread off the spool, and that was delicate mouth work indeed. Tying knots in something so fine with teeth and tongue alone didn't exactly improve matters. But in order to keep the spool from merrily clattering along behind them, somepony else had to carry it.
"They're adult sizes," Sweetie pointed out.
"They're soft. They'll mold to fit," Scootaloo grumbled. "Not like the stupid ankle and neck mounts for the spools..."
Which currently meant holding one between her teeth. Very loosely, so that any movement would make it spin. She was going to be tasting wood for a week.
"Ah've been thinkin'," Apple Bloom gloomily announced from her place near the garnet bin: she was scouting for initial attachment points. "One knot takes a bit of time t' do, especially when they're this small. A web's gonna be a lot of knots. Maybe this'll take too long after all."
They all considered that.
"What about the craft glue?" Scootaloo asked. "I know Rarity's never told us not to touch the craft glue."
Sweetie rather unexpectedly snorted. "It's too weak," the smallest of the fillies said. "It's mostly good for holding things in place for a few seconds, so she can see how they look there before moving them somewhere else. And it's easy to move them, because it peels all the time. And then you get this big piece of wobbly dried glue with a gem dent in it. We can't glue the threads to each other. One bump and everything will come apart."
"How 'bout somethin' stickier?" the earth pony began to propose. "It usually don't take us too long t' --"
The dead stop allowed the same thought to go through three minds at the speed of horror.
No tree sap.
They didn't want to have anything to do with tree sap. The adults had noticed their collective natural proclivities, politely told them all about syrup production, and so ensured that one potential mark would never be sought. Sweetie had spent multiple nights in wishing for her personal spell to be something which repelled the substance: the other two had simply decided a sap allergy would be a step up.
"...I think," Sweetie eventually forced out, "we could just weave it. Wind the thread in and out of itself. Over and under, with loops. That'll make it stay in place."
Her friends deferred to the half-knowledge gained through Boutique osmosis.
"So we make the webs in here," Scootaloo concluded. "Let's try the tunnel one first. That can't take much thread."
"Or a lot of room," Apple Bloom confidently decided.
"It'll be easy!" Sweetie happily (and unknowingly) lied to herself.
They began.
There were a few more issues.
A good web had to be well-anchored. Spiders, who had the benefit of natural adhesive, could use any shadowed corner for the crucial points. The fillies were trying to work with a solid base and a minimum of knots. This meant, just for example, starting the thread web by securing the far end on the window latch. But then they had to find another attachment point. Something where they didn't have to tie anything again and could just loop the thread before sending it somewhere else. And you could make a loop around a fabric bolt, or the tooth grip pull of a gem bin, or a sewing device's neck. In fact, since they were all on different sides of the room and you wanted the web to be really well-anchored, it was probably best to use all of them. A proper web clearly needed a strong foundation.
...of course, not all of those anchor points were at the same height.
So that meant angling off towards something higher or lower on a different side of the room. Because you couldn't learn by aggregate without knowing what it actually meant, but the fillies were fairly certain that when it came to 'level', they could approach it through the art of the average.
The result was a criss-crossing network of fine lines which went back and forth and sideways and here and there and pretty much everywhere, which usually included where they were standing. And then they had to start on the cross-hatching. That was when movement started to become a problem.
"Ah backed into a thread again," Apple Bloom groaned.
"I saw the bolt jump," Sweetie noted.
"...ain't mah fault that Ah'm startin' t' get mah growth," the earth pony eventually said. "Overdue, if anythin'."
"Shists shal site," Scootaloo decided.
"...what?"
The next word were preceded by the sound of a spat-out spool hitting the floor. "I said, it's all right. At least we know the attachment point is solid." She glared down at the little roll of wood. "Getting sick of having this thing in my mouth..."
"It's the only way," the little unicorn pointed out.
Feathers rustled with irritation. "Why is it the only way?"
"Because I can't make my corona work very well yet," Sweetie rather placidly said. "Without my horn -- you're staring at me. Why are you staring at me? Scootaloo, you're... kind of staring. At my forehead. At my --"
"Horn..." Scootaloo breathed.
With open concern. "Yes. Horn. I'm a unicorn. I --"
(Apple Bloom, whose natural safety instincts were concentrated in one very specific area, was trying to move towards clear space. There wasn't very much available.)
The pegasus' next words emerged in the tones of light hypnosis, along with the slightest touch of drool. "You have a horn..."
"There!" Scootaloo proudly announced. "One less thing to carry!"
Sweetie slowly lifted her head. It took somewhat more effort than usual.
"Take it off," the little unicorn said.
"I knew horns were good for something!" the pegasus enthusiastically ignored her. "Other than lifting stuff. And spells. And charging down annoying ponies. Lightning's better there anyway. But look at that, Sweetie! You're a spool!"
The next "Take it off," had been meant to possess something of an edge. Having multiple loose ends of thread hanging in front of Sweetie's eyes did a lot to blunt it.
"And look at all of the stuff I got on there! Sure, it took a while to unwrap and rewind it, but you're carrying what, ten spools? Twelve? I lost count. Anyway, think about how much you can carry after you get a little bigger! ...maybe three more. Your family doesn't have very long horns. Or I could just make the layers tighter --"
"-- you. wrapped. my. horn."
With just a little too much happiness, "It frees up my mouth. Having the spool rotate in there tasted funny. And the way it was making my teeth feel --"
"-- rotate," Sweetie softly said. "My horn doesn't rotate."
"Your neck does," the pegasus reasonably pointed out. "Just toss your head when we say. Or lower it, and everything will just sort of spiral up when we pull. It's a plan!"
The little unicorn's next stretch of silence represented either the gallop-up to a full murder attempt (with blunted horn) or an extremely thorough consultation of her internal dictionary.
"Plan," Sweetie said, because the lexicon was running into some technical issues.
"And you've got the easy part! Come on, Sweetie! When you've got something extra in your anatomy, you've got to put it to use!"
The white filly was silent. The yellow, whose hair bow was occasionally suspected to be a natural growth, had been caught trying to work it free from the web.
"So let's get back to it," Scootaloo concluded. "Back up a little. Give us some feed slack." She grinned. "This is going to make it so much easier!"
The final results could be described as a web. The fillies were used to describing things. For example, they often described the Crusade itself as 'Something which is gonna work, just watch!' and so descriptions were part of their everyday lives.
Their efforts wove across the room. Threads wrapped around each other. Cross-hatching had been achieved, although it tend to pull in six different directions at once. There was more pressure coming from some attachment points than others, and it tilted the multicolored result along several angles.
The fillies were collectively confused by the sheer quantity of colors.
"Sweetie?"
Too calmly, "What is it, Apple Bloom?"
"Y'hang out here sometimes. How much thread is on a spool?"
"A full one? A few hundred body lengths."
"Stockroom ain't that big."
"No," said the filly whose horn had just been rewrapped with a fresh load. "It isn't."
"An' we still went through..."
"Six spools."
The trio pondered that for a while.
"Maybe 'cause it ain't silk thread?" Apple Bloom proposed. "Does Rarity have --"
"-- it's locked. And it wouldn't be spider silk. And... it's not the same thing as her silk."
"Ah didn't read that part," the earth pony shamelessly admitted. "How do spiders make it?"
Sweetie told her.
"...oh."
"Do you want to know," the too-calm unicorn asked, "where it comes out of?"
"...top of the head?"
"Wrong."
Scootaloo took a rather audible breath.
"We should take a picture," she proposed. "I think that's a tunnel."
Apple Bloom's brain automatically went with Funnel. The mouth tried "Ain't. Ah had a lot of trouble getting out."
"You're right here," the pegasus reasonably noted.
"Yeah. Pressed up against the door. With mah dock goin' into the wood."
"With us."
"Ah had to back out as Ah was layin' thread," the earth pony continued. "Kept gettin' lower and lower t' the floor. Pretty much movin' on mah ribs at the end there."
"I could have done that..."
"Sorry, Sweetie? Missed that."
"...nothing," the unicorn lied.
"So that's our web?" Apple Bloom asked.
"The first one, yeah," Scootaloo beamed. "And it's perfect."
"How d'you figure?"
"Easy! What's a web for?"
"Trapping insects, usually," Sweetie promptly said.
"Right!" The pegasus took a step forward --
"-- hang on. Gotta... just get my foreleg up a little... geez, this stuff rubs at your fur..."
Or at least as much of one as the sprawling web would allow.
The orange forehoof poked a strand. The entire room vibrated.
"It's solid," she announced. "I think it's the most solid thing we've ever built. Out of thread." A brief glint in purple eyes suggested that spiders might actually have something going for them. "And I guarantee that anything which goes in --"
She poked the web again. The forehoof slipped between several strands.
They got her free after a while. Three laws of topology were casually violated in order to do so, but the fillies didn't know those existed and so there was no problem there.
"Take the picture," Scootaloo said. "This is top marks."
The camera went off. Sweetie, who was the best photographer, tried for multiple angles. One of them almost achieved a panorama effect. The other two held the shot for a surprisingly long time, mostly because she was waiting for her friends to free up her ears.
"That's one!" the pegasus happily declared. "Three to go!"
"Where?" Apple Bloom reasonably asked. "Ain't no room left in here. An' it's gonna take a while t' take all this down again, especially if we're rewrapping the spools." Which was very important, because they considered themselves to have borrowed the thread and winding it all up again meant they would be putting it back.
They all considered it.
"It did take more time than I thought it would," Scootaloo admitted. "We should probably go out now. Tell Rarity we're done studying and we have to start on a picture assignment for school. She'll understand."
"I," the living spool said, "have thread. Wrapped around. My horn."
"So we talk to her and you sneak out the back." Borrowing was natural. Returning things was polite. Adult understanding, however, seemed to have limits.
"So when are we takin' all this down?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Tomorrow," the pegasus dismissed. "We can do it tomorrow morning. Unless we get a good idea during the sleepover, and then it's afternoon. We'll just get the other webs out of the way first. Besides, it's safe to leave it for a while. The Boutique's closed! To help us study!"
"...Ah'm pretty sure she said," Apple Bloom tried, "she didn't think she could get anythin' done while we were --"
"-- right! To help us! And what's Rarity gonna do with the stockroom in a closed store, anyway? Have an 'i-dea!' and come galloping in here without looking at top speed because she just has to reach the sapphires before her 'in-spir-a-tion' goes away?"
The pegasus squinted.
"I think that's the sapphire bin over there," she said. "It's a little hard to see it through all the thread. Anyway, it'll never happen! Because she said sapphires were so last season! So let's go!"
Unassailable logic offered up its usual protection, and all possible consequences were hidden under a gentle layer of salve.
They went.
They needed a total of four webs.
The fillies felt the stockroom effort had been a strong one. They also believed that it had taught them several lessons: a web needed to be big, grand, and in a place where it wouldn't be expected because that was spiders all over. There were a million of them in every acre and yet, you never quite expected to see one. So when it came to getting a good grade for their efforts, the photography would be most impressive if their threads were woven in locations which would serve as a surprise.
Additionally, they needed a certain amount of isolation and long-term privacy, because weaving all that thread took a while. So it really helped to put things in places where ponies weren't going to be looking, especially since the local adults had a fully unnatural distrust of any excuse which started with "It's our homework!" and just never thought to check with Miss Cheerilee. (Not that they wanted the adults to do so, because they also wanted their pictures to be a surprise.)
Places that were out of sight, which weren't being used. And incidentally, had some decent photographic framing. Sweetie was insisting on that.
The other two weren't sure why, but going along with it cut down the "...take it off..." mutters a bit.
The shade trees near the Barnyard Bargains loading dock had a number of low branches, and that gave them plenty of anchor points to work with. However, getting a really good street web together meant using the dock itself, because otherwise it was just the tree and there was only so high they could go: all three had a maximum high jump, Scootaloo's buzzing had a strict hover time limit, and Sweetie couldn't levitate objects with any precision for more than a few seconds before her horn started to spark. (The other two also presumed this might do something horrible to the thread, and they had to return that.) Plus ponies trying to climb trees was one of the surest signs of insanity. It had to be insanity, because it was something which nopony did and there wasn't any mark for it. The Crusaders had proven that second part, mostly through executing some rather impressive failures in trying for the first.
There was a certain buzz of adrenaline which came from working behind a place which was open and active, especially when they could hear ponies moving around inside -- but the trio felt themselves to be familiar with the store's operations. It was the weekend. Nopony was going to make a delivery during the day on a weekend. Anything the store was selling had clearly been delivered during school hours, because that was when all of the interesting stuff happened. No carts were going to pull up while they were weaving the threads, and if one somehow defied their logic? Diamond was in their class, and that meant Mr. Rich was one of the few ponies in town who would believe them about Homework.
No weekend daytime deliveries. That was obvious. And to believe there might be ponies who arrived very early in the morning in order to get things ready before the front doors opened, or that somepony would just want to step out back during their break in order to get some Sun and shade on a beautiful spring day -- that was just silly. Especially the last part, because what kind of adult did something like that? So having the web cover a good part of the cart dropoff area, that strange lift-from-the-bottom door, and basically serve as a Your Axle Snagged For You Free offer... none of that was actually a problem! Besides, the only way anypony was going to miss seeing their web was if they made a delivery at night.
The store didn't sell at night. So the store wasn't open at night. Simple logic.
The same principle applied to the back of the post office. There was no mail service tomorrow (unless you bribed Spike with a gem and these days, he had a nasty habit of actually wanting to read what you were sending) and if there was no mail going out on the next day, then there was obviously none coming in. Plus when it came to getting their blorb up, the red brick building had a clear advantage. They didn't have trees to work with, but the edges of the doors had hooks. Layers of them working around three of the frame's four surfaces, because the post office employed a lot of pegasi and mailbags could be hung anywhere. They had all of the anchor points they could ever ask for and since the building closed early on the first day of the weekend, privacy was guaranteed.
Of course, life wasn't perfect. They hadn't known exactly where they would be going when they'd left the Boutique, and they certainly hadn't layered Sweetie's horn with an eye towards artistic contrast. So it was really just bad luck, to have all of the red threads going up in that brick location. Still, the cross-hatching was getting better, the hooks had helped, and completely blocking the door made for a really effective web. And it was still visible. From certain angles. If you caught the sunlight behind it, which was actually rather hard to do. But Sweetie said there was a nice shimmer to the perfect shot, and even continued to do so after they got her ears free again.
As for the strangled web... by that point, Sun was going into the lowering process. The weaving had taken a lot longer than they'd thought it would. (None of them knew how spiders got through it, and Apple Bloom was starting to wonder about the natural caffeine content of a mosquito.) They already knew that some places closed earlier than others on the weekend. One of them was close by. And it had a railing: the kind with lots of curling metalwork. Anchor points aplenty.
Sure, it was a little high up, but they knew of certain approach angles. (It helped for Apple Bloom to try the high jump from the best semi-ledge places on the bark: the hard part there was waiting for the street to empty. After that, she just had to snag the other two. By the scruffs of their necks. With her teeth. They had grown surprisingly used to it.) There was enough protection from leaf-laden branches and swaying shadows to block the view of passing pegasi, plus the ground traffic really didn't look up at that level. And really, if you knew the town well enough to understand that the mare who operated the tree was going to stay in the lower portion for hours to straighten things up, and wouldn't glance out at her balcony until she was done...
Actually, the curtains were drawn. So she probably wouldn't look outside at all. How often did anypony use a balcony on a warm spring night?
Nopony was sure about why the small telescope was out there, but it was one more thing they could anchor to. Plus it served as the last thing they could back towards as more and more of the balcony became webbed off. You needed to have a retreat point, when you were making webs. It made them feel sorry for spiders, because everything came out of the back and that meant the retreat points came from going forward. This clearly made no sense and possibly explained some of why spiders bit ponies. They were just that irritated about it.
On the way to the clubhouse, the friends spotted the first streak of hot white light moving across the sky, and stopped to enjoy the meteor shower.
They didn't get to sleep for a while, because there was one more day to go on the weekend and they needed a good Crusade idea. (The one which required the mask still felt promising: it just had the minor detriment of being functionally impossible.) But there were times when the concepts flowed freely, and then there were long hours when they just argued at each other across the wood floor.
Ideas were proposed. Some of them turned out to be subsets of things they'd tried before, and so were immediately discarded. Others were just boring. The fillies realized they were functionally wiped out when two of them sleepily (and simultaneously) mentioned an activity which would have involved tree sap.
They arranged their blankets on the floor, nudged them into appropriate piles with heads and hooves while making sure to cover up some of the nailheads. (Some of the ones in the floor could be covered at a level which offered comfort. A few of the population sticking out of the walls had names, families, and grudges.) Windows were opened, because it was a warm spring night and the air had earned a chance to come in. And then three tired fillies snuggled down, each resting low in their own nest of soft fabric.
They resolved to take the webs down in the morning, as no ideas had presented themselves. (Or afternoon, if they woke up with a thought.) And then weary bodies were tucked against the floor. Eyes closed. Sleep came close behind.
Meteors streaked through the sky above the clubhouse. Stars twinkled.
Soft blue twinkled.
The soft blue found an open window, and silently came inside.
Apple Bloom, whose very blood had a depressing insistence on keeping farmer's hours, was usually the first to wake up.
It could be a slow process: much more gradual than her big sister liked to see. She would become aware that she was awake. The filly's eyes would remain closed for a while, because it was possible that her body might get a chance to fall asleep again and actually looking at anything might provide motivation in the other direction. The legs would stretch out low, because Apple Bloom generally slept on her belly and barrel: kicking high wasn't really an option. A languid curl back in to find a better sleeping position was just about mandatory.
Unfortunately, that was generally when her bladder became aware of the new day. Apple Bloom was vaguely aware that somepony had once called the stomach 'the tyrant organ', and presumed that pony had never heard of bladders. And there was also a rather odd scent in the clubhouse. Not exactly skunkish, but... unpleasant and strong. Familiar without being something a little more biological. Scootaloo tended to announce the biological stuff with pleasure, and often expected applause.
She sighed. Stretched her limbs again, planted her hooves on the blankets, pushed, and rammed her head into a newly-present, decidedly-low and somewhat flexible ceiling.
The earth pony completely failed to blink. Blinking required opening her eyes first. Besides, this had to be a dream. She'd barely gotten a hoof-height off the ground...
She pushed again. Her hair bow snagged. Each ear was caught in a separate loop. Mane hairs were trapped and when she tried to drop down again, the longer ones stayed just where they were.
"EVERYPONY! WAKE UP!"
Six eyes shot open, and Sun's light forced its way to three fillies.
Sun had to push. There wasn't a lot of room to work with.
Lying down on the floor put the clubhouse ceiling quite some distance above their heads: the structure wasn't all that comfortable for the taller adults, but the fillies generally had plenty of space to operate. And the ceiling, being rather well-constructed (if, at least when it came to flushness against a surface, poorly-nailed), had a welcome habit of staying exactly where it was.
The ceiling, rendered newly hard to see, was presumably just where it should be. The web was just over their heads.
Threads criss-crossed the whole of the clubhouse. They went from door to window frame, hanging lamp to table, anchored on shelves before darting to a handy nailhead on the opposite wall. They could barely see for threads. There was just enough space between threads to allow for more threads.
Air was still getting in. They weren't sure how. Air was just agile that way.
"What is this?" Scootaloo half-shouted. "Who did this?" Her legs instinctively kicked out, and the pegasus made a mistake. She stood up.
"I think Rarity did it," a half-awake Sweetie considered.
"...Rarity," Apple Bloom tried. (Her bladder twinged.)
"I'm looking at the color balance on the threads," the little unicorn said. "It's fabulous --"
"-- I can't move!" Scootaloo yelped, and a pegasus who was in a tight spot did the natural thing.
'The natural thing' was a mistake.
"My wings! They're snagged! It's got my feathers! Somepony help me! I'm --"
"-- you know," said that part of Sweetie which really didn't wake up well, "you could probably free yourself if you flap hard enough."
"You don't know what this is like!" blasted out on the steam of instant stress. "Six limbs! Six! I'm fifty percent more snagged than either of you --"
"-- after all," the unicorn interrupted, "when you've got something extra in your anatomy, you should really put it to use."
"THAT'S NOT FUNNY! Apple Bloom, you don't know how lucky you are..."
"Ah'm a little bigger than you two," the earth pony muttered. "Right now, Ah ain't callin' that luck." She moved her head, trying to work the snagged portion of her mane free. The web caught the bow. "Ah need t' stop sleepin' with this..."
"GET ME OUT OF --"
"-- don't move," the earth pony said. "Ah'll come t' you after."
"After you get Sweetie?" Scootaloo raged. "She isn't even caught! I am! Whatever I did, I'm sorry --"
"-- after," Apple Bloom firmly said, "Ah get outside."
"Outside," the pegasus repeated.
"Yeah."
"You're leaving us," Sweetie desperately checked.
"For a minute."
"WHY?" was a chorus.
"'cause if Ah don't," Apple Bloom stated, "we'll be cleanin' up more than threads. Get me?"
Both of her friends briefly fell silent.
"Go," they said.
Not here, thank you.
Apple Bloom considered her options.
"We ain't returnin' this," she told them. "Ah'm gonna bite mah way out. Hang on..."
She arched her neck. Stood as much she bared, and took a mouthful of threads between her teeth --
-- spat.
"Bitter apple!" the earth pony coughed. "It's bitter --"
"Your cousin?" Scootaloo checked. (Her feathers rustled. This turned out to be another mistake.)
"I thought he was such a horse pill," Sweetie's poor riser annoyance offered. "Did you hear him trying to brag about the stuff he never actually did? All of those obvious lies! Nopony was swallowing any of it."
"...naw, ain't Bitter," Apple Bloom eventually choked out. "Reaction's 'bout the same, though. This is stuff y'spray on whatever y'don't want animals to bite or chew. Miss Fluttershy gave us some t' keep Winona from chewin' on the furniture in the winter. Border collies gnaw on everythin' if they can't work."
"How does it taste?" Sweetie morbidly asked.
"Worse than it smells." The young farmer sighed. "Jus' gotta do it..."
She forced herself to bite down again. Chewed for a while, as her face contorted. It took very little time for the expression to twist into a sort of thoughtful disgust, and then she spit out the threads for the second time.
"They're tough," Apple Bloom observed. "Tougher than they should be."
"...magically tough?" Sweetie reluctantly checked.
"Yeah." The earth pony sighed. "Why would Miss Rarity and Miss Sparkle do this?"
"...I... have an i-dea..."
"Bear with me, y'all," Apple Bloom groaned, and fought back the next six internal twinges. "This is gonna take a while."
"What," a lightly-trembling, semi-cocooned Scootaloo asked, "is 'a while'?"
"Letcha know when it ends."
Wide purple eyes tried to stare at trapped feathers, and mostly failed.
"WAIT!" the pegasus shouted. "I've got a plan!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! Sweetie! Get your horn into the strands! Then start turning your head! FAST!"
They were back in the Boutique's storeroom, because the final spools needed to be rewound. Rarity had told them to treat it as a special occasion, because it was also the last time they were ever going to touch threads at all. The fillies, even with the last of the weekend lost to the apology tour, takedown of the previous three efforts, and librarian lecture on Effects Upon A Pony Body Which Goes Into A Very Tight Net At High Speed, considered that to be something worthy of celebration.
The adult left them to it. And then it was just the winding, over and over, while the repetitiveness of the motions cut against their attention spans.
"Finished this one," Scootaloo morbidly declared. "But the end is loose. Sweetie, how does Rarity usually hold the thread down, so it doesn't unwrap again? I wasn't looking yesterday."
"Is there a little notch at the top of the spool? Something you can slip the thread into?"
"No."
"Then a small piece of tape."
"We're not allowed to touch the tape."
"Oh, right. Last winter." Sweetie sighed. "I thought she would have forgotten that by now."
There was no fun left to be found in the stockroom, and but one thing which had yet to be forbidden.
"I'll use the craft glue," Scootaloo reluctantly decided.
"Kinda weak, ain't it?" Apple Bloom checked.
"That's why it's actually good here," the pegasus reasoned. "It won't gum up the threads, and it'll just peel off when she wants to start the spool. This stuff always peels."
"Makes sense," the earth pony admitted.
"I think so too," decided the unicorn. "Go ahead."
Scootaloo fetched the tube. Placed the spool on the floor, and put the glue next to it. The nozzle was carefully aligned.
"Okay, just a little bit of a squirt..." She stepped on the tube.
Gunk happened.
"Oh, come on!"
"Scootaloo?" her friends checked.
"It got on my other hoof! The stuff is so watery, it just flies..." She reared up, scraped her forehooves against each other: all that did was spread the substance out across a second source of keratin.
"Wave your hooves around!" Sweetie told her. "In the air, over and over! That'll dry it faster! And then we can just peel it off."
"By mouth," Apple Bloom muttered. "Anypony ever think 'bout jus', y'know, eatin' for a change?"
Scootaloo, without a scooter's steering rods to lean against, had certain problems maintaining The Biped Dance and quickly wound up on her back. Once the glue was dry, Sweetie and Apple Bloom carefully approached, then reluctantly leaned in and nipped the edges of the rubbery substance.
They pulled back, and both results came free in a single go.
"...wow," was Sweetie's first spit-free word. "Look at this..."
Apple Bloom stared. Scootaloo, vaguely curious, eventually flipped over to get a better look.
The staring doubled.
"It's a perfect cast," the pegasus half-whispered from her position against the floor. "Those are my hooves. You can even see that little chip from when I went into the tree. After the web put me off course. Because it was so gross that I couldn't steer right."
Her friends nodded. The chip was visible, and when it came to losing control... spiderwebs were just gross.
"It's like plaster," Scootaloo softly observed.
"More fragile," Apple Bloom considered. "A lot more."
"Yeah, but you don't get all the heat when it dries," Sweetie reminded them. "And it's a lot faster, too."
"Really hard t' take off in one piece, though," the earth pony noted. "We got lucky there."
"Maybe multiple coats would be more solid?" the unicorn asked.
"Dunno. Have t' experiment a bit. Layers might just peel off each other." Apple Bloom shrugged. "Except, why would we ever need to?"
But Scootaloo's eyes were already ablaze with Dream.
"That one plan," she said in a distant tone, for her thoughts were far away from mere details like Reality and Consequences.
(Technically, nopony had ever forbidden the glue...)
"Which?" both friends asked.
"From the other day. The one which needs a mask." The pegasus grinned. "How hard could it be to get a cast of Bon-Bon's face?"
